Wendy Day of Rap Coalition explains how artists should legally acquire beats. Leasing beats from YouTube lacks permission and exclusivity, so professional artists need exclusive licenses. Pay producers half upfront, record, then pay the remainder after release with a written agreement.
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Hi guys, Wendy Day from Rap Coalition here. I want to talk about, uh, production today, not from the producer's standpoint but from the artist standpoint. So this is for those of you that need to have music because you don't make your own beats and you're going to need to acquire, um, music to either rap over or sing over in order to make a song. My little music munchkins. One of the things that I want you to understand is that every artist needs to be paid for their contribution. In the beginning of a career, however, most artists don't have a lot of money. If you have no money, I'm just going to be honest with you, you're fucked in this industry. This industry is a very expensive industry and it takes money. There is no free ride in this industry. So let me just get that out of the way, and I'm sorry if that depresses you, but it's reality. It's never been a free industry. If you thought that it was, I don't know where you got that idea, and I'm sorry that you think that. Okay, so as an artist, when you're acquiring beats, the worst thing you can do is go to YouTube and pull beats off of YouTube and just use them, right? And the reason that doesn't work is because when you put music out even for free, you need permission from the producer or the person that made the beat. And you need that contractually. You need that in some sort of a contract between you and them giving you the right to use their beat. A lot of producers, because they realized that when they sold a beat to somebody that wasn't a professional artist, they would lose the beat. So they might sell a beat for a couple hundred dollars, it would never come out, and they would not be able to use that beat again. So along came this thing called leasing, and leasing is an amazingly wonderful solution for people that are not doing this professionally. If somebody is just recording to record and they want to make music for their friends and they only want to stream 100,000 copies of a song or up to a million or whatever the leasing agreement says, that's who leases are made for. But for the people that I interact with, my clients, most of the rappers, most of you listening, you're trying to do this to earn a living. You're doing this because you're trying to be a professional musician. You're trying to be a professional singer or a professional rapper, and you're trying to make music to put out into the marketplace so that you can make some money. You want to make money with your music. Which is understandable. You are the guys that I'm really talking to here, and in order to do that, you need to have an agreement that allows you to license the song that you're using. And this is not something that's easy to do when you take a beat off of YouTube for two reasons. One, it's very hard to find the person who made the beat, and two, there might be 1,000 people that recorded to that beat before you, and it's already out there. It's up on YouTube, it's on Spotify, it's on Apple Music, it's on SoundCloud. It's already out in the marketplace, so you no longer have the exclusive rights to it. And as a professional, you need to have the exclusive rights. If you're going to put any money into marketing and promoting a song, you want to make sure that your version of it is not only the only one out there, but you have the right to be the only one out there. So many times I have seen people put out a song, they'll get a beat even from somebody like a Zaytoven or an unknown person online, they'll put out a song, they'll put a bunch of money behind it, sometimes $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 behind a song, and then it'll pop up as having been on like a Migos mixtape or it'll pop up, you know, as a beat for Roddy Ricch, and now you're fucked because he's a bigger artist, more established, and it's forever gonna be like it's his song even if you used it first. So my best suggestion to all of you is to find a producer, work something out with that producer, and record on a beat that you have the legal rights and the licensing agreement in place to use. The way recording works is— and I don't mean the, the day-to-day of recording, I mean how, how the process, the business side of recording works. Usually you will find a beat that you like from a producer that you have somewhat of a relationship with. In a perfect world, you've gone into the studio with them, you're comfortable with them, you've built a relationship, and they're making tracks just for you based on your sound, your image, and your, and your lyrical content, right? So the way that it works is you pay that producer half of the, the asking price up front. So let's just say they're charging $200, but that, that could be anything. That could be $200, that could be $1,000, that could be $30,000. If they're charging you $200 for a beat, you're going to give them half of the money up front, so you're going to give them $100. You're going to record over that beat with or without them present, and then you're going to have your attorney put together a producer agreement that allows you to use that beat professionally. There is no cap on how much, uh, how much you can stream. It's not a license, it's not a lease, it's a license. They're two different things. It's an exclusive license to use that beat. Once they sign that agreement, and they may have an attorney that negotiates back and forth, they may want more points, they they may want part of the, the advance to not be recoupable. Whatever, you're going to come to an agreement between the two of you. It's going to be in writing, and then once they sign that agreement, you're going to give them the back end of the money, the other $100. So understand that the $200 that you're paying them, for the most part, is an advance against their royalties. So really, you're just giving them an advance to get the beat. The reason that you don't want to have a leased beat is because you're going to end up spending tens of thousands of dollars more to market and promote this song in order to get it to go as wide as possible and to reach as many fans as possible. And as you're spending money on that song, you don't want to have a cap on how many times it could stream. You don't want somebody to turn around and file suit because you didn't get the proper paperwork, What if it's a hit record and it blows up? Do you really want to be in the position of a Lil Nas X who got the beat from BeatStars where you have to go and now renegotiate your deal with that producer now that your song is blowing up? I promise you it's no longer going to cost you $30 or $300 for that beat. Once money is involved, they and their lawyer are going to step in and want more because they're going to deserve more. They're going to see that the leverage is shifting to them and away from you. And yes, that's great for the producer, but that's terrible for the artist and the record label. If you're going to use a producer that is brand new, that's wonderful. Even if they're giving you the beat for free, you're going to have to get paperwork that stipulates that. And just to be fair, there should be something in that paperwork that says if that song blows up, that producer gets X amount of dollars, or they get a backend more so than the, um, 50% ownership of the publishing that they would naturally have from making that beat. And producers, you absolutely should own 100% of your publishing. You should never give that right up, and that gives you ownership of 50% of that song in terms of the music and the composition. So Guys, do a little bit more research on production and publishing. The music is what we're selling. The music is the product. So it's really important that you do the right thing before you put the music out, even if you're just putting it out for free, okay? Really do the research here. Understand what publishing is. Find out how to find producers, how to work with them. Figure out how to put agreements together. Make sure you're not jerking anybody on either side. Just do what's fair, do what's acceptable, and you can all make money in this business. Thanks for tuning in to Inspiration 2021.
