The Truth About Selling Beats Online


In a little over the last decade, the internet has provided a way for music producers all over the world to provide for their families doing what they love. It's truly a beautiful thing! I've been licensing my music online Full-time since 2011 and my family has greatly benefited from this relatively new career option. As I've experienced more and more success, I've gotten emails from producers asking how they can do the same thing. I tried to answer as many of those producers as possible and even wrote a few beat selling eBooks. But at the end of the day, I learned the general problem for most producers was not learning how to sell beats. Let me clarify. 

I started playing piano in the 80s and producing in the 90s. I've had a strong passion for music far before I ever gained one cent from it. I grew up simply having fun doing what I loved. It was my outlet and how I expressed myself. I truly love music. I've spent countless days and nights learning and growing as a musician and producer. In 2010 when I started sharing my music on soundcloud, I was doing it simply for listening purposes. I just wanted to share with others what made me happy. Eventually, people started asking about buying my beats and that turned into me selling beats off soundcloud Full-Time by 2011. Starting this way, I learned the true way to sell beats.

The true way to sell beats online is in an attraction based manner. How do you do that? Work HARD growing your craft musically to the level where people start hounding YOU to buy your production. Attract customers to you through excellence. Chase excellence and customers will naturally come. That's the angle that truly works and is most effective. When you do this, you really don't have to "sell" your music. Your job is to progressively make the most excellent music possible, make it reasonably affordable, and INVEST (spend money) in every avenue you can think of to get it out in front of the people (social media ad campaigns, google ads, your website, other beat sites, etc.). From that point, the music will sell itself.

But overall, have fun and enjoy what you are doing. Making music is one of the best things in the world but when you make money the PRIMARY reason you do it, the music suffers. The thing I hate about today's market is how hard the money factor is thrown around. Yes I make really good money doing this but I've been making music for years/decades and have been passionate about music far before money was involved. If you've only been producing for a couple of months or years, forget about selling beats right now. It's totally ok and respectable to have a normal 9-5 AND do music on the side. Enjoy the process of growing in your craft and create music for the FUN of it. Truly love what you do and it will love you back. 
 

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