# Best (or not terrible) places to sell beats (or hip-hop instrumentals)?



## TomNoyd (Aug 29, 2015)

Hello all,

If there's a thread that already covers this, my apologies (I couldn't find anything right off the bat).

For those of you who sell (or lease) beats as an additional source of income, what would you consider to be the better, more successful websites (that don't waste your time or money)?

My initial web searching is proving to be surprisingly difficult as you have to determine which places are legitimately good, what's mediocre, and what's just scammy, spammy trash (which I found a lot of). Here are some places I thought would be worth considering however I'm hesitant to pursue them for a small variety of reasons:

-Annodominination.com
-Shadowville.com

I noticed these two get mentioned as the more high end, reputable beat selling/leasing sites from my quick Googling. However, you (apparently) can only join them if you're invited so I'm not sure a sort of "cold call" email featuring your best work would get anywhere with them, regardless of how professional you may come across with your presentation and interaction. 

Also, I get the impression that you would have to crank out a lot of material to stay with them as the same producers upload new tracks several times a week. Probably not the best place for the casual hobbyist who can only offer a moderately good track once every two weeks to a month. Then again, I'm just guessing.

Then there are these sites:

-Beatstars.com
-myflashstore.com

Again, it seems whenever I see an article listing the best places to sell rap instrumentals, these two normally get mentioned. However, they seem to be intended to merely be used as another platform to sell beats in addition to your website, Soundclick profile or what have you - not like, for example, the better music libraries where they have at least some quality control and returning customers/clients. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they're great tools (as they're intended to be) but the marketing's solely on you. They seem like more like a fancier Bandcamp than they are a music library. Again, just my initial impressions.


With that said, I'm starting to realize that the process of getting your music into music libraries and beat selling sites are very different beasts....which I guess I'm looking for beat selling sites with a more music library mentality where they:

-Have QUALITY CONTROL
-Don't have you "pay to play"
-Give you just as much opportunity to make money off your music as the next guy or gal based on your work...without having to resort to bizarrely aggressive and competitive self promotion.

Sorry for the rambling. I really intended this to be a mere 2-5 sentence post but I got carried away. 

Everyone's insight is much appreciated and thank you in advance!


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## Allegro (Aug 29, 2015)

It actually depends on how fast you make beats and how much time you invest per beat. For non-exclusives, leases etc, this is a requirement. The best way is to make noise. Use any service you can. Soundclick used to be awesome for beatmakers and I had a lot of friends there but it is getting more and more saturated these days.

For starters, shadowvillie looks like a good place to start but they aren't accepting too many beatmakers these days.

If you make exclusive beats like me and are looking for exclusive deals only then marketing yourself is the way to go. I can tell you from experience that I've sold more exclusive licenses independently (through Youtube) than any other service. It took me some time to set up a website and store though but it was worth it. I only had to worry about youtube views, and subscribers. There was always someone willing to pay big for an exclusive license.
In the long run, I now have crazy clients who place orders for beats that I will make in the future because of exclusivity perks.

Exclusive game is risky though. There is either big money or no money so you have to be patient at first.

In short,
For NE: Use soundclick page, flashstore shadowvillie etc, buy a vocal tag, spam beats after beats. Get a guy to do hooks for you (hooks sell way more often). Give away free beats at first for promotion. Use channels like YourRapBeatsTV or Superbeats for getting recognition.

For Exclusive: Youtube, website, act like you're BIG, negotiate cleverly over email. Join some ghost production websites that take 50% cut for getting you exclusive deals. Check out freelancer, they have long term jobs available sometimes for exclusive beatmakers. Keep track of clients (they're really valuable) and focus more on the quality than quantity.

I hope this helps.


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## TomNoyd (Aug 30, 2015)

Allegro,

Thank you so much for your detailed response. I think I'll actually save your post as sort of a reference to keep my plans in check. 

On another note, you basically confirmed my fears that I'm going to have to really promote myself if I want to be mildly successful with selling beats. Just making exceptionally "great" music and uploading it to some beat selling site is only half the battle, I guess.

I think I'll start with non-exclusive and use Soundclick (egh) and build my way towards a website when it comes time to do exclusive tracks (when I'm able to commit more to it).

Again, thank you very much for sharing your experience and insight. It helped put things in perspective.


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