In this solo presentation, the speaker explains how a music creator evolves from a beatmaker—someone who makes and sells or leases beats—to a full‑fledged producer who can run studio sessions, coach artists, and deliver a complete, market‑ready record. He outlines the producer’s responsibilities: controlling the recording session, guiding vocal performance, shaping the song’s vibe, and ensuring every verse and hook is strong. The talk also covers practical branding tips such as using a consistent producer tag and crafting hooks that are simple enough to become slogans. A large portion of the video is devoted to the controversial topic of giving away free beats. The speaker advises that free beats should only be offered to artists who are talented, have market buzz, and possess a realistic promotional budget; otherwise the beat risks being lost in the flood of new music on platforms like Spotify. He stresses the importance of helping promising artists promote their work to showcase the producer’s talent, while also warning that without a solid budget or label support, free beats rarely lead to revenue. Finally, he encourages persistence, networking, and consistent branding, noting that a single hit can generate a cascade of requests from other artists seeking the same success.
Chapters
Hi guys, so welcome back to Producers 2020 Vision. Um, once you get to a certain level in your career, you go from becoming a beatmaker to a producer. So a beatmaker is somebody that makes beats, they send out beat packs, maybe they put them up on the internet to sell or to lease. Um, but a producer is somebody that's able to control a session. So that's when you go into the studio with the artist and you've developed and honed your craft so that you kind of know what types of beats are going to do what in the marketplace. And what I mean by that is, you know, if a song is going to work at the clubs because you've already made enough, um, club anthems or club hits that have already blown up. So you get a feel for, okay, this is a strip club song, or this is a, um, mainstream club song, or this is a radio record. You, you get a feel for what the song is going to do, provided it's got the right budget and the right team behind it. But when you become a producer not only do you have the ability to deliver what your client is looking for in terms of the type of record that they're looking for, the type of song that they're looking for, but you also have the ability to go into the studio, control the session, and make sure that the, um, rapper is delivering their best work on the beat. So it gives you the opportunity if something isn't sounding right, for you to say to the, to the artist, no, no, no, do that again, like, you can do better, you know. Or if they're having trouble, like, fitting words in a certain space, um, making a suggestion that'll help them as they're creating the hook on the song. You have some experience, so you know that, um, a catchy hook is going to work better than a hook that's like 3 paragraphs long. Um, I remember— I can't remember who the producer was, but I remember years ago a producer telling me that a great hook is not only repetitive and catchy, but you could print it on a t-shirt as a slogan. And that's kind of always stuck with me. Um, but a, a producer has the ability to control the session, get the best workout of the artist, know when to punch them in, know when not to, know when to get them to, redo a certain lyric or a certain line multiple times to get it to sound the best on the song, and even when to scrap a verse and tell them to go rewrite the verse. Because what you don't want is, if you're doing 2 verses or 3 verses, you don't want to have one banging verse and one half-ass verse, or 2 banging verses and a weak verse. So a producer has the ability— that's where a producer is a little bit different than a beat maker. A producer has the ability to overseeing, create the whole song, the vibe of the song, the way the artist sounds on the song, and you're delivering a finished product. And that's really important. Um, and, and I think I touched on this before, but I, I want to touch on it again. Um, and it's regarding giving away free beats. And this is the question that you guys ask me the most, and it's not something that I can really answer easily for you because it depends on so many factors. Like, you know, can you afford to give away a free beat? Where are you in your career? You know, if you're a superstar producer and you're getting, you know, between $25,000 and $100,000 a beat, you shouldn't be giving away a beat unless it's your artist that you're, that you're, you know, cultivating and that is signed to you, to your company, right? But in terms of um, giving away free beats, the best advice that I can give— and again, I'm hesitant to do this because I don't know each individual person's, um, situation— if you're gonna give away free beats, at least give them to artists that are going to excel and be successful on your beat. Because if you're not going to do that, you might as well be leasing beats, right? So if you're going to give away a free beat, the artists that have a chance of success, in my opinion, are the ones that are A, talented, B, creating music that the masses want, meaning their other music is really good and they've got a little bit of a buzz in the marketplace, or you believe they can get a buzz in the marketplace. And the third thing is they have a realistic budget. This is a very, very expensive industry, and if you can't afford to market and promote, you're just not going to go any— you're just not going to go very far because there's so much music already out here. I think, um, somebody at Spotify was saying they upload 40,000 songs a day to Spotify, or maybe it's a week to Spotify, but that's a lot of fucking music. And you've got to stand out as an artist. You've got to stand out amongst all that other music. So if the artist doesn't have a label behind them or an investor behind them or their own funding to market and promote the song that you're making. My fear is that if you give them a free beat, you're just tossing it into the wind. And then my other advice for free beats, if you're trying to get established and you don't have a name yet, at least go for— if you're not going to go for the folks that have a budget, or maybe the folks that have a budget are already hooked up with another producer, my advice would be to find the most incredibly talented artists that you can find and at least help build them and help them promote and market as best you can. And I'm not saying spend money, that's not what I mean, but help them as best you can to spread the word, because at least then your tracks are being showcased by somebody worthy. And your goal is always for somebody to hear a song and say, wow, who did the track on that? I want to go buy beats from that person. Your goal is to make money doing this. Your goal is not to just keep giving away beats for free for everybody. But until you're known, you know, they— you want them showcasing in the best light possible. Um, and we already talked about producer tags, so I'm just going to mention again really quickly. Make sure that you've got a tag. Don't put it all through the song unless you're doing it to stop somebody from using your beats for free, like downloading them off the internet. Just have your, your, um, tag at the beginning so— and don't change your tag, like, until you're known. Keep using the same tag so that people know that it's you, and people will come to you. It— I know it feels sometimes like an uphill climb and that it's never going to happen, but it does. And the more time that you can put into this and the more networking you can do And the more aware people become of your music, the more people are going to want it. And certainly, I'm sure you figured this out by now, when you have one song blow up, everyone's going to come to you. Everyone's going to want you to produce for them because they want to repeat the success that the artist had on your beat that blew up. And it's going to drive you crazy because they're going to come to you and say, yo, I want a beat like so-and-so's. And it's not that they want something that sounds like that other beat, it's that they want the success that that beat helped create. But again, without the money and without a talented artist on top of your beat, it's probably not gonna go very far. So just be really selective if you're gonna give away free stuff. Okay guys, that's it for today. I'll see you soon.
