Most people tend to get confused when it comes to becoming a pro at beat making process. Many might think, you need a god gifted talent to be a beat maker, and others feel that beat makers must have a lot of money to begin with. And then some may find it very time consuming and tough.
Although, the last thing might not wholly wrong. Beat makers are not made in a day. One always needs to practice acquiring a certain skill and be professional at it. We have written a beginner’s guide for all those wondering how to become a beat maker.
Let’s have a look.
Table of contents
Introduction
There is no correct or ideal way to begin making your own beats, you just happen to know it. You might have heard a DJ playing at a concert and you wonder if you can also sound like them and make your own beats. All of us have our own favorite artists who influence us in many ways. Their influence on us can help us in beginning our journey of beat making. You should always learn from mistakes of your own and others so that you achieve great results in your profession.
Beat making equipment for beginners!
Beat maker equipment is one of the first few things you need to get in order to become a beat maker. You need to figure out what kind of gear do you really need. You must have watched all those videos of renowned artists making beat programs in their fancy studios with the most expensive gear on YouTube. And this will make you want to buy those thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment. But wait, you may be wrong here! You need to rethink about it and look closely at what is it that you actually require. You do not need fancy equipment to become a good beat maker. All you need is a working laptop or computer with an affordable sound card and a digital audio workstation (DAW).
You can have a DAW of your choice according to your requirements to become a music producer, and voila! You are now ready to show your magic to the world. You can now become a sound beat maker and can upgrade your computer beat maker any time you want.
Self-assurance
Well, there is no such thing as good or bad in music. What may sound good to you might not suit someone else’s ears. You need to trust yourself and your ears and believe in your music. There is no such equipment that can make you sound good automatically. You have to work on your craft and make your beats sound the way you want. You need to focus on the little details, read online and watch videos to learn how to improve your mixing and mastering of beats. Hard work can make a lot of difference if you work on your beats daily.
Upload your music
You need to make the kind of music that YOU like and create the beats that make YOU want to groove. You don’t need to make music that others like. Think of new ways to evolve your music style and genre and upload your music everywhere.
This is an essential step. You first need to have a quality playlist of at least 50-100 beats with proper mixing and mastering. This will help you listeners engage with your music and they will want to come back for more. You need to be consistent in uploading music on various music streaming platforms as this takes years of work and advanced beat making techniques. You must sound different from the tons of beats available on the web to build a brand for yourself.
Register for your website
The next and important step is to find a suitable domain name relevant to your business brand name and look for a host provider. You can find the domain name availability from various online websites. Pick a suitable theme for your website that will help you in increasing your reach and help you sell more beats.
Next step is to set up your payment account to accept payments and purchase a Beat Player, which will be the essential tool for your business. You can look for stores online to make the purchase. You need to look for the players most suited to your requirements and need to upload your beats, set up your pricing, and put it on the website. Then you are ready to sell your beats!
You can check out SoundCloud, YouTube and SoundClick to sell your beats online. You must also check out the forum sections of the abovementioned websites. They have large communities that can be an amazing opportunity for you to become a part of those communities. This will help you in networking and making connections.
Beat license
There are four kinds of beat licenses: Basic, Premium, Unlimited and Exclusive. And each kind has its own pricing. The licenses change depending on whether you want to sell free demos or mp3s, but these are the four main types.
Basic ranges between $5 to $50, Premium is somewhere between $30 to $80, Unlimited license ranges from $50 to $120 and Exclusives licenses range from $70 to thousands of dollars. Other than this, there are demos, tagged and mo3 downloads which are mostly free or priced at $1.
Multiple streams of Income
Another very important aspect a beat maker must consider trying to have multiple sources of income. This will help the beat maker not be dependent solely on his beats as initially, it might take you a while to make sales. So, you must keep making money as a musician in case things don’t turn out the way you wanted them to. This can be achieved by making drum loops packages and drum kits. These can be sold via the website itself. Looperman, Producer Loops and Flashkit.com are some websites where you can upload these products and sell directly. This can become an amazing opportunity to get some extra income for you.
Promote on all social media platforms
You must know how to market your skills and manage your social media being an artist. It is very important to promote your beats online on every platform such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Clubhouse, StumbleUpon, Snapchat. All these platforms have millions of users that might be interested in your music.
It will be great if you are willing to spend a little money to invest in your social media and if not, you can just learn how to increase traffic on your social media. You need to upload quality and informative content of high quality consistently on your social media to gain millions of fanbase. You can upload practice sessions, demo videos, beat making process, and other eye-catching content that will drive your social media engagements through the roof. You can then later link them to your official website. Get your social media marketing and official website done with experts at unbeatable price.
Music Libraries and Internet Stations
If you want to make your beats available to more and more people, uploading them on the internet stations and music libraries is a good idea. Some of the examples are:
- Spotify (internet stations)
- Audio Jungle (music library)
- Pandora (internet stations)
- Pump Audio (music library)
Artists get paid by these internet stations according to the number of times their tracks have been played and these are a great place for instrumental music having a large community of listeners and different genres of music. On the other hand music libraries make your beats available on their platform for people who want to add music to their videos, podcasts, websites, ads and video games. These libraries have great potential to help you in making connections if you upload your music on them.
Royalties on both these platforms might be low, but the number of plays increases as the demand for your tracks increases.
Making a list of subscribers
E-mail marketing is one of the most important aspects of online business. The beat maker must start collecting e-mails of the people interested in his work or have subscribed to his channel or website as soon as possible. He/she can then mail some of the downloadable content useful for his/her subscribers, making them come back again.
Build a Team
Beat making might be a one-person job but selling them online will require a team. Building a team of beat makers can benefit both the sides. You will have the time to upload content consistently and listeners can get to hear more of your beats with various techniques and styles variations. You can then give some percentage of the beats you sell to your team and keep the rest; this will benefit everyone.
Mixtapes, compilations and contests
Creating albums with compilations and mixtapes is very important for building your brand as it will help you attract many potential clients. You can ask for permission by those artists who have used your beats in their song as you have also made contributions to their track in a way or you can offer them free beats in exchange for creating new tracks for your mixtapes exclusively.
Participating in a beat contest is another great way to have some exposure and experience to learn new things as beat making is an integral part of electronic music production. You also get a chance to promote your beats as well as your business. And then finally, you can sell your mixtapes, compilations and tracks created for the contest and earn good commission on the side.
Wrap Up
As beat making is an international language that comes with lots of opportunities, no matter what your style, genre, or sound style is, you have to dream big and work hard to achieve that dream. Have faith in yourself and your skills and work towards polishing your skillsets every day by more practice and become better at making beats day by day.
Also learn about the history and evolution of pop music and it’s production with our new blog.