Do I Need A Beat Lease To Sell My Song?
What Are Beat Leases?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBo2ogv3e2Y
In order to help you learn from my mistakes, here is my current process to choosing when to buy leases and which type of beat lease to purchase.
Before you move forward and record a song to a beat you haven’t purchased a lease to yet, you should make sure the beat is available.
The last thing you want to do is make the best song on your album or mixtape to a beat that already had the exclusive rights sold to it.
Then you are stuck with a song that has tags all over it saying “BIG BEAT MAKER ON DA BEAT BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISH” 3 seconds later “Buy this beat today at….. www…. dot …. BIIIIIIIIIIIIISH” lol
That beat tag covers your vocals and you look like a f**king amateur.
In a world where your 2 cousins just decided to start calling themselves a rapper yesterday, you need to do anything you can to look as professional as you possibly can.
Sp if you make something insanely good to a beat, don’t waste time, just buy the $20 lease.
It may not sound like a lot, but my record for making songs in a single day is 80 choruses. The day of, I thought all 80 songs were hot.
A month later I end up only wanting to use 10 of those songs and I cataloged the rest. Then I bought the leases so I don’t lose the beats to the hottest songs I made.
Then I let those new songs sit and when I wanna use them I know I have them in my pocket.
Now That I Found A Beat I Like, What Now?
Start writing, and start recording to find the voice for that beat.
AM I ALLOWED TO USE THESE BEATS?
Absolutely, if you pay the small fee for them. $10-30 is usually the low end cost per beat.
Let’s talk about the kinds of deals you can get for beats to use them legally.
THE BASIC BEAT LEASE
($10-$30 Per Beat)
This generally allows you to sell up to 2000 units of your song. You probably won’t sell that many for a while so don’t really worry about that. If you do sell more than that, it won’t be an issue for you to pay more for the beat upgrade.
PREMIUM BEAT LEASE
($40 – $80 Per Beat)
A premium purchase generally allows for WAY more sales of a beat. Up to 10,000 sales most of the time. If you are selling 10,000 units on a song. Congrats! If not, stick with the $10-$30 option.
Sometimes when you buy the premium beat lease you will get the beat track out free with it. Not always, but sometimes.
THE BEAT TRACK OUT (Beat Stems)
($50-$100)
All the tracked out pieces of the beat individually. When you purchase this, it is not mastered so it will sound different than the original downloaded beat you had. It needs to be mixed.
The beat track out will usually include the premium lease options.
Ask the beat maker in order to clarify what rights it comes with.
Benefits of buying a track out for a beat/instrumental
1) It generally comes with a contract that allows you to sell more than just a basic lease
2) You can change the arrangement with ease
3) You can change the instruments
Some beat makers don’t offer track outs. They don’t want you to be able to take their beat and remake it for your own unless you pay for the exclusive full priced version of the beat. Depends on the producer but most of the time you can buy a beat track out.
DO I NEED THE TRACK OUT/STEMS FOR A BEAT?
You are probably asking, “What is a track out?” On Top Of “Do I need a beat lease to use the beat”
It is all of the instruments that make up the entire beat ‘Tracked Out’ one at a time for you. This way you can mix it however you want. You can pan the bass all the way left, pan the kick drum all the way right etc.
Most importantly, and the main reason I ever purchase a track out if one of my own producers didn’t make me the beat. Is that I need to remove instruments I do not like. Sometimes beat makers get a bit TOO creative and it doesn’t suit the sound I’m going for.
So I purchase the beat and I myself lay down an instrument and melody that is more fitting to the song I wrote.
I know I said it above but the benefits of purchasing a beat track out:
1) You can mix the beat, change the beat however you want too.
2) You get the premium lease for purchasing the track out (usually). This means you can sell more copies of it.
Some of the beats will not be available for download though. 🙂
EXCLUSIVE FULL RIGHTS BEAT
($100-$1000+ Per Beat)
You own the full rights of this beat.
You can do whatever you want with it! (Please note that sometimes there are slight stipulations on exclusive rights.)
You still have to credit the beat maker too.
The Benefits of buying a a beat/instrumental exclusive
1) They no longer lease the beat to other people. Only people who had already purchase the lease will have it.
2) You can sell UNLIMITED Amounts of the song.
3) It will come with the beat Track Out/Stems so you can take out instruments and mix the beat however you want.
DO I NEED TO BUY THE FULL EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS TO THE BEAT?
This depends, if you made a SMASH HIT SONG. Buy that beat AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
If you buy the exclusive rights, the beat maker isn’t allowed to sell that beat in any way anymore. Not even leases.
This means no more rappers are making shitty songs to your beat!
I recommend that when you buy the beat, you request that the beat maker remove the song from their page.
Because as I show you in the Genius Tool Every Rapper Wishes They Had PDF you can get by signing up to my E-mail list, even if the beat isn’t downloadable, there are still sneaky ways of getting around that and downloading it.
You don’t want them snatching it and making a song to it under the radar.
I have a method of downloading them so you can get around that issue.
When you download a beat using my method it will still have the tags on it! (Which it should so they get paid for their work!)
But I like having the beat in the folder I made the song too so I can instantly access it anytime I want to write to the song more.
My method is NOT for stealing beats, but for being able to write to beats until you know you want to keep the song. Then you need to go and buy a lease type from the beat maker.
It’s a great way to build relationships with beat makers but also show respect for the craft of music.
If you want people to buy your music… you should be buying your beats.
On that note, here is a link to an article I wrote last month where I would have lost a huge song on my next mixtape if I didn’t buy the beat when I did.
Proof That Not Buying A Beat Lease Can F#$% You Over
Sign up below in order to get my secret trick on how to download beats from any website you get beats from.
[et_bloom_inline optin_id=optin_27]