How to sell beats (best places + marketing tips) (2024)
Table of Contents
If you’re reading this, I know your passion for creating music runs deep.
Here’s the scoop:
Passion alone won’t cut it if you want to turn your beats into cash.
Selling beats online requires more than just uploading them to a random beat marketplace and crossing your fingers. With the online music scene buzzing, standing out can be a real challenge.
The key to successfully selling beats lies in uncovering your unique style (your sound) and building your brand.
This article will provide the best tips for selling beats online, and guide you through the process of standing out in the competitive world of music production.
We’ll discuss the top-selling music products, how to utilize social media platforms (e.g. YouTube) and eCommerce websites to promote and sell beats online, and delve into the art of creating an online store.
Unlike other marketplaces where you do the work, Sellfy ensures you reap a bigger reward—tools like “Buy Now” links for platforms like SoundCloud empower you to sell directly from your site, making your beat-selling journey not just easier but a more rewarding and profitable venture.
Want to learn how to do that? Read on to learn more.
Don’t just sell beats, sell your “sound”
Sure, as a music producer you must understand that professional beats are the most obvious product choice to sell music online. The reason? It’s one of your biggest assets — you create them once, then sell them over and over again.
But it’s not the only product you can sell.
“Nowadays producers are selling their drumkits, they’re selling their loops, sound effects — any sounds that they create and that they want to share with the world. This is an opportunity for you to make money.” notes music producer DECAP, and it makes a lot of sense.
So, here are some real examples of products that you can sell online along with your beats.
Drum kits
If you’re making beats, the chances are high that you’ve worked on some custom drum sounds.
Drum kits can be a self-sufficient product to sell along your beats or even on their own.
For example, a UK-based beat producer Jack Cronin launched his music career by starting a YouTube channel and selling his custom drum kits on Sellfy. Now he has over 61K subscribers on his channel and continues selling beats on his online store.
Samples, presets, and loops
Have an ear for sound design?
In this case, you have a lot more to offer to musicians than just beats. It means that you can sell any sounds including samples, loops, and one-shots that other artists could use for building new music.
Luckily, a lot of producers are always on the lookout for new and unique samples. That’s why there are plenty of creators that are successfully selling beats from their own online stores. So, why not create sample packs and sell them to other producers?
Sound effects
Don’t limit yourself to just music products. Digital creators are in desperate need of quality sound effects for their videos, podcasts, movies, commercials, etc. So why not give them what they need? This is a great way to get people to listen to your music.
And by sound effects I mean anything from a loud bell, running water, or a gun being fired, to a lightsaber swoosh sound effects.
Here’s an example:
Kuennen Schade is a well-known lightsaber sound font artist in the Star Wars community. By selling one-of-a-kind audio files for lightsaber props to film fans worldwide, he has managed to increase his income and grow from a fan to a successful business owner.
Music Lessons
If you have the experience and skills in music production, why not share it with those just starting their careers? Nowadays, people are more eager to learn new skills than ever — especially something they’re interested in but isn’t really taught at school.
DJ Carlo Atendido is a professional DJ. Aside from that, he teaches DJing on his YouTube channel. He started with uploading a $1 audio file on his Sellfy store, and now he sells dozens of successful products including his mixing courses and even his own merch.
VST plugins and instrumentals
As a producer, I believe that you’re devoting a lot of your time to designing a VST plugin. So, it makes a lot of sense if you’d try to make some extra money selling it as a preset pack. Believe me, there are a lot of producers who are making good money with that.
5 best places to sell beats online
The beat market is very competitive. That’s why putting your beats in front of the right people can be a challenge.
So, when you’re looking for a platform to sell beats, keep in mind that you’ll also have to promote them on platforms like YouTube to get actual sales.
Luckily, there’s an entire suite of websites and tools out there designed not only to sell beats online fast but also to help you market them!
1. Your own store/website
If you’re looking to sell beats online, you need your own website.
Best selling marketplaces may come and go, but only your own website can guarantee you a constant online presence.
Here’s why:
- You have complete control over the selling process;
- You can keep the profit without having to share it with marketplaces, streaming platforms, or distributors;
- You can showcase your brand’s and personal style;
- You can sell beats, samples, music lessons, and other digital products — all from one place.
The good news is that you don’t have to spend a lot of time and money to build a professional website for your beats. You just have to turn to an all-in-one eCommerce platform.
By subscribing to one service you get all the tools you need to start selling beats online, including hosting, online storefront, customization possibilities, payment methods, email marketing and other marketing tools, technical support, etc.
One of the best examples of such a platform is Sellfy — an easy-to-use service that allows you to build an online store for your products in less than 10 minutes.
2. Beatstars
Beatstars is an online marketplace that allows beat makers and music producers to license and sell beats online. Its main focus is to create a community of various professionals from the music industry. And it pretty much works — the platform boasts over 3M users.
The good news is that Beatstars has a free plan that allows you to list up to 10 tracks. However, there’s a 30% commission on each sale.
Here’s another great thing — a while ago Beatstars started a collaboration with Sony to offer publishing rights. It means that as a producer you can make additional income through royalties (80%) when your beats are used for commercial purposes.
3. Airbit
Airbit is another popular platform that serves as a beat marketplace. Just like Beatstars, a lot of musicians use Airbit to expand their network and gain exposure from the community.
One of the best things about Airbit is that it allows you to put your beats in front of the right people by featuring them in a chart. The hotter your beats are, the higher you can get on the chart. On the flip side, you’ll have to work really hard and invest a lot of effort in marketing to even get included in the chart.
Airbit offers a free plan that is limited to 10 uploads, and you get to keep 80% of revenue from each sale. However, paid plans will give you access to extra features and reduced commissions.
4. Traktrain
Traktrain is slightly different from instrumental marketplaces like Airbit and Beatstars as it’s an invite-only platform for buying, leasing and selling your beats.
The good thing about Traktrain is that they don’t take commissions from your sales while keeping a curated marketplace of quality instrumentals. The bad thing, however, is that it’s an invite-only service and requires you as a user to be invited by a currently signed-up member.
Their memberships exist on a tiered basis, starting with a free basic account through to paid options of $9 and $19 a month, with additional benefits such as extra uploads.
5. Soundee
Out of all platforms mentioned in our list, Soundee is the most recent newcomer. The best thing about the platform is that it was built by producers for producers. It clearly shows through thanks to the constant improvements in the user experience, development of new marketing tools, and new eCommerce features.
Overall, Soundee is gaining tons of positive feedback among producers and is quickly earning a spot among the best beat-selling marketplaces. Just like BeatStars and Airbit, Soundee offers a free plan that is limited to 10 uploads and two paid plans ($7.99 and 14.99) that include more features.
How to sell beats with Sellfy
There’s a common misconception that beat marketplaces like Airbit, BeatStars, and Soundee were created to make sure that producers are generating sales.
Breaking news: that’s not true.
All they do is provide you with essential tools to list your beats for sale. Everything else is on you.
The same applies if you decide to create your own website. However, you get complete control and many more promotion opportunities that a marketplace could never offer.
You might be thinking:
Building a best-selling website seems like a lot of work.
Not really though. There’s a platform that can take most of the work off your plate, and you don’t even need expert knowledge or skills. Sellfy is an excellent solution for everyone who wants to sell beats online but doesn’t like complicated setups.
Here’s how to start selling beats with Sellfy:
1. Set up an account
Signing up for Selfy is easy and only takes a few minutes — all you need is a valid email address. There are three different plans to choose from, but you can also sign up for 14-day free trial so that you have time to decide which plan fits best before committing completely.
2. Upload your products
Once you create an account, you’re ready to upload your beats (or any other type of product). Just go to the Products section of Sellfy’s Dashboard, choose Digital products, and click on Add new product.
Upload your beats, drum kits, samples, music lessons, or whatever you want to sell. Add product images and all necessary info in the Product Description section, so that your customers know what exactly they’re buying. Once you’re finished, hit Save product, and products will be listed in your store!
3. Customize your store
Naturally, since you’re creating your own store you’ll also want to make it look exactly the way YOU want it to. If you’re going for a unique look, then you’ll find Sellfy’s store editor a perfect tool. You are free to customize everything—from text color to the shape of the Buy now buttons. You can also choose the layout style of your store page, the number of products per page, and oh-so-much more.
But, if you’re looking for an easier way to build a perfect-looking store, you won’t even have to lift a finger — just choose one of Sellfy’s pre-designed store themes.
How to promote your beats
We’ve already established that selling beats online takes more than just putting them out there — you need to promote them too.
Thankfully, there are many ways you can do it. For example, you could reach out to other music artists that resonate with your sound, post your beats on streaming services or social media platforms (like YouTube), and even collaborate with other producers.
While the possibilities are endless, we’re here to give you some actual tips on how to generate more beat sales.
Include direct Buy Now links on SoundCloud
With its huge user base (70+ million users) and over 175 million monthly unique visitors, SoundCloud is a great place to promote your beats and build a following.
There are some basic rules for promoting your online store on SoundCloud like placing the link in your bio and track description.
But, there’s one thing that could immediately enhancing your beat sale:
Adding a direct buy link to each track.
Including a direct buy link in the description will make it much easier for customers to buy your beats directly from your beat store, thus helping increase your sales. You can edit or add a Buy link through your track’s edit page in the Metadata tab. After you click Save, a Buy button will be rendered below the waveform.
Share user-generated content on Instagram
Why should you use Instagram to sell your beats online? Because word-of-mouth is a powerful yet highly undervalued promotional strategy.
For instance, a Star Wars fan and lightsaber sound font artist Kiennen Schade (KSith Saber Fonts) almost never has to come up with content to promote his products. Instead, he relies on positive reviews left under his social media posts.
Here’s another example:
Jack Cronin (ProdbyJack) has never actually had to pay for advertising thanks to posting positive reviews of his products and user-generated content on social media.
90% of people tend to trust social proof more than anything else, so why not let your family, friends, and customers do you a favor and spread the word? Consider how Instagram fits into your marketing straightening for selling beats online.
Add “beats for artists like…” to your YouTube video name
With so much noise on platforms like YouTube, you must try everything you can to make sure your content ends up in front of the right people.
One way to do this is by including a famous rapper in your YouTube video titles.
It’s so simple, but it works. Just add “beats for music artists like Future” or anyone else depending on your sound. That will help your beats surface as rappers search on YouTube — and also helps you with the YouTube algorithm.
Use freebies and one-time discounts to expand your email list
Email marketing is a universal soldier when it comes to promoting new beats, announcing sales, and keeping people up-to-date on your work.
The problem is that most people need an extra incentive to sign up for your email list. So, you need to offer them something called a lead magnet to encourage them to give out their email address.
Here’s what you could try offering:
- A free download or exclusive beat.
- A one-time discount or a coupon.
- Run a beat “pre-sale”
Besides, free beats are great for generating traffic to your online store.
In case you were wondering, as a Sellfy artist, you’ll be able to create as many freebies as you need, and share them in any way you prefer.
Use Sellfy’s marketing tools to sell unlimited beats
To help you out with building a unique marketing strategy, Sellfy offers a great host of built-in marketing features to help you sell more.
Here’s a short rundown of Sellfy’s marketing features:
- Discounts & coupon codes—for running sales and creating compelling offers.
- The upselling feature for offering related products as soon as your potential buyer adds something to the cart.
- Email marketing feature for sending custom emails with links, coupon codes, product announcements, and updates to your audience.
- The cart abandonment feature allows you to retain a potential customer with special offers.
- Pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing gives customers the power to decide how much they’ll pay for your beats.
- Freebies for boosting website traffic and growing your email list.
FAQ: selling beats
How much money can I make from selling beats?
Successful producers can make anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars per month. Building a unique brand, creating quality content, and utilizing effective eCommerce platforms like Sellfy are key to maximizing your earning potential in the competitive online music market.
Do I need a business license to sell beats online?
In most cases, you don’t need a specific business license to sell beats online as a sole proprietor. However, it’s crucial to check your local regulations, as some areas may require licenses or permits. Establishing a clear understanding of your region’s legal requirements ensures that you can focus on creating and selling your beats without any legal complications.
How can I sell beats as a producer?
As a producer, selling beats becomes seamless with Sellfy. Create a professional online store, showcase your beats, and utilize Sellfy’s features like “Buy Now” links for SoundCloud. Sellfy offers an all-in-one platform with customizable storefronts, secure transactions, and marketing tools.
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