2009-10-28T03:08:00.000-07:00

The Debate on Free beats.

The Advantages

1. Gain more traffic. You must recognize that most users of the internet are freeloaders and lurkers, always looking for something that doesn’t require them to bust out their wallet. Therefore, anything that is free will automatically attract more visitors to your webpage, especially if you clearly label or advertise your products as free.

2. Establish audience loyalty. By audience loyalty, it means that there will be a high return rate of visitors to your webpage. Because you label your beats as free, they will always return to your page on a regular basis to see if you have any new instrumentals at no charge to them.

Distribute Your Beats Over a Period of Time

First, determine how often you make beats, realistically. Then you should find your appropriate posting frequency, perhaps upload one beat a day, one beat a week, etc., based upon how often you make beats. Divide your pool of beats up and spread them out evenly over a set period of time, such as six months, to upload (just numeric-wise, you don’t have to decide on which exact beats you will put up).

Hot Beats Only — Manipulating the Eyes (and Ears) of Your Fans

In the music business, image is everything. It doesn’t matter if you are the performer, if you are an A&R officer, or if you are a producer. If you do not have the proper presentation, you will not be able to attract that million dollar record deal nor convince that hot artist to sign to your label nor work with a big name on his or her next album’s beats. As a producer, it is crucial to always be conscious of how other people perceive you and your work, and how you can adjust yourself to alter other people’s notions of you and your work.

It is without a doubt that all producers have so-called ‘hot’ beats and ‘whack’ beats. Nearly all amateur or beginning producers will throw every single one of his or her pieces onto his webpage or into his or her portfolio. This is a poor move. One of the easiest methods to manipulate other people’s perception of your skills and your quality of work is to show only hot beats to the public. Never reveal your weaker beats or less-than-mediocre work to your listeners and fans. By only displaying your good beats, you will cast an image to your perceivers that you make nothing except spectacular work.

Find Your Niche and Capture One Market at a Time

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to establish your niche and clearly define your production style. All successful producers have a certain ‘tone’ or ‘ring’ to their beats. A mistake made by many producers is that they try to diversify too much and way too early. You must capture one fanbase group or demographic at a time with your music. Think small first, then expand. Walk, then run. How does one eat an elephant? The answer — one bite at a time.

So what does this all mean, you ask? Well, it means that you should focus on only one specific sub-genre of the genre of your beats. You want to have your first time listeners remember you by your style. If you have too many different styles of beats, you will not be remembered.

For example, a listener might say: “Oh, XYZ Beats? That’s that guy who makes, uh, a lot of different cool beats,” as opposed to “Oh, XYZ Beats? That’s that guy who makes crazy hot snap beats!”

Legalities of Beats: Copyrights 10

What is a copyright? In essence, it is a form of protection guaranteed by the U.S. law that prevents unauthorized people from using, reproducing, or distributing your work without your permission. Let’s cut to the chase and ask the most popular question by all beatmakers:

How Do I Copyright My Beats?
The answer is simply your beatsÂ are already copyrighted. No, you don’t need to register with the Library of Congress nor any department or office. If the beat is indeed your original work, and you can provide the original master files as proof when asked for it, then your beat isÂ automatically copyrighted. Here is an excerpt from the US Copyright Office’s website:

Legalities of Beats: Copyrights 101

So Why Do People Register Their Copyrights?
Copyright registration with the Library of Congress/Copyright Office is merely a legal formality. It is intended to make a public record, but it is not a necessary condition of copyright protection. A registration is necessary, however, before an infringement suit is filed in court. Copyright registration does provide certainly advantages such as a public record of a copyright claim, registers with US Customs Service for protection against overseas (”importation”) of infringing copies, and early registration can automatically cover attorney fees in court actions.

How Do I Transfer Copyrights?
All transfers of rights to another party must be made in writing, with your signature validating the transfer. You do not need a long and complex contract written by a lawyer. You can write a sentence as simple as ‘I hereby transfer the copyrights of XYZ beat to John Doe’ on a piece of napkin with your signature in crayon scrawled on it, and it would be legally acceptable. Transfer of a right on a nonexclusive basis does not require a written agreement, although it is a good gesture and sign of trust to do so when you are selling leases on your beats to customers.

What is a Work-For-Hire?
This is where you create a beat for someone who pays you to do so, and your employer will be considered as the author, not you. Be careful of selling beats to a customer who is providing you with his or her own contract form (this is common in the case of selling “custom beats” to commercial companies such as record labels). If you are willing to accept that you lose even credit of authorship to your beats including copyrights for payment, then go ahead with a ‘Work-For-Hire’ contract.

If you want to understand more about copyrights in layman’s terms, and details on how long copyrights last, I highly suggest that you read up further on the US Copyright Office’s website.

Some advice !

2009-10-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

Marketing yourself as a producer or artist is a lot like marketing a company, in fact it's pretty must the same thing, except as a producer or artist you have an advantage, you are selling yourself. Now who knows you better than yourself? This means you can really build great relationships with customers and continue these relationships because you create a certain bond with them that you just can't get with companies.

Creating relationships with your customers is really important, because statistics show it's about 40% easier and cheaper to sell to a current customer than it is so go and find new customers.

It's important that when contacting new customers, it's not necessary to start selling them something straight away. Offer them something for free, or start a general chat, make them see you as a person rather than an advertising machine.

A great way to do this is on social networks like MySpace, SoundClick, Facebook etc. When approaching people on these sites, don't do what I see a lot of other producers doing by spamming people's inboxes with BUY MY BEATS, BUY MY BEATS, because it's just not that effective. Start by complimenting their music, find out more about them, create a relationship with them. Once you have created this relationship with them, they will trust you more, and when you decide to offer them your products or services, they are much more likely to to buy from you because they feel they know you. This can be very time consuming I know, but when done correctly you will really start to see the difference it makes.

Once you put this into action, you will start to see the effect building relationships makes to your sales.

SELL MORE BEATS

Distribute Your Beats Over a Period of Time

Hot Beats Only — Manipulating the Eyes (and Ears) of Your Fans

Find Your Niche and Capture One Market at a Time

Legalities of Beats: Copyrights 10

Legalities of Beats: Copyrights 101

Some advice !