How I created an EPK (Electronic Press Kit) page for my first song on Spotify, using GitHub pages and Amazon Web Service
I am so grateful I got to work on this song, and everything I’ve learned along the way from both the musical and technical aspect of this project. You can check it out here on Spotify – Hey Mama
The first step in the process has been learning how to play guitar. I learned my first two chords October 1, 2022. I played them all day long once my friend, Adam Young, taught them to me. It was a strange feeling trying to build dexterity in my fingers and transitioning from one chord to another. I started strumming them in a certain pattern and this is what came about after a few hours of playing them together – SoundCloud, ‘In My Bones’. I later added a melody, lyrics and called the song ‘Take Me Back’, which will be my next release on Spotify soon!
Back to ‘Hey Mama’ and the next steps. I began writing nearly every day if not daily. And on October 10, 2022 I wrote ‘Hey Mama’ in one sitting. I was really missing home and missing my mom in particular. She’s always been such a bright spirit in my life and someone I look to when I’ve been anxious or feeling ‘not ready’ for the next phase in my life. She has a calming and loving timbre to to her voice as you can hear in the third verse of the song. I have also spent a great deal of time reading books like ‘Writing Better Lyrics’ and getting more involved in online available resources on improving my songwriting, like often attending At-Home Songwriting meetups that you can find out more here, led by virtual Berklee University instructor, Chad Shank, who is an incredible human being and inspiring song-writing coach. I highly recommend joining!
Next came working working out the chord progression to fit the lyrics, melody, and hook. You can see part of that in an Instagram post I made here.
What truly made this song special was singing with my mom, having my dad play the drums, and some of my best buds from my hometown play the backing instruments that filled out and breathed life into this tune.
Once the song was created, then I uploaded it to Spotify through DistroKid, a music distribution platform that makes it incredibly easy to put music out on all music platforms.
Lastly came creating the Electronic Press Kit (EPK). I grabbed a template from html5up and edited what I needed to to showcase the upcoming release of Hey Mama before Mother’s Day weekend. I uploaded the code to my GitHub repository here and created a live GitHub site by publishing my site. Once the site was live, I needed to go to my Amazon Web Services console and create a CNAME record (music.daleyarborough.com) using Route 53 that I could route my GitHub site to. This is what this looks like when configuring your site to a custom domain name with a CNAME record –
Once I had that all setup, the site was live and I could post it to my social media. If you’re interested in keeping up to date with future music releases, my Spotify and Instagram links are below!
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