Standard info to include would be the name of your band (duh), the members and any previous experience they've had in other bands, how you guys got together, how you came up with your name, what your sound is like, something that makes you different from other bands, quirky facts for lazy journalists to include, a previous discography, information about what you're releasing now (a track by track breakdown is good) and a rough outline to your plans to take over the world.

Once you have written it, Koe, send it to me if you like and I will make sure you have written it all correctly and that no apostrophe catastrophes are taking place in it.

Oh oh oh I can help with this.

Things to do, apart from what is mentioned above:

Mention any accolades the band has earned, such as getting to #8 on the bFM top ten etc.
Mention any quotes from respected entities e.g. "Glorious....pop perfection" - Mike Chunn (or something).

Mention any internationals that you have played support for.

Mention influences THAT ARE APPARENT IN THE BANDS SOUND. DO NOT list every single band you've ever thought were ok. This isn't myspace and nobody cares.

So the idea is to make it as easy for journos etc as possible. They will be getting 5 - 10 CDs a week minimum so you need to make a short sharp impact and make them want to listen to your stuff. Then, if it's good, you're sussed and will get reviews/interviews etc. If it's crap, you're fucked. But if it's good and they never listen to it, you're fucked anyway.

Also, mention any famous links anybody in the band has. For example, if say Shayne Carter happened to be at York St that day and played a bit of lead on one song, definitely include that on the press release.

Here's some stuff to avoid:

Saying your band is going to be the biggest thing since the Beatles/Oasis/Interpol/Metallica/Strokes/whatever. Just don't do it, it pretty much screams unprofessional. You want a well written, positive breakdown of your music, but being a LITTLE understated is not a bad thing. Kiwis like modesty.

Avoid the cliches that you see on here and other sites, like "These guys are going to take the world by storm/will be huge/are set for world domination." Again, unprofessional, pretty much indicates you're crap.

Unless it's actually interesting (like you met and formed a band after crashing into one another's cars or something), don't bother with how the band came about. If two of you met at music school and then someone responded to an ad at the rockshop, don't put it in. Who cares?

It actually doesn't hurt to have a bit of fun with the paper it gets printed on and the presentation of the disc. The worst thing you could do would be to submit a white CD-R with the band's name written in vivd. If you give people something that has some additional perceived value (like say individual number on the first 500 copies, plus a DVD of the band making the album in the studio), you're in all likelihood going to get more bites than otherwise. It's hard to know how to strike the balance between expense and benefit here, but it doesn't hurt to get a bit creative. Again, once the album gets played, it's up to the quality of the music to do the talking for you, but just getting people's attention and getting them to put the album on is your first priority, and the hardest part of the process.

Wow, that ended up being long. Hope there's some good stuff in there for you anyway.