Entertainment Media Publishing & Distribution

            In month eight, our course was Entertainment Media Publishing & Distribution.  The Leadership Portfolio assignment this month was to create an electronic press kit for a book, movie, album, etc.  Given that I have a Bachelors degree from Full Sail in Recording Arts, I naturally chose to do my EPK on an album.  Though I have made music for years now and have been on other artists’ and bands’ albums, I have never actually made a record out of the 70+ self-produced songs I’ve compiled over the years.  This assignment was my chance to at least lay the framework for my own album.  I entitled it “Rhyme Will Tell”.  For the EPK, I included an artist bio, professional photos, equipment personally owned and equipment venues must provide, an album cover I designed myself, the track list of the album and gigs I’ve played in the past, lyrics to one of the album songs, a sample demo track, published quotes about me as an artist, and finally my contact information with a business card.  This assignment was fun for me because it is something I can actually use if I decide to create a solo album at some point.

            It was interesting putting an artist bio together of myself.  I’ve had to write personal bios of myself prior to this Leadership Portfolio of course.  However, I’ve never done it in a way that promotes me as a solo artist planning to go on tour with my solo album.  My strength of vision certainly came into play here as I thought of the brand image I wanted to portray, drew my album cover, and had to narrow down a 15-track album from a song library of 70+.  I would also say that I worked on my weakness of problem solving with this assignment.  One would think that with so many self-produced songs to my name, I would have taken the steps to put fifteen of them together onto a CD, make an album cover, and try to make some money and/or create a name for myself and my art.  This was the first step to me realizing that it really isn’t all that difficult to do, and if I put so much effort into the songs, I could spare a fraction of that time to create an album so they can be heard instead of collecting dust as wasted effort and talent.