bridgekid09
New member
u give em out free n theyll have no value at all
I was in the same position. I was giving a cousin beats for free, studio time for free, and he SUCKS!!! I would do all of this work for him for free, and he would never hold up his end of the bargain. Never got stuff mixed, never made the calls he was supposed to make, kept lying to me about "i got a meeting in New York next week, can you make me a package", when in reality he just needed some CD's to hustle to people to get some quick change.
My work had no value to him. So he just sh*tted all over me, and used me.
When i started charging him $200 for a package (beat, recording time, engineering), then all that changed. He ain't recorded a SINGLE SONG since I stopped giving him stuff for free.
I even charge him $20 per CD for me to burn when he wants to "send out a package". Now he's only hitting me up when he REALLY needs a CD...which has only been about 3 times, instead of him needing 20 CD's every month.
A major artist wouldn't take your beats for free. You'd have to pay him to get on your beats.
That's what I'm trying to tell y'all. The people who you WOULD give free beats to that you can actually BENEFIT from it, would tell you to PAY THEM in order to get on your beats.
But hey...learn the hard way. All I try to do is impart a little wisdom, from someone who's actually BEEN there, and not just speculating how it SHOULD work.
Thats what you've experienced bruh. I've had a major artist call my phone WITHOUT me giving him my number, my homeboy had one of my beat CD's and he let this rapper listen to it. Dude hit me up talking about let me hear what else you got. I let him listen to a few beats and he wanted 2 and he told me to hit him up the next day.
I told ALL my boys in the hood (HUGE MISTAKE) and they were like hit this n1gga up for $5000 for each track and I let them influence me so when I told the rapper how much I wanted to charge, dude was like naw man and he never hit me up again, 6 months later his CD dropped and he had a number 1 single for a week and went gold.
If I would have lowered the price and negotiated higher points on the album as a business man a NOT a "hustla" I'd be in a much different positioin right now. Everything happens for a reason so I'm not trippin.
What I learned:
1. Eliminate dumb and broke people from my circle.
2. I have to start somewhere and I'm not going to start out selling beats for $40,000 a pop.
Honestly, there is no right or wrong answer to this because it really depends on your situation and who you're involved with. Simple as that.
*I know for a fact that a certain iconic producer used to give tracks to Jay-Z for free so how can I charge a somebody for a track with no major catalog behind me, again depending the situation*
Oh yeah, Troup, I'm not speculating, this is what I"ve experienced first hand.
haha well as long as you got a few other chances to work with majors i'd consider this as a valuable lesson in business tactics...
but if u never had a chance like that afterwards i'd say you ****ed it up
Lol, I did mess it up but I've learned from my mistakes.
but i feel you on that whole influence thing man! people who dun even have a clue what they actually talk about have a certain ability to guide you into dumb things!
guess its mainly because they pull the most simple conclusions out of the most obvious things without thinking real deep about it and you eventually get caught up in that ish...
"Oh he got money charge dat nigga 8000 a pop"
I give out free beats to people with a buzz....