Making money as a music producer online is one of the most difficult things you can do when you first start out. Even putting in the time and effort to build up processes to make money online takes time and effort.
On the other hand, if you want to make money online as a music producer, you must have adequate high-quality recordings. You cannot make money online by selling substandard tracks.
When it comes to music, one of the most difficult things to do is to create a variety of ways to make money online. To even begin to develop one stream of income in music, you must go through a number of learning curves.
Selling tracks online has the most difficult learning curve of all the income streams since you must consider a million aspects. It all starts with the demand for the style of music you’re making and concludes with how inventive you’re with your marketing.
Music producers that make money online have two things in common: they work hard and don’t give up. You must be persistent about not giving up on your online income-generating efforts.
Selling songs online begins with determining the type of music being created and ensuring that it is in demand. The marketing of the tracks should be done in such a way that it accurately depicts the actual product in order to attract clients.
Even if it’s exciting to learn that you can make money online, in this article I’ll explain what selling beats entails, how to sell beats online, and how to promote your beats. Let’s get started, shall we?
What does selling beats mean?
Creating tracks without vocals for various genres of music and selling them online through a website is what selling beats online is all about. Because of the popularity of trap and hip-hop music, this type of sales has risen to the forefront in many cultures.
Rap and hip-hop music is the most commonly marketed tracks because they are easy to sing over. This is not the case with tunes from other genres.
When it comes to hip-hop and rap music, the sample frequently repeats itself throughout the song, allowing beat merchants to create a limitless amount of beats for rappers to use.
Before the rise of online beat platforms in 2007, selling beats was considered a foreign concept. If someone requires a beat, they must visit a recording studio or request a beat on CD, which they can then use in their songs. It was not of the highest grade.
Things became easier and more accessible as technology progressed, particularly in the domain of computer software for music production.
Getting a rhythm for music production or rapping is no longer a difficult chore; there are numerous music producers who create tracks and sell them online.
When it comes to selling a beat online, there are so many details that no one considers from the outset that they become nothing more than licensing.
You must understand that if someone is selling a track or a beat for $20, you are merely purchasing a license to utilize the songs and not an exclusive sale.
Many people miss out on this, and as a result, they wind up arguing with the rappers. In this article, I’ll go over each of these licenses in terms of selling beats.
The first license entails the use of the rhythm in front of a crowd of 10,000 people. When you buy a beat for $20, you’re effectively purchasing a tune that will be played in front of 10,000 people.
The music producer might end the license and ask you to renew it if your track has more than 10,000 views or sells more than 10,000 copies. Then you must pay a set proportion for each and every view you receive on the track.
This is because, while the track was purchased by you, it was purchased on the basis of a license to use rather than an exclusive license. As a result, the master track belongs to the music producer.
The following license is an exclusive license. The artist receives the track as well as 50% ownership of the master track in this case.
Even if a music producer buys you an exclusive deal on a song, keep in mind that unless he explicitly states that he relinquishes 100 percent of the master track rights, he retains ownership.
This is where many music producers and record labels fail to deliver for rappers and singers. This is the result of a flaw in the copyright system. According to copyright regulations, anyone who creates a product has a 50% stake in it, regardless of whether it is sold.
How do you sell beats online?
Selling beats online is no longer a difficult operation; it used to take hundreds of dollars to set up a website and configure it to sell your beats. Nowadays, there are a plethora of venues that allow you to sell your beats without any hassles or for a low price.
Before you start selling your beats online, the first thing I would advise you to do is develop a catalog of 35 beats. When you publish your website, having a larger library will provide your consumers more options to browse and select a track that they are interested in.
Setting up your beat store, which may be done in a variety of ways, is the first step in selling beats online. I would recommend that you develop your website if you have previous website design experience.
If you don’t have any experience putting up websites or working with domains, going with a third-party storage provider is the best way to go. “Beatstars and Airbit” are the two most popular beat store platforms.
Beatstars was the first platform to offer the possibility of hosting beats on their site; they also give you the option of selling your beats with custom licenses. This gives them a significant competitive advantage in the beat store market.
In your beat store, you can now sell your merch as well as services like mixing and mastering. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you want to make your beat store a standalone website, you can easily do so by connecting a domain to Beat Stars’ pro page.
If there’s one thing I have to say about Beatstars, it’s that their customer service is outstanding. Within 20 minutes, they respond to your emails.
Airbit is the next platform. They provide similar services to Beatstars. When you compare the number of users on both platforms, you’ll notice a significant difference because beatstars use their money well to advertise it to beat producers.
The only issue I have with Airbit is that they do not give custom designs for your store page; nevertheless, practically all of the functions and capabilities that you get with Beatstars are also available in Airbit.
Another thing to keep in mind is the user interface. The beatstars user interface may appeal to some, while the airbit user interface may appeal to others. Examine the websites and make your decision.
While selling beats on these platforms may appear to be thrilling at first, most users are unaware that these sites do not provide marketing for your beats. Let’s have a look at how you may promote your beats.
How to market your beats
As I previously stated, marketing is where many producers make critical errors. Every one of these platforms has marketing capabilities built-in; the funny thing is, they’re all gimmicks to keep you on the site.
You must do your promotion if you want to sell beats online, which is a difficult lesson to learn. My recommendation is to devote time to learning how to build beats as well as how to sell them.
You will have a difficult time selling beats if you do not devote equal effort to mastering beats and marketing.
Finding your target demographic is the first step in selling your beats. This may appear to be a difficult chore, but it is not. Take a look at the type of music you make to figure out who your audience is.
Your audience can be identified if you can pinpoint who will be interested in your music. Every kind of music has its own set of challenges when it comes to finding an audience.
If you find that the individuals who are interested in your music are solely on Instagram, you’ll need to understand how to sell your beats on Instagram. Every platform is the same in this regard.
The earlier you identify your ideal consumer and audience, the more effectively you can sell your beats to capture their attention and persuade them to purchase your beat.
Producers will sometimes look at different audiences and try to pitch their rhythms to them, but this always fails. How do you sell your music to someone who isn’t interested in it in the first place?
Some people are unconcerned with who they are selling their music to; they simply spend money on advertising. They, too, reap nothing.
Half of the work in marketing is done if you choose your target audience wisely. The second part is marketing the music through the platforms that these folks are on. Another area where many people are having difficulty is not having enough beats in their beat store.
If a potential consumer comes to your website looking for beats and you only have 10 beats, you will not make a transaction. The more beats you have, the more sales you’ll make. Always aim for 100 beats in your beat store during your first year of beat selling.
When you achieve 35 beats, it’s time to start selling your beats online. When you do it with a smaller amount of beats, consumers will almost surely leave your site without purchasing any beats.
It’s an art to make beats. You should also be able to make more beats in a shorter length of time. Learn how to recycle templates so you can keep adding things to your website in many genres of music.
How to make beats
As I previously stated, generating beats is an art; you must have both the expertise and the creative brain to always seek out new ideas when writing music. This is not something you can undertake in a single day or accomplish in a single day.
When you initially start making beats, you’ll feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over again for the first few months.
You can incorporate and involve more creative approaches to make your beats sound more intriguing and energetic once you’ve gotten past this initial step of comprehending and learning the procedure.
When it comes to hard labor, there are no excuses. Understanding the subtleties of mixing and mastering takes time when making beats. It’s not just for folks who are making entire songs; it’s also for people who are attempting to sell beats.
Always categorize your beats based on mood and whatever genre of music they belong to as soon as you start making them.
If you don’t do this from the beginning, you’ll have a hard time identifying a track in your pile of 100+ beats that represents the tone and feelings that your consumer requested.
When you’re producing beats, the next step is to make multiple beat templates. If you like a rhythm template you’re using and it fits a specific sub-genre of music, save it in your audio production software for that sub-genre.
You’ll save a lot of time if you use that template instead of having to find out how you made the arrangement for that beat in the first place if you’re requested for a custom beat in that sub-genre.
This will also save you a lot of time when it comes to getting your songs to your beat store.
Make sure you’re getting several outputs from a beat as soon as you finish it. The display version of the song with the limiter turned on is the first output you should take. This version should be in high-quality mp3 format.
This is the version that will be shown on our website for users to listen to. The next level of output is simply a wav file with no limiter enabled. This is the final product that will be sold to a rapper who only needs a high-quality end file for recording.
The next form of output is all of the song’s stems combined with the final wav mix. This is a large file. You must keep this output since you can still use the wav files of individual pieces if you lose your beats project files.
If you’re delivering your beats to someone who isn’t paying you, always include your beat tag. Don’t fall victim to a con.
How do I sell my music tracks?
Even though selling music tracks is comparable to selling beats, there are a few variances. These are tunes with lead vocals and sound layer atmospheres. These are intended for use as layers in a movie or video.
There are a variety of alternative ways to market this type of music in these situations. Let’s take a look at each one separately. There is a large audience for these songs, just as there is for rapping beats; people are always looking for music to add to their videos.
There are other platforms, such as Beatstars and Airbit, where you can apply and join to sell your music compositions.
The audience isn’t made up of typical rappers or songwriters who want to write songs to a beat. Music directors and composers, as well as content creators, are among the audience members looking for tunes to get inspired by and use as background music for their movies and films.
There are two methods to sell these tunes, just like there are two ways to sell beats. The licensing model is the first, and the exclusive sale is the second. In the event of an exclusive sale, you may anticipate receiving anything from $500 to $3000 per piece of music.
If you sell a license, you will be paid a nominal fee upfront, and royalties will be added to your account through ASCAP and BMI.
Platforms like Pond5 and Envato Elements are the greatest venues to sell these tunes. These are websites where you may upload your music tracks and sell them. You do have one advantage in that they already have people searching for tracks on their websites.
This gives you the advantage of just creating many tracks and uploading them to their platforms. Another thing to keep in mind is that these tracks aren’t exclusive, which means that by uploading them to the Pond5 site, you’re granting permissions for others to utilize them.
Music that has been licensed cannot be offered as an exclusive song again. This is where the majority of folks go wrong. They overlook the fact that these tunes were previously released under an individual license, resulting in copyright issues.
The first thing to keep in mind when creating these songs is the song’s atmosphere and feel. You can’t just write a song and expect it to be successful. Make a list of what you want to create for various platforms and look at what sells the best.
You should start composing music tracks rather than beats once you’ve found the appropriate genre and vibe of music you want to achieve. Analyzing other tracks in this genre can also help you comprehend and learn how to program these types of music.
When it comes to selling beats and musical tracks, persistence and diligence are two qualities that are required. It takes time to get sales, but as you develop and sales start to come in, it’s satisfying.
How much can I sell a song for?
If you’re selling a song solely, you can get anywhere from $300 to $2000 for it. This quantity changes considerably more depending on how and where the song is sold.
If you’re selling your music as a license, you can charge based on the number of people who hear the song and how the artist sells it. You can also take a portion of the sales if the artist merely wants the master rights to the music.
How do you distribute your music?
Once upon a time, tracks were solely distributed through record labels. Things have normalized now, and you can easily distribute for a nominal cost through any online platform. Distokid and
Ditto Music are two of the most well-known distributors.
Almost the majority of the tracks of independent music producers are handled by them.
It’s better to sign up with an online distributor like distrokid and send your songs to streaming platforms through them if you want to distribute your music to all of the online streaming platforms and collect royalties from them.
What is the best site to sell your music?
For up-and-coming music producers, selling your music on your website and marketing it on YouTube has always been the way to go. Many artists use YouTube to look for beats using various search phrases.
Identifying them and publishing beats in these terms will help you attract the audience and customers you desire. If you’re having trouble setting up your website, try working with Beatstars, who will provide you with a ready-made platform on which to host your beats.
How do I get paid for my music?
If you use various forms of music correctly, you will be compensated. The first one is streaming money, which will get paid through the distributor who is storing your tracks on all the streaming services.
The remaining funds come from royalties. Royalties are distributed by ASCAP and BMI, who are responsible for distributing royalties to artists and music producers.
How do I sell my original music?
The first step in selling your original music is to make it available for streaming on all platforms. The first step is to contact streaming music providers and request an account. They’ll pay you for both the streaming earnings and the song sales.
After that, you must register with ASCAP and BMI to receive your royalties account. These are paid to the artist or music producer on a quarterly basis.
Conclusion
It’s incredibly difficult to make money online as a music producer if you don’t diversify. You must also be extremely cautious about how you diversify. Selling music online is one of the ways that today’s music producers can make money and sell their recordings online.
Always try to survey the market and discover how it works when you’re just getting started with music creation. This will assist you in determining where you should focus your time and effort in order to expand your company.
For many producers, selling beats online was a dream come true because it allowed them to sell their songs from anywhere in the world and earn money.
Selling music also allows you to benefit from all of the additional revenue streams that come with it. This has always been the way the market operates. When you begin to distribute your music online through these distributors, the two money streams merge.
In the music producer community, royalties are grossly undervalued. They’re similar to receiving a pension for your hard work. You can collect royalties for a very long time if you can build a decent portfolio of tracks that generate cash.
Streaming may fluctuate significantly depending on how well the song or single performs.
