Selling Your Own Beats

By Jeremy N Fischer

Many musicians are earning incredible money through their songs in the music business. You would think that, to be able to do this, you would have to be some kind of superstar, or a very famous artist.

This is not true! By selling your beats, either from home through an online service, or directly to an artist by contacting them, you can make very good income. Both methods will be discussed below.

Online Beat Selling Services

If you want to sell your beats from home, the best way to do so I on the internet via Soundclick. On Soundclick, anyone, whether a professional or an amateur, can set up an account to sell their beats through, or buy beats for using in their own work.

By giving artists free samples, and by building an audience using social media such as Facebook or Pinterest, you build and market your 'brand'. This is a very important aspect of selling beats online: building a following of people who like your music. Because even if you produce amazing beats, it won't matter if people don't know who you are!

By using Soundclick to sell your music, you can start right now! This may sound appealing, and it is, but you do need to know the right way to do it. It is important to learn the skills necessary to become a well-known producer on the internet. There are courses available on the internet as well as e-books that teach the basics of proper internet marketing. It is well worth investing in one of these courses.

Contacting Artists to Get Sales

You can also make money with your beats the old way - by selling your product directly to your client: the artist. If this is what you will be doing, a few things are very important.

1. Keep practicing and getting better at producing great beats. To be able to convince an artist to purchase your beats, you have to believe that they are indeed very good. Create a portfolio of many music samples, and pick the best ones to offer to your clients.


2. Do some research on the musical niche or genre that will most likely be your buyer. Also, listen to previous works of the artist you will be working with and anticipate on what he or she will want to hear.


3. Market yourself! Go to conferences and talk to people who are well-known figures in the business. Make sure people know you exist, and ask people you have worked with to keep in touch. Let the awareness of your existence grow naturally.

Thoughts and Beliefs

To really be successful in any business, it is important that you really believe it is possible, and that you will get where you want to go. It is most likely that you will fail multiple times before achieving success. However, this is part of life, and if you regard setbacks as lessons instead of thinking you have failed, you will be able to use it to your advantage.

In short, keep practicing, keep building your network, keep faith and most of all, have fun! You will never succeed in this business if you don't enjoy what you are doing. Good luck and I look forward to hearing your creations on national radio someday!

Jeremy Fischer has been active in music business for over 16 years now, and is presently helping musicians achieve their goals, mostly through his website. For more articles and free information and tips, feel free to visit http://www.recordingbeatmaking.com/.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeremy_N_Fischer

Planning My Show - Keith Birmingham, 04/06/2013

One of the primary reasons an artist of any kind will fail in business is that they fail to make a plan for their performance. The good news is that taking the time to plan your every move helps to secure your success as a business. And, there is not much reason beyond success for doing any project. The following article shows my basic plan for what I need to do from start to finish.

My goal is to find a “pitch” where I can be seen and heard without getting in the way of, the people passing by while engaged in their daily activity. Each of those people are my prospective audience, and I want to do nothing that annoys them.

I want my show to move at a steady pace. But, I do not want to appear to be in a hurry. I want my audience to see that I am there to entertain them, and not get in their way. The songs that I play are each 3 to 4 minutes in length. I figure that I will spend an average of about a minute between each song engaged in chatting with my audience. Of course, most of the time I will be starting my act with absolutely no audience. So, I need to start my act with a “catch” song. But, I cannot afford to let my audience loose interest in what I am doing, so I have to keep “good” entertainment coming at a steady pace.  And, I want to finish my show with a couple of my strongest tunes.

Until I figure have enough experience to figure out just who will be my audience I am including new and old tunes that are basically from the country, rock, rockabilly, and blues genre. So, I keep a list of songs to practice on a continuing basis that rotates about 100 songs. I do not, however, go out thinking that I will play 100 songs, and go home. I will plan each day of work to be 2 sessions, and be between 20 to 35 minutes in length. That is enough time to play 6 to 8 songs for each session, and 5 to 10 minutes of chat. I will then take a break. What I am counting on is that my audience will enjoy my music enough to want to converse with me between songs, and following my act. So, basically, I will spend a few seconds before each tune to introduce the tune, and mention something about who I am doing a “cover” of.  At the end of each song I will converse with the audience before introducing the next song.

I will then watch my audience to see if they move on with their day, or are they hanging around to hear more music. If they are moving on I will wait until my audience is almost entirely new before I do another session. The trick to setting up a successful pitch, I believe, is to be playing at a time when the people passing by are not in a hurry to get to their destination, perhaps on a lunch break. Or, perhaps while they are shopping at a leisurely pace.

At this time I do not plan to be on any pitch for more than 1 to 1.5 hours each day/night that I play. However, if I am up to it, and if the audience is up for it, I will go as long as I can.  Actually, I do not plan to busk more that once or twice a week. My plans are to try to get gigs playing for veterans and seniors at local centers close to home. This, I think will leave me time to work with my passion of photography, and to practice and make changes to my act.