Here are a couple of reasons to not depend on beat selling communities like SoundClick and PMP Worldwide.
I’m a big fan of the websites mentioned above, but there are a number of reasons you should not depend on these websites for your music success.
I see many benefits in using these websites, but using them may actually be bad for your beat selling business.
1. They Aren’t Professional
If I’m claiming to be a professional, sending someone to a cheap generic profile that has no personality and is cluttered with useless information is an amateur move. Generic web profiles make it easy to be ignored in the competitive market of selling beats.
2. Promoting Competition & Losing Sales
One of the biggest things you should be concerned about is that when you promote your profile, you are also promoting Soundclick and the thousands of other music producers on there.
When I land on your profile before I even scroll down to your beats, I see links to check out the most popular music producers and the most popular beats, and I already want to leave your profile because I want to check out what is hot right now.
There are music producers on there that will have better beats and better prices, and you are losing sales because you are promoting your competition indirectly.
3. Cheap Beat Prices
How do you value your hard work? It doesn’t matter. Because when beats are being sold for $10.00 (on average) you will have to keep your prices competitive to try to snag the sales. And let’s be clear: when I say $10 beats, you may think “Those are some crappy beats”. But no, there are some really professional sounding beats on the market for really cheap.
We are in the digital age of FL Studio and Reason, where teenagers living at home can pump out beats all day, and $10 a beat suits them just fine because that adds up for new shoes. When your music is surrounded by under-valued beats, you will have to be accommodating to survive.
4. Wrong Audience
A site like SoundClick promotes itself to music producers. So most of the traffic is music producers and rappers. So if you are getting a lot of audio plays on your profile and wondering why no sales, it is likely because you are being listened to by other producers.
Let’s think about the type of visitor you want to visit your profile, and the type of visitor you don’t want. I’m sure the people that do buy beats from SoundClick go there for the wide selection and cheap prices.
Do you want to be a part of that wide selection and cheap prices, or do you want to meet a serious music artist with a real album budget? They probably aren’t searching those sites because they have tons of producers coming to them directly.
To be honest, I don’t know if big-name artists are searching on those sites… I suppose it is possible. I just want you to think about the group you are marketing yourself with. Are you in the group that spends 2 hours on a beat and then sells it for $10, valuing your time at $5 an hour, and can you make a living off that?
5. No Connection to Your Customer
You shouldn’t look at selling beats, as just selling a beat. You should look at it as building relationships. Here’s why:
By building a relationship with your customers you can sell multiple beats to the same music artist. Businesses call this customer retention.
The focus is on keeping customers happy so that they keep them coming back and paying for your services. It’s difficult to encourage someone to keep working with you when they buy your beat from a generic website that lacks personality.
6. No Personal Branding
The SoundClick profile pages have a profile picture and a thumbnail image above it. Other than that, every profile looks the same.
The focus isn’t on you. You are secondary to the advertising and other clutter on a page.
People would happily pay for a beat by Timbaland before they even heard it, because he has created a personal brand, and established a known track record of making quality music. These profiles don’t allow you to establish your brand or show off your previous work. You need to make people excited to work with you and it takes more than a profile photo for people to connect with you.
Check out Boonie Mayfield’s Website. As soon as you land on his site, you know it is his site.
You know right away that he produces music, and the site has a unique look and feel that helps it stand out. This is a serious producer who has invested in his craft.
7. Website Clutter
These sites don’t offer the best user experience. They are cluttered with ads, links to your competitors, and tons of other features that can take the visitor’s eye off you and your music.
If you are paying for a service, the focus should be on you and your music to help you stand out.
That’s it!
What do you guys think? Leave a comment and let me know if you think I’m wrong.
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You make some valid points about why one should not rely on these sites to sell beats but you leave out reasons or how you can leverage these beat markets to drive traffic to your personal website. For example, I have a Soundclick page (www.maseedproductions.net) notice that my page has it’s own domain, it is a custom page that is professionally put together. You can find my page while searching on soundclick or you can go directly to it. I have my music on soundcloud.com/maseed and all beats link back to my website (www.maseedproductions.com). I use youtube in the same fashion. I don’t think it’s unprofessional to use 3rd party sites so long as you promote your brand properly and drive the traffic back to your personal website.
Now that being said, yes you probably do have lots of plays from your competition (other producers). I don’t look at them as competition though, I look at other producers who patronize my site as living, breathing billboards. A song play is a song play and the more of those you have, the more popular you appear to whoever visits your site be it artists, producers, labels, etc. I’ve sold beats to producers so I think you’re selling yourself short by excluding them from your fanbase.
Also the key information that you left out here is the fact that paid advertising is the single most important factor in driving traffic to your website. Once your site goes viral, beats sell go on auto-pilot. There are producers on Soundclick making 6 figures a year selling beats and I’ll tell you 1st hand that their success comes from 2 things: (quality product and paid advertising). Facebook, Twitter, and youtube all have paid advertising and the ones investing money into those platforms are winning.
When I run ads my traffic goes up, when I don’t it goes down…real simple concept. People think that there’s some magic formula to this sh*t but there’s not. It’s a numbers game and the more people you make aware of your brand, the more likely it is that you’ll make a sell. Also consistency is a key factor. Don’t think you can run a $50 dollar campaign for 7 days, stop and all of a sudden blow-up, it doesn’t work like that. At 1st people don’t trust you enough to buy because they are unfamiliar with your brand even if they actually like your product. You have to demonstrate that you are the real deal by constantly exposing them to your product. Once they hear and interact with it several times, they will usually end up buying at that point. That means you’ll need to run several ad campaigns on several different platforms, several times a month. It does get costly to do that and you’re not guaranteed to make your money back but you have to look at that as an investment. This is the way business is done, period no matter what industry you’re in.
Hope yall were able to gain a little insight from this.
Very valid. I agree. Good insight
Man you’re right! I check Boon Doc out a lot on youtube. That cat got it popp’n for real. When I finally heard his album, I was like damn. But anyway those 7 reasons are definitely hitting the nail right on the head.
I started checking for cd baby, TuneCore, and pmp wordwide a long time ago. But I kinda felt like there is definitely no room for a producer or beatmaker to shine. I guess running your own website is your best bet.
Until something else better comes along.
I am inspired by this article, i have been online selling beats on these third party sites and yes i have made some money,but not much. I started my own website recently and though a tough job i believe it will be successful. I wish there was an article that would give real information on how to drive targeted traffic to ones beat selling site. What options are there. for me i feel this is what is so difficult to manage when you decide to go the your own website way.
You hit the nail right on the head!
Sounds good, however, you can’t live in the analog age forever. It’s called innovation…. Technology is driving a lot of behaviors, and these platforms allow for artist and producers alike to grow with what’s trending. You think Twitter, Snapchat and Facebook will be around forever. The next wave is around the corner….. Appreciate the innovation…..