Stop Giving Away FREE Beats...

I used to think the same way. But, at the end of the day if you do the proper paperwork when you are giving beats to rappers then you shouldnt have nothing to worry about. You have to build your brand first. Nobodys gonna buy your beats especially if you dont have a STRONG BUZZ for your brand. Why do people buy Jordans? Because they know his brand. Why do people buy Nike/Apple/Sony products? Because they know their brand. On top of that, you gotta ask yourself "AM I REALLY GIVING OUT FREE BEATS?" If you want them to buy, make sure you are sending invoices with the beat you send. In the industry, producers dont usually get paid until the project is finalized. Some up and comers dont get paid at all. Ive seen it happen up close. Just some food for thought for ya.
 
I dunno dawg I think there's a time and place for giving away free beats, especially when you're first starting out. Even if you're established. You use a free beat as an incentive to get repeat business from people. Like giving away free beats for an email and upselling them on mixing/mastering or something - it's got its uses. But I feel you styll
 
I agree! If you're good at something, never do it for free! Oh, that rhymes! :D
 
FidelityMusic said:
Coming from someone who always looked for free beats to rap on, I didn't appreciate what producers did one bit, let alone did I care of the work they put in. Do you know how many beats I destroyed, and not in a good way? Now that I've put the time in producing, I realize the hard work it takes. From studying Sound Design, to learning to play the Piano/Keyboard, to learning basic Music Theory, learning your DAW inside-out, to studying the basics of Audio Engineering, to watching countless videos to learn new techniques and then applying them, to learning your Plugins and Synths inside-out. There's no way I'm giving beats away for free, a good majority of us dedicate too much time for some lame rapper to talk about his manufactured struggle, all the females he claims he's hittin', or how he's killing the rap game in his bedroom.

Let these rappers/artists put their money where their mouth is, producers shouldn't be doing $20 leases either, unless it's some basic project/session that you know is gonna sit in a folder.
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I started out as both a rapper and someone who got lucky a few types tapping around at keys and thought he was a producer.

When I actually got serious about producing, man did I learn how wrong I was.

This is a golden response! Cheers for that.
 
Right! We must appreciate our individuality which we put in our music and don't spend our efforts for free because unlikely some guy after you giving him your beat for free even won't appreciate you work because he got it for FREE... its really tiresome((( But anyway - its not about money, firstly, its all about passion!=)
 
I used to give away free beats & I never thought about it like that, giving away free beats does hurt other producers as well. I just give away super old ones now back when I first started
 
I agree, but the music industry as a whole devalued the worth of music. My experience with working with artist to even getting placements on tv, the value of our work is not respected. Big time networks don't even want to pay for music and some publishers are not even giving the artist or producers a cut of the license fee. They put your music under a blanket license. You have to wait for your back-end royalties. And the royalties are not much. It's just the way the music biz is right now.
 
audiobinger said:
I agree, but the music industry as a whole devalued the worth of music. My experience with working with artist to even getting placements on tv, the value of our work is not respected. Big time networks don't even want to pay for music and some publishers are not even giving the artist or producers a cut of the license fee. They put your music under a blanket license. You have to wait for your back-end royalties. And the royalties are not much. It's just the way the music biz is right now.
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Scripps
 
Speaking as somebody extremely old-school, and probably thought of by many of you as an irrelevant old fart, I endorse the OP. Among the first rules in any business is the edict that giving your labours away devalues your labour and sets the expectation that such things should be free.

I'll slink back to the old folks forum now...
 
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