Wendy Day explains why exclusive beat rights matter for serious artists. A client spent $80,000 on a song using a beat that was already on a Migos mixtape, so DJs played the Migos version instead. Leasing beats for $100 works for emerging artists, but exclusive rights are essential if you're investing real marketing money.
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Hi guys, thanks for tuning in. So we're going to talk about leased beats. Um, you know, there's two ways that you guys offer beats. You offer them exclusively and you offer them as leased beats. And I completely understand why you offer leased beats, because a lot of people will get beats from you and then they won't go anywhere and you'll have lost the beat. But if you lease it, since there's a million rappers out here that don't have budgets and probably aren't going to go anywhere, I know that you're thinking is that you can lease a beat for $100, and if you do that for 1,000 artists, um, it's good money. So I get that. Um, the problem that I have with leased beats is that if you're going to put a budget behind it, you can't really put a budget behind a beat that you don't own exclusively. And the reason that I say that is if you're going to make money with a track, you've got to be able to upload it to YouTube and not have Content ID shut you down. You've got to be able to take it to radio and not have other artists that may have used the beat send cease and desist letters. Um, you need to have the exclusive rights to use the beat. There have been so many times where I've worked with artists that had a beat and we thought that it was exclusive, we had the exclusive paperwork, but it seems that before that artist purchased that beat, the producer had given it to many, many, many artists prior. And when you do that, you run the risk of the beat being out there on somebody's mixtape or somebody's album. And I was working with an artist and we had spent $80,000 on a song, no exaggeration, and it was over a beat that had been on a mixtape that the Migos had used. So everywhere this guy went at club, at the club level um, the DJs who all knew, you know, recognized the beat, they would be like, yo, did you know the Migos used this beat? And one of two things would happen. Either they would play his song and next to the Migos song, or he'd walk into the club and they'd play the Migos song to sort of like, you know, remind him that, yo dude, you're rapping over somebody else's beat. And the thing is, he had the exclusive paperwork for the beat. It's just that anybody can go to a website or to YouTube and download a beat and rap over it. So producers don't always know what happened to their beats, and it's a problem, you know. If you're, if you're spending money to market and promote a song, you don't want to then find out that somebody else has that beat already in the marketplace, especially an artist who's bigger and, and more well-known so that it looks like you jacked their beat when in reality you paid for the beat and you did all the right steps in terms of getting the paperwork. So I totally understand why leased beats exist. I understand that financially producers don't want to lose their best production to artists that aren't going to go anywhere. So I do absolutely understand the point of leased beats.. But I hope that you guys understand why, as a label consultant that helps artists become successful with their music, why the artists I work with can never use leased beats and why they need to be exclusive and really exclusive. So we've learned now to— when we buy a track offline— online, excuse me— we've learned to run them through a program that tells us whether it's out in the marketplace place already, if it's already on YouTube, if it's already on Spotify or Apple or any of the mixtape sites. And then we tend to not use that beat, um, instead of, instead of leasing it or buying it, we just move on to the next beat. And if the beat's banging enough, I've seen artists— not my clients, but I've seen artists— take those beats to other producers and say, could you make me something that sounds like this? So what's happening is a third party that had nothing to do with your beat is getting paid to recreate a beat similar enough to your beat so that they don't get sued, but not so close that it's exactly your beat, right? And I just think that that option sucks too. I'm a big fan of producers getting paid. I get why leased beats exist. But they don't exist in terms of major record labels. They don't exist in terms of independent record labels and people that are really putting up real money to market and promote their music. So, um, they definitely exist. There is a place for them. If you are a new artist, it's the cheapest way for you to get beats to rap over for mixtapes, or, you know, to put up on DistroKid or, or TuneCore. And stream, you know, as much as you can, but they're not great for hit records. And I will absolutely find somebody that has the opinion opposite of mine to, um, interview so that you can hear the other side of this, because I want you to hear both points of view. I want you to understand why people love leased beats and why, um, you should consider doing it if you're a producer and you're trying to make money, because that's what this series is all about. Okay guys, thanks for tuning in. Wendy Day from Rap Coalition, and see you tomorrow.
