Selling Beats

Hey Jireh!

When you enter the world of digital products, you start dealing with copyright.

Please note, do not take my words here as legal advice.

Whether we’re talking about selling beats, a book, a picture, a poem, lyrics, or anything under the umbrella term of “intellectual property”, a much different way of thinking starts to happen compared to a normal 9-5 job.

When we are employees at a typical job, we often go to work, collect our pay check and go home.  We don’t think about ownership, or “the right to use”.

Selling beats would fall under the umbrella of copyright, where others cannot use your work without the proper license.

Can people use your beats without your consent?  Yes, you can’t really stop them.. and if the person using your work is very small, and collecting little money off of your work, taking legal action would bring little reward for the time, money, and effort you’d have to put in to stop them, and recoup a small amount of money.

If that person is large, and using your work, this is where hiring a music lawyer would come into play, and you’d still have to figure if it’s worth your time in regards to how successful they have been off of your music, royalties they’ve been paid, etc.

There are ways to prevent artists from using your music to an extent..

You can use beat tags.. but the artist can still cut that part out of the beat..

Nowadays many streaming platforms have Content ID systems in place which can trigger a message to either not let them upload the music at all, or those royalties would be passed onto you.

What they say is as soon as you create the beat, it is your copyright.  No need to submit it to be officially copyrighted, as that is expensive and time-consuming.  You also have the music project to backup proof that you are the owner of the work.

Additionally, if an artist is ripping your music from a streaming site, it’s often low-quality audio they are getting.  When they purchase a license, you’d often be sending them the high-quality .WAV so they can get the best quality product to their customers, as well.

In short, if an artist is serious about their music career, they will want to purchase a license to the right to use so that they can perform, record, and sell their work over top of your work.

What are your plans with this knowledge?

Yes, if you send someone the .WAV they get the high-quality 16-Bit or 24-Bit .WAV file (whatever they request).  16-Bit is very high-quality, 24-Bit is a lower noise floor.. but has been CD Quality for MANY years.. so very high-quality.

In terms of selling a Lease, Exclusive, and still holding onto ownership for streaming, this all comes down to your agreement and license you have between you and that artist.

Generally a beat you are selling is not a beat you’d be uploading to a streaming site, if you were wanting to take the BEAT TAPE approach.  This is to avoid any business conflicts to your own music, to a product you are trying to monetize.  (Notice I am calling a beat a product, because that is what it is!)

If you want to sell your beat, in short, you are looking at a LEASE from what you’ve mentioned, as Exclusive is a one-time payment for the right to exclusive access to that customer.

Typically Leases grant the end user (your customer / artist) the right to use the beat under certain terms.. common in the industry is restricting to a certain amount of sales or streams..

My best advice is to do a lot of reading, and see how other producers have put together their license agreements.  Don’t copy, but just understand the commonalities between them in regards to what they allow artists to do with their purchase.

Also understand that once you start selling your music, you often have no control on what is said over top of your music, whether you agree with that morally or not.

Hope that guides you to confidently make your decisions!

Well to confirm.. it actually is pretty complex!  The last thing you want to do is agree to something that you don’t know the pros and cons to.

When you enter the world of agreements, where shares of royalties are involved, you really have to know what’s going on.

This is why I was saying to make sure you do some heavy reading, and understand what should be in an agreement to protect yourself in regards to anyone taking advantage of your product!

An agreement should benefit both parties.

Keep the questions coming!

I just wanted to confirm that agreements are extremely important.

When things seem small, it may not feel like it’s worth the time to care, but whenever signing where you are bound to such terms, it’s always important to take your time and never rush.

What would happen IF something big did come of it, and you just signed away something without knowing!

So asking this question is important, as you want to do things right!  So make sure to research agreements in general, as well as in regards to agreements for how to sell beats, and then you’ll know how to confidently proceed in the future!!

Once you start going, you often create a general template, which can be modified as you go, in case a unique situation pops up, but your general terms would still be covered.

No problem, Jireh!

Thank-you so much for your interest and membership in my platform!

I will close this question – please feel free to ask ANY questions about FL Studio, Beatmaking, Music Production, or before you make any purchases on VSTs.

It takes me just as fast to reply as an email, and helps others reading!