Do I need an EPK or a website?

You need both, eventually, but they are not the same tool. A website is the thing a promoter, journalist, or fan finds on their own — through search, a social bio link, a poster. A press kit (EPK) is the thing you send when someone has already asked for it: a venue booker who wants your bio and stage plot, a festival submission form, a radio plugger. Confusing the two is the mistake — sending a website link when someone asked for a one-page PDF, or having no findable site at all because you only ever "send stuff."

What each one is actually for

A press kit is a document. Usually a PDF: bio, band photo, a short tracklist or set list, upcoming dates, and a booking contact. It is built to be attached to an email or dropped into a submission form. It doesn't need to look good in a browser — it needs to open fast, print cleanly if someone prints it, and answer "who are you and can you play our room" in under a minute of reading.

A website is a place. It needs to work when someone lands on it cold — from a search, a poster QR code, a friend's recommendation. It carries more than a press kit: audio or video embedded so people can hear you without downloading anything, a gig calendar that updates itself, photos, and usually a way to join a mailing list. A website is also the only one of the two that can be found without you doing anything — it's indexed, it's linkable, it exists whether or not you're actively pitching that week.

When a Linktree is genuinely fine

If you're a hobbyist act playing occasional open mics, or a solo artist six months into gigging with no real backlog of dates or press, a link-in-bio page is not a compromise — it's correctly sized for where you are. Its job is narrow: send someone from Instagram to your music and your next show. If that's the only job you need done, a $0 Linktree does it.

The test is whether anyone external — a booker, a wedding client, a journalist — ever needs more than "here's our music and our next date." If nobody is asking you for a bio, a stage plot, past show history, or a rate sheet, you don't need a press kit or a full site yet. Build one when the ask shows up, not before.

When it costs you a booking

It starts costing you the moment someone with money is deciding between you and another act. A function band chasing corporate and wedding bookings without a real site looks unbooked-in — like the couple would be your first paid gig, even if you've done forty. A cover band with only a Linktree can't show a venue their actual set list, sound samples by song, or that they've played rooms this size before. None of that fits in a link stack of five buttons.

It also costs you the moment a booker asks for a press kit and you don't have one ready. "I'll put something together" is a worse answer than a slightly rough PDF attached to your reply. Festivals and venues with submission deadlines are choosing between artists who could send it now and artists who need three days — and the follow-up email you send three days later often arrives after the slot is already filled.

A third failure mode: your Linktree points to a Spotify profile and an Instagram, and neither one has your booking email visible or your upcoming dates in one place. A booker has to hunt for how to contact you. Most won't.

The order to build them in

Do the website first, not the press kit. The website is where your bio, photos, dates, and contact info actually live — the press kit is just those same assets exported into a portable format. Write the bio once, pick the photos once, then generate the PDF from what already exists rather than maintaining two separate documents that drift out of sync. The common failure is a press kit with an old lineup photo and tour dates from eighteen months ago because nobody remembered to update the standalone file.

Practically: get the site live with a clean one-paragraph bio, three to five photos, and a dates section, even if the dates section is empty at first. Add the mailing list signup next — it's the one thing a Linktree can't meaningfully do, and it's the only channel you'll fully own if a platform changes its algorithm or shuts down a feature. Build the press kit last, generated from the same bio and photos, so updating one updates both.

Where Roadshow fits

Roadshow builds the website from a plain description of your band, then generates the press kit PDF from that same site — bio, photos, tracklist, dates, and booking contact — so you're not maintaining two versions of your own story. It's available on every plan, including the free trial, and paid plans add gig invoicing on top if you also need to bill venues and keep a year-end summary.

If you're still at the Linktree stage, stay there until a booker actually asks you for more. But the day someone emails asking for your press kit and you have to build one from scratch under a deadline, you'll wish the bio and photos were already sitting somewhere reusable.