7 Tips to Selling Beats

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7 Tips to Selling Beats

Here are some tips to promoting yourself more as a producer, and find more potential buyers of your beats.

1. Make Beat Making Videos

Some people may not want to get in front of the camera, but this can really help with exposure. There are many people online that want to learn. These people become fans and follow you and can possibly become buyers of your music.

I want to use Producer Boon Doc as an example. He currently has 6,558 Youtube subscribers. According to Boon Doc, posting his production videos on Youtube has helped tremendously with exposure. "People are posting and discussing my videos all over the place at websites and forums that I’ve never even seen or heard of before.” He points out how it has helped with beat sales, finding new artists to collaborate with, and connecting with big name people like Ryan Leslie.

One of my other favorite Youtube music makers is Ronald Jenkees who has a whopping 77,429 subscribers, and his video views range from 95k to 3 million views. This can certainly help you build a name for yourself.

So online videos can help a lot.

2. Participate in Forums

I have been in many music forums where certain producers have built great names for themselves. They do this in a couple ways like having great answers to people's questions, sharing music making tips, giving good feedback, and producing good music. Participating in forums also allows you to keep up to date with what is going on with music.

When participating in forums, just work on building a good name for yourself.

3. Promote! Promote! Promote!

Put a web address in your email signature, forum signature, and on blogs when you leave a comment in the URL section. You will see traffic coming from all kinds of sites because of it.

Also use Myspace to get people to listen to your music. Post a Myspace bulletin once a week when you have new music. But don’t be one of the people that do 10 bulletins a day, because that’s spamming, and it wouldn't be a good look for you.

4. Give Away Free Beats

Giving away "free beats" can be good depending on the situation. Maybe you can give away 2 to 3 decent beats in a forum, and this may help bring people to your site to possibly buy some higher quality beats.

For example producer Eyetel describes how he gave out a free beat CD and the rapper Crooked I ended up rapping over one of his beats he gave out freely. So free isn’t always bad.

5. Put Beats Online for the World

Make your beats available everywhere you can. You don’t now where people may come across your music. Utilize sites like Myspace, Soundclick, and Roc Battles. Make sure when people say they want to hear beats you have them available to hear, or you may miss out on that sell.

Web sites like Roc Battles allow you to upload beats, sell or lease a beat, and set your own prices. It also offers an affiliate program where others can promote your beats for you and get a small percentage off a sell.

6. Join Online Beat Battles

Web sites like Roc Battles have sections for beat battles that allow people to show off their talents. With every win you gain more points, and the more points you get the higher you will show on the producer charts and get more exposure. (Example of a Beat Battle)

7. Go Out and Network

I’m sure you have heard this before. It’s not what you know, it’s about who you know. You have to get your foot in the door, and meeting those right people can expose your music to the right person. So give your music to everyon: rappers, singers, managers, engineers, song writers, musicians, etc. It’s a small world and you have no idea who some people off the street may know.

When you’re out networking, please make sure you have the essentials like a business card handy with a name, current phone number, email address and a personalized web address to stand out.

Conclusion

I know way too many producers that are overly protective of their beats. I personally feel that if you plan on being a success in the music industry, your skills of being able to continuously create hot tracks is what will determine your success. Like Rsonist from the Heatmakerzs stated, "your beats won't be heard in your house". Get them into everyone’s hands that you can put them in, because you don’t know where it may get you.

Keep in mind

• - Be patient, sales may not come right away
• - Try to do some remixes with other artist vocals; some people may not see the potential of the beat until they hear vocals on it.
• - Continue to push yourself creatively so your skills can continue to grow