I'm a (type) beat star

Last time we talked about a great tool for creating beats. I’m pretty sure you spent hours creating the perfect one. You can now share it to the world for free (and that’s ok) or you can sell it. The question is : who wants to buy your beat ? Probably you don’t know but you don’t have to. It’s time for you to become a beat star.

Beatstars is a fantastic website or platform created by a genius, I don’t remember his name but who cares ? This genius had a great idea before everybody and he became rich… A classic modern story. What is interesting : his idea. This guy was a rapper, a broke rapper, just like me. He didn’t have enough money to buy a beat created by famous beatmakers. This guy created the concept of leasing a beat.

Yes, it looks like this is a great concept : anything you can buy, you should try to create a business for leasing it. Abe Batshon (I’ve just remembered his name) had a brilliant idea. The concept is pretty simple, instead of buying a beat at full price, you can lease it for a very low price. If you lease the beat, you don’t own it. This means that someone else can also lease it. You don’t have exclusivity. For aspiring rappers, this is a great opportunity to buy quality beats for a low price, the only drawback is someone else can use it and the beat was not made only for you and your project. For the beatmakers, it could also be a great opportunity : do you prefer to sell a beat with exclusivity once at 100$ or sell 20 times at 10$... Do the math.

Abe Batshon created Beatstars in 2008 with his concept in mind and you know what : the platform became the number one. I’ve heard that some beatmakers can earn about 50k per month selling beats on Beatstars.

A great idea, well executed with a cool name = success ! That’s it, why don’t you do the same ? Maybe you just don’t have THE great idea :)

We are in an era where digital marketing is critical so the concept of leasing a beat has been extended a little bit. You can choose the audio quality of the beat (MP3 or WAV), the number of streams you expect to perform with your song (less than 5000 / more than 10 000), you can select the number of youtube views etc. All these criterias will have an impact on the cost of your beat.

Too many beats kills the beats

Anyone can sell beats on Beatstars, even you and me. As discussed previously, I’ve created two beats using Bandlab because the samples used are royalty free (check my previous post about Bandlab HERE). Iv’e uploaded it on Beatstars and ‘voilà’. It’s pretty amazing how simple it is. You connect your paypal account and you’re good to sell and become a millionaire. By the way, if you could help me a little bit and buy my first beat, it would be so kind 🤣. As you may understand, I also would like to be a millionaire.

DJ Low-Ha! on Beatstars

The problem when everyone has access to something is that you don’t have control over the quality. With millions of beats on Beatstars how many worth buying it ? And also if you are a beatmaker and want to sell, I’m not sure if Beatstars is the perfect platform because there are so many competitors. Some beatmakers explain it’s much easier to sell a few beats on AIRBIT (a direct competitor of Beatstars) because there are less Beatmakerss on the platform. Maybe I’ll give it a try later.

So you won’t find beats from DJ Premier, Evil Dee, The Alchemist or Timbaland. You can find beats from ‘mid-range’ Beatmakers (no offense). These Beatmakers have produced famous rappers (JayZ, Styles P, Snoop etc…). I guess they have (sometimes) millions of streams due to this kind of collaboration. They are not just so famous yet. You can buy a beat from Jahlil Beats who has produced for artists such as Lil’Wayne, 50cent, Chris Brown, Tyga, Rick Ross or Meek Mill (Ima Boss, that was him).

The rise of the type beat

But everybody, I mean the aspiring rappers, they just want to sound like their favorite stars. They search for beats like Dr Dre or like Kanye West. That’s why Beatstars (and Youtube) has seen the rise of the type beats.

If you are a rapper, you have already used a type beat once for sure. Many beatmakers want to sell more (I can understand that) and they sell what people want to buy. Instead of focusing on their own style of music, they try to copy the beats of famous beatmakers. In the other way round, some beatmakers produced a beat, at the end, they realize it sounds like a Jayz song so they name it ‘JayZ type Beat’ to gain more visibility on the platform. Aspiring rappers will go on beatstars and they'll type 'JayZ' in the search bar and they'll find the type beat more likely.

If you’re broke, I suggest these guys : One Dollar Beats, I like the concept of one dollar for a beat and they have some good instrumentals (lots are trash). In fact, on Beatstars, you have to dig deeper to find a nugget. A nugget that nobody (or few) has used and that will fit perfectly in the middle of your next EP. There's some really good sh!t on this platform.

You’ll find almost only type beats on Beatstars, beats anyone can use for a few dollars. It’s an automated platform, you won’t talk with the beatmaker, you won’t be in touch. You will not be able to ask the beatmaker to change the length of the 3rd verse a little bit to fit your lyrics… No, it’s not a collaboration, you’ll just lease an existing beat. So it’s up to you if you feel this is a platform that you can use or not. At least, you can send a message to the beatmaker and negociate the price.

I was used to rap on B side instrumentals with no opportunity to publish my songs to the world so I like the idea of producing ‘legal sh!t’, I mean it’s just great to pay for the instrumental, produce your song and stream it to the world. By the way, if you want to upload your bangin’ hit on Spotify or Apple Music, you can do it with Beatstars but we’ll talk about this later.

So what are you waiting for ? Just go sell your beats !

koby

#music