A DJ press kit isn't a portfolio — it's a decision tool. A booker should be able to scan it in 60 seconds and know whether you fit their room. Most DJ EPKs fail because they try to impress instead of inform. This guide covers what to include, what to cut, and how to host it so it actually gets opened.
What a press kit is actually for
A booker uses your press kit to answer four questions in the time it takes to finish a coffee: What do you sound like? Who has already booked you? Are you reliable? How do I contact you? Everything that doesn't directly answer one of those questions is making the kit worse, not better.
Treat it like a landing page, not a CV. One scroll on a phone, no PDF download, no autoplay video, no walls of text.
- Hero block: alias, one-phrase sound description, a single strong photo, and a play button on your best 25 to 40 minute mix.
- Recent highlights: three to five logos or venue names, ideally with date and slot.
- Mix samples: two or three mixes, each labelled with the slot it represents (warm-up, peak, sunset).
- Short bio: three sentences, written in third person, mentioning where you're based and what you're known for.
- Contact: direct email, phone number, Instagram, and a link to your tech rider.
Host it as a single link, not a PDF
PDFs are dead. They're slow to open on a phone, they go stale within months, and bookers can't share them in a group chat. Use a one-page site — a custom domain, a Linktree-style booking page, or a hosted EPK builder — that updates as your bookings change.
- Pick a URL that's your alias plus the country code: djalias.com or djalias.live.
- Make every link work in one tap on mobile.
- Show the most recent gig at the top; rotate the photo at least every three months.
Photos and video that look like the room you want
Photos are the most over-thought part of an EPK. You don't need a studio shoot — you need one strong shot of you behind a real booth in a real venue, ideally with the crowd partially visible. If you want club bookings, your photos should look like club nights. If you want lounge and brunch gigs, they should look bright and friendly.
Add one 30 to 60 second vertical video clip near the top. Bookers swipe to that instinctively. Loud crowd, clean transition, decent lighting — that's enough.
One practical detail that separates working performers from hobbyists: keep a simple log of every venue you contact, the date you sent the pitch, and whether you got a reply. A spreadsheet with five columns — venue, contact, date sent, follow-up date, outcome — takes ten minutes to set up and saves you from sending the same pitch twice or forgetting a promising thread. Review it every Monday before your outreach block.
The tech rider nobody else includes
Adding a one-paragraph tech rider to your EPK puts you ahead of 90% of working DJs. It signals you've played enough real rooms to know what you need. Keep it short:
- Preferred setup (CDJ-3000 + DJM-900NXS2, or USB-only).
- What you bring (laptop, two USBs, headphones).
- What you need on the night (monitor on, water, comp drink).
- One line about hospitality if you're travelling.
That's it. No diva clauses, no champagne demands. Bookers love it because it shrinks their checklist.
Keep it alive, not perfect
The EPKs that get DJs booked aren't the prettiest ones — they're the most current. Update the recent highlights every time you play somewhere new, rotate the lead mix every two to three months, and remove anything older than 18 months. A booker who sees a dated EPK assumes you stopped working.
Set a calendar reminder for the first of every month: 15 minutes to check the page, swap the photo, refresh the highlights, and confirm the contact details still work.
Building a press kit is a one-day project; keeping it current for years is the hard part. Estelle is an AI agent that watches your booking history and quietly prompts you when the EPK is going stale — new highlights to add, mixes to swap in, photos to refresh — so the page bookers click on always looks like a DJ who is actually working.