By Justin Gray (Songwriter/Producer/Founder www.wearemdiio.com)
If you were at our recent MDIIO/U event, you heard Paula Danylevich discuss the importance of YOUR bio! If you weren’t…you should have been! Your bio is usually the first glimpse that someone gets into who you are and what you do. If your bio isn’t interesting, YOU’RE not interesting. And if you’re not interesting, nobody will be interested. Conveying a message that shows that not only are you interesting but what you do is interesting, is really the primary focus of what your bio is intending to accomplish. Artists, Songwriters, Producers, and bands all have varying perspectives when it comes to telling your story. Your bio IS your story! If you are not sure of where to start, go online, find someone who is in your creative lane, and use their bio to inspire yours. Here are five ways to hype the humblebrag, promo the FOMO, and build the BIO!
Introduction - When someone is reading your bio right at the beginning, the first thing they are trying to glean is who are you and why do I need to care about you? So tell them! Let them know in plain facts "here so I am," "here’s what I’ve done," and "here’s why you need to know me." Once you’ve done that, then you can dig in deeper and contextualize your bio. When I was in journalism school, they ingrained in us that the first paragraph has to contain the who, why, where, when, and how. The rest of the story is meant to explain those things in more detail. Your bio is exactly the same.
Context - Context is very important. It really is the thing that creates the definition of who you are. If you are a songwriter. "Your name" has been writing songs since the age of 15. Whatever it is that you can say to put some context around why some of this even reading your bio in the first place is crucial. It should be interesting and funny and informational and project to the reader exactly who you are.
Color – Especially if this is your first bio, try to create a visual picture through your words to really describe who you are. If you think about color commentary at sports events, there’s a person whose entire job is just to add color to what it is that you were seeing on TV. This is exactly the same thing. Providing some color or some story around what makes you you is going to be crucial in having somebody really understand and glean from your bio how special you truly are. To say that you were a singer-songwriter really doesn’t separate you from the pack. But if you were a singer-songwriter "who grew up in a small town rummaging through a dusty record collection to you could listen to your parent's 45s of Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan" will immediately invoke a creative bias so that when they listen to your music, they will understand where it is exactly that you came from. Make sure that the language in your bio supports the narrative of who you are.
Experience - Mentioning collaborators is a really great way of authenticating your experience. "Having collaborated with songwriters all over the world, "your name" has managed to create X amount of songs in Y amount of time." Keeping it factual but being able to piggyback on other people you’ve collaborated with is a really great technique to validate who you are, and the experience that you have. If you have attended any of our MDXO events, you can brag with confidence!
Structure – Starting your bio with the key important points is crucial. Usually, the middle part of your bio should be the color and the context. And every bio should end with what are you currently working on, and what are your intentions for the next 12 months. This indicates to the reader what you have done, what you are doing, and what you will do.
The Coda: Write your bio, rewrite your bio, then regularly update it. Let people know about every new win. This is your calling card. This is how people will know who you are and what you do. We all think about who would play us in the story of our lives. Well…this IS the story of YOUR life. You might as well be the star!
See you next week and keep writing those hits.
Justin@mdiio.com