Writing A Musician Bio That Doesn't Suck!

A bio can be a tough nut to crack for independent artists. So how do you write a good bio?

First of all, proper spelling and punctuation are imperative. Don’t have errors in your bio!  Have other people proofread your bio, especially if this isn’t one of your strengths. (I’ve been guilty of spelling and grammatical errors plenty of times myself – just make sure you don’t let yourself off the hook too easily. Proofread. Care. It matters)

Image courtesy of Shafali Caricatures.

Structure your paragraphs in a way that’s easy to read. Be digestible. Giant paragraphs and run-on sentences are amateur and make your bio difficult to read – not what you want!

As for the content, there are many ways to approach it. Here’s one of them:

First paragraph = Who are you? – in the present moment.

The opening paragraph should do two things. It should set the context for the reader to be able to process the rest of the information – a starting point that answers their question, “who is this person?” – and, it should be compelling enough to make the reader want to know more.

After you’ve answered the initial question in the first paragraph, you can add some depth with some of the back story. How did you get to be who you are? - and keep it interesting. If you don’t have anything interesting to say then either try harder to come up with something, start doing things that are interesting that you can write about in the future, or make something up – because if your story isn’t interesting, you’ve got nothing!

 

Next, we answer the question, “what are you doing now?”

Finally, we answer the question, “what is your future?”

 

The above is an excerpt from a piece that details, with examples, how to write your biography as an independent artist. You can view the examples here.