Income generation from Beat sales
I’ve been looking at different ways to monetize my music business and thought I should share the ways I do it in a hope that people will in turn share the methods they use with me.
I’m going to get right into it and talk about beat sales. This avenue probably accounts for 80% of my musical income. Given the total saturation of the market, you need a system in place before you think you’ll be able to do this long term. There are beat makers all over the world and chances are that a some of them are better or more advanced than you.
With that said, being a good beat maker isn’t going to sell you beats. Marketing and a solid system will. Marketing beats can be done via social media or word of mouth. Platforms like IG, YouTube and Tik Tok are decent ways to try and get your music out. Facebook and Twitter are also still good options for getting your beats seen.
In terms of a system, you need to determine if you’re going to put beat snippets online and deal with each person individually via email or whether you’ll grab a widget (Google this term, you’ll need it when you build your site) from a beat selling website like Airbit or Beatstars and link it to your PayPal (also very important).
To go with the topic of systems, you’ll need to get online and find out whether you’ll be doing nonexclusive leases or exclusive leases or both. I’ve used both over the years to different levels of success, so I’d say experiment and see what works for you. Having leases just lets artists know what sort of agreement they’re getting into when they buy a beat. There’s nothing worse than being slapped with the fine print when it’s too late.
Onto the product…
You’re going to need to get a truckload of beats. At least 30 beats to start with. Make sure those beats are well mixed and that the intros are decently catchy. Try to sell your beats before people even hear them. This can be done by placing some sort of description of the beat with an image relating to the sound. This way, people will know what to expect and they will be drawn in before even hearing the beat. There are some channels on YouTube that have gotten creative with the way they do their beat artwork. If you aren’t a graphic artist or you don’t know how to do beat visualizers, you should try using ZgameEditor on FL Studio. They have a visualizer wizard that helps you make professional visualizers very quickly.
Next, do a bit of research on beat prices in your area. What can your customers afford? Ask the artists that you work closely with to help you out in this regard. Ask your producer friends to help you price your beats. If your beats are selling fast, is the price too low? If you’re struggling with sales is the price too high? Dig for the info and you’ll find it.
Once all these things are set up, try to drive people to your store through social media and word of mouth. Remember to make it easily accessible.
As a last point, try to develop some sort of an email list. Your mailing lists should be specific so that you can continue to give value long after they’ve downloaded your beat. Start small.
The next few money-making avenues I’ll discuss will be those ways we never really think of using. For the time being, try and get a store up and running on your website as discussed earlier and check back later this week for another post on how to monetise your music. Feel free to check out the rest of my site here.
Happy building SB
