Everything You Need To Know About Type Beats

An artist’s guide to Type Beats, what are they and how can artists use them to their advantage?

What Are Type Beats

The Type Beats wave started back in 2010, when a couple of innovative producers uploaded their beats to YouTube to potentially sell their beats to artists. It didn’t take long for artists to embrace finding new beats online, due to the obvious convenience and huge variety of beats that were readily available.

Type Beats are a great way for young artists to experiment with different sounds and develop their own. But Type Beats aren’t just for artists that lack access to producers. Famous artists with access to a ton of talented producers have recorded songs over Type Beats, like J. Cole and Meek Mill.

The most streamed song in the world, Old Town Road by Lil Nas X, is recorded to a Type Beat produced by Young Kio. Like most Type Beats, the beat posted on YouTube where it was found by Lil Nas X.

For artists that are able to record their own vocals, Type Beats are extremely useful. By using Type Beats, these artists become completely independent. Because they are now able to purchase a beat online and record a song to it whenever they feel like it. If this is something you're interested in and you want to learn more about recording your own vocals, check out our Vocal Recording Guide.

At Sound Syndicate, we believe the Type Beat industry is here to stay. Let’s dive deeper into what the Type Beat market is and how to work with Type Beats.

BeatStars Marketplace

Platforms like BeatStars completely embraced the new market and cater their business to connecting producers and artists, by creating a safe, secure and efficient online marketplace for beats. 

Nowadays, producers are able to make a living selling beats through BeatStars. While artists get access to industry quality beats at an extremely low price level. The transactions take place on online marketplaces like BeatStars, where contracts with terms and conditions are automatically generated for both parties.

If multiple producers worked on a beat and agreed on a split, the BeatStars platform automatically splits payment between all producers.

Purchasing Process

So, you’ve been browsing YouTube in search of the perfect beat, and hooray, you’ve finally found it. You’ve been writing a song to this beat on YouTube, and the next step for you is to purchase this beat; so you can access the high quality WAV file, load the beat into your DAW and start the recording process.

(FREE) Is Not Completely Free

The beats you see on YouTube listed as (FREE) are generally only free to use non-commercially. That means it is usually okay to record a song to the beat and upload your song to SoundCloud and YouTube without monetization. 

Generally speaking, it’s not okay to upload your song to streaming services without purchasing a lease. If you choose to upload your song to streaming services without purchasing a lease, your song could either be demonetized or taken down by the producer of the beat.

Producers generally only use ‘FREE’ in their titles because it has become a standard for recognizing Type Beats on YouTube.

Sometimes, you’ll find producers uploading beats with ‘FREE FOR PROFIT’ in the title. Even then, many of these beats are not actually free for ALL profit purposes.

Always Read The Description

Different producers have different terms and practices for selling their beats. When purchasing a beat from YouTube, make sure to always read the description on YouTube first to prevent any mistakes.

Producers usually place a BeatStars (or other marketplace) link in the top of the description of a beat on YouTube. You click the link and it takes you directly to the marketplace page of the beat. Where you’re presented with a couple of different options. 

Terms Of Use

Most producers offer a couple of different price tiers. Generally, Type Beats are offered at the following price points:

• Mp3 Lease / License (about $0 to $35)

• WAV + Mp3 Lease / License (about $30 to $60)

• WAV Track-Outs Lease / License (about $60 to $100)

• Unlimited Lease / License (about $100 to $250)

• Exclusive License

On the BeatStars marketplace, you can easily view the different terms for each price point.

Upon purchase, a contract is generated into a PDF for you to download along with the other files (WAVs & Mp3s). Usually, any beats you purchase will be free of any producer tags after purchase.

The terms generally look somewhat similar to this:

Mp3 Lease / License

You’ll receive an Mp3 of the beat.

You are allowed a small limited amount of monetized streams, radio appearances and live performances using the beat. 

WAV + Mp3 Lease / License

You’ll receive an Mp3 and the WAV master.

You are allowed a medium limited amount of monetized streams, radio appearances and live performances using the beat.

WAV Track-Outs Lease / License

You’ll receive an Mp3, the WAV master and WAV track-outs.

You are allowed a large limited amount of monetized streams, radio appearances and live performances using the beat.

Unlimited Lease / License

You’ll receive an Mp3, the WAV master and WAV track-outs.

You are allowed an unlimited amount of monetized streams, radio appearances and live performances using the beat.

Exclusive License

You’ll receive an Mp3, the WAV master and WAV track-outs. The beat becomes exclusively yours to use from this point forward.

While all other leases and licenses are sold non-exclusively, it is possible to purchase an exclusive license. 

Non-exclusively means that when you purchase a lease, so can any number of other artists. 

When you purchase the exclusive license, the beat is exclusively yours to use, and will no longer be available for purchase for other artists.

Because each of their beats performs differently in terms of sales, most producers will ask that you make an offer for the exclusive license. We’ve personally heard of exclusive prices ranging anywhere from $25 to $10.000. This price simply comes down to supply and demand. The more traffic and sales the beat generates, the higher the producer will price the exclusive rights. 

A producer is never obligated to sell exclusive rights, and will sometimes refuse to do so if they think the beat is worth more to them as part of their catalogue.

Streaming Limits

Your lease is only valid up until the amount of streams listed in the terms. If your song is streamed outside of the permitted limits, technically, the producer would be entitled to take down your song or take 100% of it’s earnings. 

You could always purchase a new lease once your song is streamed outside of the permitted limits, but the producer is not obligated to sell you a new lease. So if the beat was to be removed from the producer’s BeatStore in the meantime, you’d be unable to purchase a new lease.

Therefore, it’s important to make a realistic projection of the number of streams you’re expecting.

Master Rights

When you create a song using the beat, your final song becomes a new master recording. Unless stated otherwise, the producer has an ownership share in this new master recording. As well as publishing rights.

Publishing Rights

Keep in mind, you are never purchasing the actual beat, you are purchasing the right to use the beat and so the producer still owns publishing rights over the composition unless stated otherwise. This applies to both non-exclusive and exclusive licensing options.

What Lease / License Is Best For Me?

If you want to achieve the best sound, anything less than a WAV lease is a no-go in our opinion. Yes, it is humanly impossible to hear the difference between a high quality, 320kbps Mp3 file and a WAV file. However, the Mp3 is a compressed format, whereas the WAV is uncompressed. When mixing your vocal to the beat, the results achieved with a WAV beat far exceed the sound quality of those with a Mp3 beat in our experience.

We’d only advise purchasing Mp3 Leases and Licenses if you’re on a really tight budget, and even then so, it might be worth saving up just a little more to buy the WAV lease.

If you don’t care about exclusivity, and you really enjoy the way a certain beat is mixed, we’d advise you to purchase the WAV lease.

If you really enjoy a particular beat, but for example, the snare is mixed way too loud, the bass isn’t loud enough, or you want to swap certain elements out, a WAV Track Out lease is probably best for you. Because you’ll receive the individual stems to the beat, your engineer will be able to re-mix the beat to your liking with these stems.

If you’re expecting to generate a lot of streams on your song, and exclusivity isn’t an item for you, an Unlimited Lease is a great option. An Unlimited Lease basically offers you all the same perks as an Exclusive License, except for the exclusivity. 

You’ll have to purchase an Exclusive License if you don’t want anyone else to release a song using the same beat. Exclusive licenses aren’t cheap, and they shouldn’t be. For producers, there’s no gain in selling exclusive rights if you are not a well known artist or unwilling to pay a large amount for the License.

Completing The Purchase

Once you’ve decided on a licensing option, you add the beat lease to your cart as you would in any other online store.

On BeatStars, when your beat is added to the shopping cart, you can click on ‘Review License’ to preview the entire contract before purchase.

When you’re ready to purchase the beat(s) you chose. You can simply complete the purchase. After payment, the PDF contract and any Mp3 or WAV files purchased become available for download.

Building Relationships

Make sure to always give credit to the producer(s) when using Type Beats. Building a positive relationship with a producer you like can have a great impact on your career. Producers also have their own followers and connections, so if they choose to share your music, that’s more people that get to hear your tracks.