How To Sell Beats Online
How To Sell Beats Online
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Beat Market Overview
Online Beat market is a really hot thing. With more and more rappers and other recording artists trying to make it the demand for beats is only getting bigger and bigger.
Just think about it.
70,000 people type “Hip hop instrumentals”and 60,500 type “Beats for sale” in google monthly. Now that’s alot of people. And these are only 2 of even more “keywords” that people type in google.
If you’re a music producer or thinking about becoming one, this is very important information. It means that if you could sell to even a fraction of these people, you could be looking at some serious figures.
And to tell you a “secret”… it’s not all about beat quality. Yeah, go figure.
Producer with better and hotter beats will sell LESS than the producer who actualy knows what he is doing but has lame beats. That’s a fact!
Where To Go ?
Learning how to sell beats
Let’s assume you are already making beats for some time. You have a few of them and your friends love them.
Now you ask yourself this:”How to sell beats online?”.
Well, there are 3 options:
1.) – Sell beats on your own website
2.) – Find sites like “SoundClick”, “BeatBrokerz” or “RocBattle”, upload your beats and sell via these sites
3.) – A combination of both
Now the best thing to do would be choosing option 3).
That’s because you can use all of these sites with your own to attract a larger crowd and sell more beats. But we will get back to that later.
What Are Leases?
How to sell beats.
They need to provide production credits to you when they use that beat.You can keep on selling that beat to other people since you still hold the rights to it.Some other common leasing license rights are (this is entirely up to you but this is something what we and alot of other producers, groups use)
- Being able to sell 2,000 units of a project (track, video, mixtape, etc) that uses that beat
- Unlimited non-profit use
- Royalty Free
Now what does this mean for artists who buy your beats?
Well, “Royalty Free” means that you don’t get any of the money they make selling up to 2,000 of their copies.
However, if they want to sell more than 2,000 than they need to contact you.
If the beat will be used in a non-profit project, they are free to share as many copies as they want.
They are not allowed to sell that beat to others tho (as in buying a beat from you and then selling it like their own).
Leases vs. Exclusives
Selling Beats Online
When deciding if you want to sell your beats as exclusives (as in you give your beat to someone for a certain price and after that they own the full rights to it) you have to consider a few things.
When you lease beats for low price, you can keep doing that with the same beats.
Sure you can try to sell 1 beat to 1 person for $400 (which is hard btw), but you would have more success with trying to sell that beat as a lease for let’s say $20.
Now a random artist is far more likely to buy a beat he just heard and likes for $20 then for $400. And you can even keep selling that beat to other artists.
Imo, leasing is a far more effective and easy way to make some money selling your beats and these websites will help you with that.
Soundclick
Your Own Online Beat Shop
Soundclick is a website where you can upload your own music but it has a twist for beat sellers. You can list your beats there, and when someone hears your beat he can contact if you if he likes it.
However, since this is pretty inefficient you’re best of paying for a VIP page where you can add a paypal widget that lets listeners pay for your beat and then you send it to them. This is very effective for leases as well as exclusives.
This is something you should consider paying for if you’re really into the whole beat selling thing. Soundclick is one of the largest if not THE largest online community of musicians. As such, it has loads of artists that need beats for their projects.
This site can do you wonders in terms of your promotion.
BeatBrokerz
Beat Selling Website
Beat Brokerz is simillar to Soundclick but a bit more “set and forget”.
It’s a free site where you can list your beats, set their prices and everything, even provide your own voicetag. Then users of that site can see your beat on the charts and if they like it, buy it!
They provide all the licensing and you can even set your own terms if you wish to do that. This is quite handy for selling leases.
You can even use the player they provide you with and place it in your VIP Soundclick page.
Since it’s free, you can’t really afford not uploading your beats there since that will just give you extra free exposure.
Rocbattle
Battle Your Beats
Rocbattle is a beat market / forum and it could be very usefull to you. Like on BeatBrokerz, you upload your beats to the site, set their prices and everything and your beats will be listed there for everyone to hear and buy. Only downside is that they take 50% of your earnings on that site if you have free account.
The twist here is, you can battle your beats against other producers and their beats. Everyone can vote and if you start winning you will be featured higher in charts and more people will hear your beats. That is some awesome free promotion right there!
If you pay for becoming “Exclusive” member for about $7 a month, then you get 100% of your earnings, battle with other Exclusive members, be promoted on home page, enter beat battle tournaments and win cash prizes and be able to upload more beats.
Since they get a lot of traffic, if you’re not on a tight budget, this would be a good investment, even more if you like the idea to battle your beats vs. others.
However, before using their website, if you don’t live in US, check if they will be able to pay you when the time comes. We had an issue with them and they said they will not be able to pay us since we’re in a country not supported by their system.
Mind you, these are all reputable sites, and LOADS of people are using them.
Selling Beats on Your Own Website
How to sell beats online
This is one of the best ways how to sell beats online.
Why would you want people to find you on other sites when they could find your own site?
Not only does having your own website looks professional but it’s much better for you in the long run to start sending your artists to your own site.
Now this is a whole topic on itself and I will be writing on how to setup your own website and how to drive traffic to it and to your other sites in my next lense. 😉