How To Make Money Selling Beats As A Music Producer Or Beat Maker

ItsAShawdiTrack

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Make Money By Selling Beats

There are many ways to make money by selling beats online and offline. However, many producers and beat makers know little or have no knowledge of the business side of being successful at selling beats. Using all your time, trying to perfect your craft, promoting, working hard, and researching information can be frustrating if you are still not seeing the sales you are looking for. Just like any other job or hustle, if you really want to make money then start by having more ways to make money than just one. This is a list that I have made for beat makers and producers on the best ways to make money selling beats online and offline.

Have Your Own Website

The first thing I strongly suggest is to have your own beat website. It is way more profitable in the long run. The first thing to successfully sell beats online is to build up a internet presence. You can do this by registering a domain name and making your own website, or you can simply sign up for a free or VIP beat service such as MyFlashStore that will allow you to set up and make your own beat selling website. You will also need a Paypal account to safely accept money transactions from customers online.

Sell Licenses To Your Beats

Selling beat licenses is about the most common way to sell online. It's up to you which licenses you do or do not want to sell but the most common licenses are Leasing and Exclusive licenses. Lease Licenses are non-exclusive licenses of with a limited sales. This means that your buyer can only sell a limited number of digital downloads or physical albums (2000-5000). Your beat can be leased to an unlimited amount of buyers and you still keep the rights to your beat. Lease licenses are used by artists for promotional use rather than serious money making use. Regular lease price are normally around the $20 range. You can also have a Premium Lease License if you choose to. This is the same as regular leases except the artist can receive the track outs under the same conditions as leases. This leasing option costs more than regular leases (average around $40 - $60). Exclusive licenses, on the other hand, are full ownership licenses, with an unlimited sales cap. They are sold to only 1 customer and the beat is marked as sold. Of course, they will be priced a lot higher, anywhere from $100 to $5,000 ($20,000 to $100,000 if you are a major producer!)

Receive Your Royalties

When you sell your beats exclusively, know that you can still receive money from the beat if the final track the artist makes does well with radio plays. You can still receive mechanical royalties from your beat. Before you do, have a Split Sheet made to divide the mechanical royalties between you and the artist (normally 50/50 split between artist and producer). In order to benefit from this, you must be registered with a royalty collection association such as BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC. These companies are the ones that pay out the royalties. Payments are only sent out quarterly, or every 3 months, so you won’t necessarily be paid a large amount at once but it adds up. It's a slow process but royalty payments are where producers really make big money, especially if you have a lot of hits in rotation.
Become A YouTube Partner

It’s real easy to become a Youtube partner, just make a Youtube channel, enable your videos to be monetized, and sign up for a Google Adsense account to monetize your videos. If you regularly update your channel with interesting content that gets a ton of views, such as beat videos, you can earn a good amount with displaying ads on your video and channel. It's also a slow process to rack up, but in the end it's worth the wait.

Sell Beat Tapes

Choose a few unsold beats from your catalog and make a Beat Mixtape. This is a great way to promote your beats and can generate a lot of excitement amongst your fans. It can also lead to generating new fans. The beat mixtapes can be sold as a bundle package of leases that you can sell for $5 - $20. When leased beats are normally $20 for just one lease who wouldn't want to buy a package of 10 or so beats for the same price?
Sell Drum Kits

There are always producers hunting new and exciting sounds and drum samples. If you can provide good quality sound that you may have created, you should consider selling drum kits. A lot of other producers have already been selling their sounds online, and if you are popular and have a large enough following, you can make a good amount of money by doing this. You can sell your drum kit on your website or you can partner up with existing drum kit websites and work out a deal to distribute from their site.
Send Your Beats To Label A&Rs

To do this you must build relationships, and be persistent and patient. The best way to sell tracks offline is to network with artists and A&Rs. You can do this at conventions, clubs, through introductions. You can email your tracks or you can set up meetings to play your music in person. The music industry really is a “who you know” business. You can either have a manager who is connected, or you need to get yourself connected by networking directly. Stay connected and keep your name in the mind of the A&R, because although you may not be right for the project he or she is working on today, your sound may be ideal for a project next month or next year. You just have to continue to be persistent and patient. If you are new to producing, find a way to build your name up locally to get attention first, then work your way up.

Work With Other Producers

Work with producers and start collaborating on beats. This is a good way that can be beneficial for both parties, it can expand your name to other producer's customer's and contacts. You can agree to split the profit 50/50 or a percentage of what you both agree to. If you have a good team, you are assured to give both customers exactly what they are looking for.

Come Up With Your Own Way

You are not limited to just these ways that I listed to be successful. There are always new platforms and opportunities being created, why not create your own way? You can sell e-books, run contests, and tons of more things that probably will never think of. There are literally tons of ways to go about selling beats. It all depends on you and what new innovative way you can come up with. You never never know until you try!
 
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