If you have the right equipment and some experience creating music, then selling beats online might be the right job for you. You can generate a substantial income by treating your beats as a business and start selling them online.
Some of the main key factors that will help you find success in this business, is knowing how to market your beats the right way. Acquiring the appropriate skills to understand the different kinds of audiences that are looking to purchase and use beats that are available online, can be achieved by knowing how to name your beats properly.
How to name your beats
There are many examples of online beatmakers and producers that generate large amounts of money selling their beats online. The beat selling business requires time and devotion, but with hard work and the correct marketing strategies, the sources of revenue can increase dramatically.
As a music producer, you can sell beats, instrumentals, loop and sound packages, samples that can be used by artists, various types of music industries and media like TV shows, radio stations and youtube channels.
As far as creating beats is concerned, a large number of music producer use royalty-free loops, sound and samples. You can create such packages and have them available on your website, categorized according to music genre, mood, bpm and more, so that beatmakers can find them easily, browse, preview and purchase them.
Rappers, singers, songwriters and lyricists are only some types of artists that are going to be interested in leasing or buying your beats. In addition, youtubers and other media industries are always in need of new music to enrich their shows.
This fact proves that leasing and selling beats online is a lucrative and very profitable business model, that when marketed the right way, it can help the music producer gain a nice income.
Name your beats properly to sell more
One of the best ways to acquire visitors for your website that will convert into customers is by organic search on the web. What this means, is that they will search on google about the certain types of beats they are looking for and hopefully they will reach you.
To achieve this, you need to start giving the right names to your beats.
It is a common truth that to grab your visitor’s attention, you need to be smart and quick. The more beats you have available on your website, the more difficult it is for the buyer to focus on and listen to all of them.
You need to be creative and grab their attention fast, by categorizing the beats and sorting them into music genres, mood, bpm and style, so that the search can become more advanced and help your potential customer decide.
Keep it simple
Remember to keep the names of your beats as simple as you can. It is a waste of energy and time to try and give complex names to your beats. The purpose is to grab the buyer’s attention as fast as possible and this would not be possible if you give difficult or weird names to your productions.
Try to keep the titles of your beats as short as possible. Single words or very short sentences are ideal. You can apply the same principles here too. You do not want to create complicated sentences that the customer cannot understand.
In order to grab his attention you can name your beats by using small sentences that have a very simple interpretation or meaning. They can also include certain aspects of your beat, such as the name of the instruments used or the beat’s mood.
Long sentences make it difficult for your customers to focus on your product, and if they get tired soon they will redirect their attention elsewhere.
Describe your beats
This naming method is very important. When the visitors come to your website, they usually come with the intention to find something very specific. For example, they may be looking for a beat with a certain instrument in it.
If they are searching for a beat with a piano melody, they will type “piano beat” in the search box. You should consider naming your beats with specific elements of their sound.
For instance, you could use the instrument or sample names that were used to create the beats. Such name make the type of beat very accurate and you have to keep in mind that many artists write their lyrics with melodies played by certain instruments on their minds.
Another nice solution is to use a name that describes the mood or the vibes of your beat. If you created a production that cause certain feelings such as sadness, melancholy, joy, nostalgia, stress or anger you can use these words and name your beats accordingly.
For example, you could name your beat “smooth nostalgic beat”. This way your beats become more descriptive and buyers will start obtaining a positive image of your beats, even before they have the chance to listen to them.
Focus on the genre
Helping the visitors of your website identify immediately the genre of the beats listed will make the browsing experience amazing.
Music genres you could use to categorize your beat:
- Hip hop
- Oldschool
- Trap
- R&B
- Epic
- Dubstep
- Dance
- Hardcore
- Underground
- Club
These are only some of the genres you could use to categorize your beats. The more you have, the easiest the navigation will become for your customers.
Another advantage of categorizing your beats, is that it will be easier for media representatives to browse and find out if you have the appropriate music for their shows. Every show needs specific music upon which they can place their videos, and this will make it far easier for them to decide on using your beats.
Use trending words
You can use the Keyword Planner tool and search for different varieties of trending words or terms. You can use those terms as names of your beats and attract your buyers’ attention easily.
Another great tool you can use in order to benefit from popular words and terms, is Google Trends. You can search and find the most up-to-date trending terms and use them as titles for your beats.
Using this technique, you are not only able to make your beats’ names more interesting, but you can also drive some extra traffic to your website or your youtube videos from people that are searching for those terms without a direct intension to buy music online.
Every time is time for new potential customers and the use of trending words will make it easier for people to increase the traffic of your website, and hopefully convert some of this traffic into returning customers.
Use famous artist names
A very common yet extremely important naming method for your beats, is to use names of well-known, established and successful artists.
This method is very extensively used by music producers, because of the fact that all lyricists and rappers in the early stages of their careers have one or several successful artists that they admire and want to make music similar to theirs.
So, when a young artist happen to admire Eminem for example and he decides to start creating his own songs, music productions used by Eminem will be his first source of inspiration. That means, that when he starts searching for beats to write his own lyrics, he will look for a beat similar to the one Eminem used for his song.
This is very important for all producers to keep in my, because the preferences of their customers should be taken into serious consideration. This way, they can check their statistics and find out which types of beats where most purchased by their customers.
For instance, if 70% of last year’s customers bought Eminem Type beats, 20% bought Drake Type beats and the other 10% were random beats, he can focus on making more Eminem Type beats, some Drake and less random beats because they tend to sell more.
This was a very random example but it can display the possibilities of having certain type of beats available for all kinds of artists. The statistics are there to help every online beatmaker acquire more satisfied customers and increase their sales.
Royalty-Free and No-Sample beats
Another thing you could include in your beats’ names is the type of license include with the beat. It is suggested that all of your beats are royalty-free so that you can have maximum sales potential.
But, in the case that you use copyrighted material in most of your beats, it is strongly advised that you point out which of your beats are royalty-free. This will make it easier for artists and media representatives to decide whether they can or cannot use your beats for their commercial purposes.
For those beats that you have used samples for which you do not hold the appropriate licenses, you could try to acquire the permission to use them by their owners or creators, but it usually a difficult and sometimes very expensive procedure, especially when you are on a budget.
Writing Sample or No-Sample next to your beat’s name works very well with some groups of people. Some artists prefer that no sample is used in the productions they are about to purchase. This happens for two reasons.
Reason number one is that they do not have to spend time or money clearing the samples. Permission to use samples in songs tend to be very expensive, as they come with additional fees every time the particular sample is play in live performances, the radio and TV shows.
Reason number two is that they simply do not like sampled loops in the beats they use. Such artists like melodies built from scratch and a synthesis-based music production.
On the other hand, specifying in the name that a specific beat contains sampled loops is intriguing and sometimes obligatory for some artists. This type of rappers like classic hip hop beats, ideally with vinyl-sampled loops and are not particularly concerned about clearing the samples.
In both situations, you can easily inform the buyer about the content of your beats so that he decides whether he wants to proceed with the purchase or not.
What to avoid
You should avoid naming your beats like factory-made products, for example “01” or “beat03”. Using such names could easily result into losing your buyer due to lack of interest.
They are boring names that do not provide any kind of description for the beat and do not help the customer decide. If he has to browse over a list of one hundred beats with same name and a number next to them he could get easily lost and disappointed.
Even in the rare occasion that someone listen and like one of your beats, he could easily forget which beat he was listening to and never be able to find it again and purchase it.
You should also avoid giving long names to your beats because like the example above, it makes it very difficult to attract the buyer’s attention. You should never include the address of your website to the name of the beat because it will make it look ugly and spammy.
What you could do instead, is include a text file along with your beat, and every time some purchases or downloads one of your beats for free, he can open that file and see where he can find more beats.
Conclusion
You should always experiment with different methods of naming your beats until you find the one that helps your website generate the most revenue. Remember to test your lists of beats yourself, so that you can find out if they look ok or if they need any changes.
Use your common sense and put yourself to your customers’ position.
This will help you see things from his perspective and improve the naming of your beats. Understanding your buyers is the biggest step you can take in order to increase conversions and offer valuable products and services to artists.
