The First Sentence of A Bio For Musicians

This week is one of those super vital topics that’s simply no fun. But when you get it right, the entire world can open up to you. It’s the first sentence of a bio for musicians – like you. When you get the first sentence right you are going to get people to read the rest of the bio.

And I’ve got the clues here as to how you can do it, do it quickly and easily right now, today. So get out your pen and paper. When you get it exactly right, Your audience is going to remain interested in your band and they’re going to crank your tunes, I promise. I got so much great info for you, but only for the first sentence.

Check out our full video playlist on the topic of writing a great artist bio here.

Please like, comment, and subscribe. When you hit the bell on the video you get alerts when we release each next video. I appreciate that. Please comment down below the video. I want to read – what is the first sentence of your bio? Maybe the one that you come up with out of this article. I’ll reply. I’ll let you know some thoughts I might have on how you can make it a little bit better. There’s always room for improvement and if I don’t have any ideas and I can give you a high five, I will let you know.

Check out our other articles on how to write a great bio for musicians here and here.

What is an artist bio?

The bio for musicians is another tool giving industry, media, and fans a reason to listen to your music.

But can you get anyone to read more than the first sentence?

First, you got to recognize exactly what the goal of the first sentence of your bio is and it’s actually got two parts. The first goal is to keep the reader reading. When you’re sending out your bio to a blogs and other media, when you’re sending it to record labels and a booking agents, other people that you’re interested in getting interested in you, that first sentence is the toughest thing to get right so that they will keep reading and learn more.

If you lose their interest in the very first sentence, you’ve lost them completely. You could spend all day thinking about what that last paragraph is going to be. You could spend all week trying to get the whole middle right. If the very first sentence doesn’t get them interested and get them tweaked about reading everything else, all that work is for nothing, so you’re going to want to spend as much, if not more time, getting the first sentence of your sentence of your bio right. Then you do the rest of the bio. It’s crazy, but it is true.

What should be included in a bio for musicians?

Different readers all have different needs from the bio, so be sure you include your vital information.

But if you haven’t captured their interest in the first sentence, how is anything else vital?

The second goal of the first sentence of your bio is to give the reader optimism that they are going to love your music, that they’re going to really love your story. So you want to make sure that that first sentence of the bio takes care of those two goals. The first goal is capturing their interest. The second goal is that they keep reading. They need to be interested in what you’re doing.

How long should a musician bio be?

A bio for musicians should be no longer than it needs to be to get them to listen to your music. A bio for musicians should be no shorter than it needs to be to get them to listen to your music.

But if your first sentence hasn’t encouraged them to listen, why would anything else matter?

The third goal is to entice them to listen. The reader could be very, very interested in reading and then think, this is a crazy story, but I wouldn’t want to hear the band behind it. That’s not going to work. They’re going to need to be reading through your bio thinking, “I can’t wait to hear this”. Or to be reading it going, “wow, this is even more interesting than it was on first listen when I heard the song or the collection of songs that they sent me.”

How do you write an engaging bio?

A bio for musicians is no different than a great pop song. You need to grab their attention, give them something they can’t get out of their head, and get out, quickly.

But if the first sentence is like the first few seconds of a great pop song, what do you need more than anything else?

You need to identify your story hook. This is your ‘Why’. That really is the big question that you’re answering in that first sentence. Why you? Over all the other bands that are pitching to the person who’s reading it, why listen to you?

And why now? Why is it that right now is what matters? It’s part of what makes writing your bio and tweaking it with each album cycle. Maybe consider even updating your bio by single. Updating your bio regularly is critical and crucial to do because that helps you identify and answer the question “Why now?”

Some things that you might want to consider as far as making part of your story hook are your experiences, things that you’ve gone through, things that you grew up with, things that you’ve experienced just in the last album cycle, the things that you’re going on in your life. It could be conflicts, things that you had to fight for, things that you had to go up against, things that you are still challenged by, things that you are addressing, things that people will relate to, but still it might be unique enough that they haven’t heard about people going through these challenges over and over and over again.

What should I write in my Instagram bio?

You only get a few words to capture attention, so be unique and compelling.

But is an Instagram bio really that much different from the rest of your bio?

Be unique, but pull something out of your experience, out of conflict. But conflict that is going to keep their attention because it’s unique.

The way I like to think about it is, if you think about your bio as being a pitch for a movie, if you’re there, if you are going to a studio to a movie studio and saying, “Hey, you need to make a movie about my band.” They’d respond with “Okay, well what makes your band great?” That first sentence is as much as you can get out of your mouth before they kick you out of the room. That is the first sentence of your bio. They have to hear that sentence and go, I can’t wait to see what that looks like on the screen. That’s one way to think about it. Unlike a song, the hook for your bio has to be right up front as to be the very first thing.

Now you know how it is, like when, if you’re releasing a single that you’re trying to get on radio, you want that hook pretty close to the front. But in the bio it isn’t that much different. You need that hook. Bam. It’s gotta be like in the first five words, six words you’re already starting to nail it down. That is absolutely critical. Absolutely awesome. Avoid cliches. Be unique.

How do you start a biography about yourself?

You are not a cliche so a bio about yourself or your band shouldn’t be a cliche either.

But aren’t you a creative person?

You’re a creative person. You’re an artist. You should never be using cliches, not in your music, not in your lyrics, not in your bio. Be creative. So don’t use cliches.

A cliche can be something like “In the nick of time”, “diamond in the rough”, “the writing on the wall”, “calm before the storm”. We’ve heard all of those a million times. Don’t put any of them in your bio. Make your descriptions unique. If you feel yourself thinking about a cliche and wanting to use it, then spend some time thinking about a different way to describe the same thing and what you may come up with is better than the cliche.

The problem with a cliche is people have heard them so many times before that their power of description has been neutered. The reader is also going to apply that cliche and that description to a million other things that they’ve seen before. And you will automatically be associated with those things and you have no control over that. Whereas when you come up with a description that is completely unique it will get their attention. And on top of it, they’ve never heard it before. It is yours. It’s you alone. You have established your uniqueness by not using a cliche. Cliches must die.

Get to your point, and take out everything but the point

Now the other thing with the first sentence of your bio is you need to strip of everything but exactly what it needs. So things like names and details need to be taken out. You should even use like adjectives and adverbs really, really sparingly.

You want every single word in that sense to provide value. And if it doesn’t, you gotta take it out. It has to do something that informs the reader and still is focused on those goals of keeping their attention and keeping them optimistic about you and your music.

Anytime a single word or single letter distracts, or elongates, or avoids getting to that hook, then it is just not needed. You just gotta take it out. Every single word. Your sentence may be six words long and that’s it. I don’t know how you do it, but if you can do it – more power to you. I’m just saying it could be super short as long as it fits those goals.

If your sentence is 25, 30, 40 words, I promise you there’s a whole bunch of fat in there that you just got to take out. So, first sentence of your bio – spend time with it. Please put it below the video linked above. Let’s work it out together.

And feel free to email me paul@outerloopcoaching.com with the first sentence of your bio. I would be happy, happy to go through it with you via email as well.