How to Make Money Selling Beats Online

That being said, rather than doing all the research yourself, we have outlined the various approaches to selling beats online, marketing yourself, and reaching potential customers.

The Secret to Selling Beats Everywhere Online

The best way to think about selling beats is with a simple three-pronged approach: production, publishing, and promotion. Regarding production, this will include making your music sound professional, finding your niche, and learning what style of music you’d like to focus on. Publishing deals with which beat marketplaces you use and how you’ll sell or release your beats. This will also include technical details like file types, beat prices, and licensing details. And finally, promotion refers to your marketing abilities. Developing and maintaining working relationships, introducing your work to potential customers, and developing a following are particularly important in the age of social media. All of this and more will be discussed below.

Make Sure Your Beats are of Professional Quality

One of the first things a listener notices in a song is the level of production. Whether they are music fans or not, people can always tell when a track is poorly produced and when it sounds professional. Sometimes the differences can be subtle (minuscule editing problems, poorly mixed snares, etc.) and sometimes amateur production can be glaringly obvious (speaker distortion, clear performance errors, etc.). But ultimately these missteps add up.

There are several ways to deal with this. Firstly, through listening to other music and comparing your work, producers will eventually gain an ear for professional standard production. This process of gaining a professional ear can take a while, so be patient and don’t rush to publish your early works.

Secondly, there are some easily applicable tips and tricks to help gain a professional sound. For instance, cutting out the extreme low-end with your EQ’s high-pass filter can help avoid a muddy sound. Similarly, notch filters can help soften or eliminate particularly harsh frequencies. Elsewhere, using a quantization tool on audio and MIDI recordings can help smooth out your performance. Finally, compression is always a vital tool to understand for young producers. This will help avoid any drastic volume changes in your performance.

Finding your Niche

There are two approaches to choosing what style of music you’ll want to focus on. On the one hand, some producers like to work with multiple genres, broadening their potential customer base. Though this makes you more flexible, it could also mean that you lack a specialty. In other words, many customers like to know what your specific, individual sound is. Some producers fit this billing, garnering a reliable fanbase or customer base and providing a distinct, niche sound. For example, beatmakers like The Alchemist or Dr. Dre have a particular feel to their beats which makes them stand out. In short, you can find your niche or attempt to diversify your style. It’s also completely fine to start diversifying later down in your career, so there’s no need to do this from the get-go.

Beats and Audio Formats

One of the first things to consider when finalizing, exporting, and publishing your beats is the file type or audio format. You will always have the option to export to a variety of different formats (MP3, AIFF, WAV, etc.) and it might be worth keeping copies of each kind for different purposes. For example, some beat-selling websites require an MP3 while others may only accept WAV.

In addition, the file type may determine whether your file is “lossy” or “lossless”. Lossy audio (such as MP3 or AAC) refers to a file in which the audio content has been slightly degraded in order to make the size more efficient. Lossless audio (such as WAV or AIFF) ensures that the file’s data is uncompressed. Producers will also want to consider your export’s sample rate, bit depth, and bit rate.

Pick your Best Beats to Spotlight

Whether you’re promoting to potential customers, selling beats through online marketplaces, or posting on social media platforms, it’s vital that your most visible beats are your best. You’ll want to spend extra time making sure these beats sound professional and are most likely to draw attention. Be selective of what you share—and promote—online while building up a back catalog. Additionally, you may want to give customers and listeners an idea of what your general wheelhouse is, spotlighting beats that best epitomize your style or genre.

Add a Producer Tag to Your Beats

In order to let listeners know who you are and to create a recognizable brand, it’s worth creating a producer tag. These are usually short vocal snippets that announce your producer's name at the beginning of the track. For example, major producer Metro Boomin has used the tag, "If Young Metro don't trust you I'm gon' shoot you" many times on huge releases with Kanye West, 21 Savage, and Drake. Through those blockbuster collaborations and their incorporation of the producer tag, audiences who might not have known Young Metro will be directed to his other work. In addition, Conductor Williams’ abrasive “Conductor we have a problem” tag has garnered some discussion online recently. Though these examples are longer and usually prominent in the beat, some can be more subtle. For example, Southside’s producer tag is a simple pitched-up “southside.”

Prepare Your File Types For Sale

When you're organizing your tracks for publishing and sales, you should consider preparing multiple versions in differing file types. Many online marketplaces will have different file requirements for beat uploads and thus can present issues for beginner producers. For example, marketplaces like BeatStars allow for WAV and MP3 sales while some music publishing sites like TuneCore want WAV files with a sample size of 16 bit and a sample rate of 44.1kHz. To make this process easier, you can create a folder for the track and then put WAV, MP3, AIFF, and other formats within that folder. You could also include track stems.  This way, your exports will be well organized and you’ll be able to upload to a variety of sites.

How Much Should I Charge for my Beats?

Pricing your beats is a tricky issue. You don’t want to go too high and price yourself out of the market but you also don’t want to undersell, making people think you’re a low-quality producer. Ultimately, the cost of your beats will depend on factors like licensing, producer notability, and file type. The best gauge of how much to charge is to look at other sellers on your chosen online marketplace. A look at the average prices for certain deals would reveal the following. Keep in mind, these are rough averages from sellers on a variety of beat marketplaces.

The cheapest package—the non-exclusive MP3 lease—will usually go for around $25. This means that you retain ownership of the track but allow for limited, specified use of the file by the buyer. Premium leases—which are usually non-exclusive WAV files—can be priced between $25 and $50. If you include the stems of your track, this means you can bump up the price to between $50 and $100.

Finally, exclusive leases can be sold for upwards of $150. This means you sell every part of the track and relinquish any ownership, granting full control to the buyer. Selling exclusive rights will usually include a WAV file and the track stems.

Remember that as you grow your brand, you can steadily increase prices. Some producers can sell exclusive rights for thousands of dollars.

Selling Beats Using Online Marketing Strategies

It’s crucial to remember that selling beats is your business. Thus, any good, profitable business needs a solid marketing strategy. This can go from posting your music regularly on social media to actively promoting your work through ads. You will also want potential customers to have easy access to the sites that sell your beats (i.e. BeatStars, AudioJungle, etc.). A good way to do this is to use Linktr.ee on your social media profile. This allows people to access your various streaming and seller profiles.

The Mindset of A Music Entrepreneur

Getting to a point where you have a reliable stream of income from beat-selling may take time and effort. The path toward being a professional music producer can be enormously difficult. Thus, it’s important to maintain the attitude of an entrepreneur, continuously trying to expand your brand. Whether you’re adjusting prices to attract new buyers, sending beat offers to customers’ email addresses, or producing a consistent stream of new music, this practical know-how is vital. That being said, remember that the most important part of all music is the art itself. Don’t let the requirements of marketing and business savvy interfere with the passion you have for beatmaking. Indeed, customers will be more attracted to a producer with individuality over a producer who has “sold out.”

Finally, just like the owners of any other business, producers must run a professional and legally-sound enterprise. This means clearing samples before publishing or using samples that are already cleared. To avoid the tiring business of sample clearance, you can sample from Tracklib’s library.

Set your Expectations Right

Though there are rare cases when a producer has exploded right onto the scene, the path of most is a long and difficult one. So let’s be realistic and honest here: many beatmakers will go for years without making enough money to be self-sufficient. The process of building a reputation, mastering your skills, and attaining regular collaborators and listeners alike is a time-consuming effort. Thus, keep your expectations realistic.

Is Selling Beats Online Profitable?

Though most producers prefer to have several sources of income (album commissions, session work, streaming, etc.), it’s possible to make a substantial profit from selling beats online. Though profitability may take time and the process of gaining notoriety on the sites can be tiresome, it can be worth it if you use the tactics outlined in this article.

Your Own Website

Having your own website is a useful addition to a producer's resources. This allows you to have complete control over how your beats are displayed and sold and how you interact with customers. You are also able to price your beats without the immediate comparison to other sellers. In addition, it serves as a great forum to give some details about yourself. The downsides are that people may find it more difficult to find your work, and keeping a website up-to-date takes more time and energy than publishing beats to an existing platform. Thus, a website is useful when used alongside online marketplaces.

Airbit

Airbit is one of the most popular beat-selling marketplaces and a terrific starting point for producers. The site boasts a terrific charting function through which you can gain visibility and there is also the unique ability to embed Airbit’s HTML5 store onto your own website. Regarding membership, the free subscription allows you to upload ten beats. The platinum membership is $7.99 per month and unlocks a huge range of features. Airbit’s commission will depend on your level of membership.

BeatStore

BeatStore is an eCommerce plugin that can only be used on WordPress sites. At $6.99 a month or $59.99 a year, BeatStore is a great mechanism for selling your beats. Crucially, BeatStore allows you to keep 100% of your revenue.

BeatStars

BeatStars is perhaps the most popular beat marketplace. With a fantastically organized and deeply intuitive interface and a 0% commission for paying users (free users keep 70% and have a limit of ten uploads), BeatStars is a must-have for producers. The pro plan comes in at $19.99 a month. It also provides a great forum for communicating with other producers and rappers. The only downside is that—given the enormous quantity of beats on display—your productions can easily fade into obscurity.

Soundee

Though less well-known than Airbit and BeatStars, Soundee is a quality beat website. One of the unique upsides of Soundee is the integrated email marketing function. Free users keep 70% of revenue while paying members ($7.99 a month) keep 100%. In addition to being cheaper, Soundee also has less competition in the app. This may make it easier to stand out for young producers.

Traktrain

Traktrain is one of the few beat marketplaces that doesn't charge commissions for free users. You also have the ability to split fees with co-producers and communicate with potential customers and collaborators. There are also some unparalleled marketing functions.

Soundclick

As well as being one of the longest-running music marketplaces, Soundclick is one of the only sites allowing unlimited track uploads. Though there is a 30% fee on all sales for free users. This can be avoided through the $15-a-month Gold Membership.

AudioJungle

Though not explicitly designed for hip-hop beats, AudioJungle remains a terrific option for selling any music online. In addition, there is a useful ability to sell audio files of any kind. This means producers can sell beats as well as drumkits, loops, and SFX. This can be a worthwhile side hustle.

Instagram

Just like Twitter and Facebook, Instagram is another brilliant marketing tool for producers. However, when promoting beats on Instagram, it’s worth focusing on the visual elements of your work. In other words, make sure that your beat tape covers look eye-catching, or to produce visually appealing beatmaking videos.

TikTok

TikTok has launched the careers of many young producers and artists. It can be enormously useful to build a following on the app, especially given its popularity with young people. This can be done by releasing snippets of your songs or showing the behind-the-scenes process of your production.

Facebook

Despite recently waning in popularity with younger users, Facebook remains a great place to showcase and promote your beats. Consistently posting your work, linking your beat marketplace, and even paying for ad promotion can boost your chances of getting a sale.

YouTube

YouTube is an invaluable resource for up-and-coming producers. Often producers who make a living from marketplaces like BeatStars often get their start on YouTube. If you publish the beat, add some cool visuals, and link your marketplace store in the description, you may find some new customers.

Twitter

Social media has become a vital marketing tool for artists of all stripes. Twitter is no exception, serving as a useful aid in building a following and publicizing your work. It’s always worth tweeting about a new upcoming release and networking with fellow rappers and producers.

SoundCloud

SoundCloud has long been a staple of the trap music scene. Indeed, many producers and rappers have emerged under the banner “SoundCloud rapper.” But regardless of whether you make trap or boom-bap, SoundCloud is a great place to release and promote your work.

Airbit free plan

Airbit’s free plan is great for young producers, allowing for up to ten uploads. Starter producers take 60% of non-exclusive license sales and 70% of exclusive license sales.

Soundee free plan

Soundee’s free plan, like most beat marketplaces, allows for ten uploads and gives producers 70% of their sales revenue.

Traktrain free plan

Traktrain’s free plan is unique in that it allows for fifteen uploads and takes 0% commission for MP3s and 25% for WAV uploads. It’s a great deal for young producers who don’t want to lose too much of their profit.

Soundclick free plan

Soundclick allows free members to upload unlimited tracks, license up to ten tracks, and take 80% of their earnings.

GoBuyBeats free plan

Despite being lesser known than some of the more prominent beat marketplaces, GoBuyBeats’ free plan is still worth a shout. Allowing three track uploads, one sample pack, and giving producers 70% of their profit, GoBuyBeats has been a popular starting point.