What's a good way to find out how much an artist is willing to pay/can pay for beats?

[The Questionaire]

I love making beats and dealing with artists, but I hate when it comes down to the money part. I wish I was at the point of my journey where I had someone in the middle handled the financial negotiations. My biggest issue is not knowing what to charge. Of course I feel like all of my to beats I love should go for a million dollars a piece like every other producer or beatmaker probably feels. But, I am fine with adjusting my price to what said artist can truly afford. Meaning, if he can comfortably pay me $100 to use a beat I can work with that. And, if his pockets are deeper (semi-established artist or dope boy money) I would like him to pay what he can afford. Maybe 500-1k for exclusives if it's truly in his range to do so. I'll work with whatever your budget is but don't want to cheat myself or sell myself short.

2 questions:
1. How can I find out what an artist is willing to pay or can afford?
2. How can I find out what they already pay for beats?

*I ask question #2 because I don't want to be under or over sold by producers they already buy from. I don't want to sell him beats for $50 to find out he normally pays $200 a pop to the other guys. Nor do I want to tell him I want $200 and him be like, "Yeah right, the other guy is just as good as you and I pay him $35 for beats. I'll pass"

Thanks in advance for your responses.

 

[Snapy Dee]

1. Your present your prices and if he can afford the beat he will buy it. It's simple as that. Fix your prices and run with them, don't think about how much a certain rapper is willing to pay you. You can negotiate afterwards, but have your prices already. You are a business, your products should have prices before a customer comes to you. Somebody was talking about this in an old thread i was reading here yesterday...when a person walks into a store to buy something, a store worker is not trying to figure out how much money this person has in order to charge him for a product. He doesn't think like "oh damn, this guy wears some expensive clothes, that means that he got a lot of money, that means that i should charge him more for this hamburger". Like, this example really got me thinking, and it's true. Of course that you are not going to present the same price to Jay-Z and a rapper from your block, but that's another story. If you sell yourself short, it's your fault in the end.

2. You can't find out how much they already paid for beats unless you ask them lol. You shouldn't waste time or energy on exploring that. Even if you find out the prices of that one producer who already sold them beats, you don't know what kind of deal they made.

 

[DJ Relativ]

Honestly for me it was all pro bono for the first 3 months. And all we had was Soundclick back then, which no rapper was paying for beats on-line. In 2004 I sold my first 20 tracks for $60 a pop when I worked at Wal-Mart and was happy just to get placements with local dudes that I grew up with.

1. How can I find out what an artist is willing to pay or can afford?
There's no way to exactly find out until you start to see a trend/pattern of the sells you've made on Soundclick or MyFlashStore.net. What percentage of customers are leasing or purchasing exclusive rights? Figure that out.

2. How can I find out what they already pay for beats?
It's not about worrying how much they've been purchasing tracks for. It's about producing for everyone for the low until your buzz is undeniable and you get a few placements on major artist mixtapes where you demand $500 to $1K for a track. To be honest producers like Epik Da Dawn and Vybe Beatz been doing this stuff since 2005/2006 and make most of their money from LEASING tracks. They learned the smart way to make money on-line.

You're not going to just magically Scott Storch/Lex Lugar your way in to French Montana or T.I.'s studio who'll gladly offer you 5K for a beat. You gotta work your way up or create a payment system that works for the small time artists which will allow you to eat.