Everything YOU Need To Know About Beat Licensing

Why should you care about this?

If your here you probably have some questions about beat licensing, or need some questions cleared up.

f you need to know why you need to license a beat check out my post called: How To Lose Your Beat Buying Virginity.

So the meat and potatoes of this is basically this:

Exclusive rights = A recording artist who is making big moves already, so max amount of ownership is required, and money will be made back.
Non-exclusive rights = A recording artist who is not making that much money or does not have that much traction right now, money might not be made back.

So that’s the framework that we’re dealing with. In this post…

We’ll dive into each one of these in detail and answer as many questions as possible.

First, you might be wondering what makes me even qualified to talk about this subject.

To keep things as short and sweet as possible, I have been selling beats online under the name BoiGenius as a producer since 2009, and have sold beats to artists all over the world during that time.

Now let’s get to it…

The questions I constantly see about beat licensing are:

“If the artist buys the exclusive rights does the artist now own the beat?”
“What if I don’t want to share the same beat with all these other artists?”
“Do I have to pay royalties to the producer?”
“Do I own the entire writer’s share of the publishing?”
“Who gets the mechanical royalties?”
“I want to license a beat that is already sold by the producer. Can I reach out to the exclusive purchaser so they can sell me a license?”
“I recently bought a non-exclusive license for a beat. Now someone else bought it exclusively. What happens to my song?”
“What happens if the beat is sampled?”
“I want to buy a beat that was already sold, can I have the producer create a similar one?”

So this is what we’ll be diving into here, if your question isn’t here and you would like me to cover it, drop it in the comments below. Now the first question:

“If the artist buys the exclusive rights does the artist now own the beat?”

Well in most cases online, with most beat buyers and marketplaces the answer is no. There is some situations where buyouts/work-for-hire agreements are put into place, but it’s stated in the agreement. The only way you outright own the beat now if your contract clearly says that it is a WORK FOR HIRE.

With an exclusive license, you basically have the exclusive rights to USE the beat, meaning the producer retains their share and will claim credit, and you have your agreed upon share.

And just to be clear, I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

Check your agreements carefully, with a lawyer to make sure you signed the right agreement.

“What if I don’t want to share the same beat with all these other artists?”

The sad reality of up and coming artists is split into the 80/20 principle, 80 percent will download the beat, 20 percent will make something, and of that 80 percent will go nowhere with their song and 20 percent will. So the odds are actually in your favor that other people won’t hear you on the same beat as someone else.

BUT

If you don’t want to share the same beat with all these other artists, there are a few approaches you can take here.

Get a custom exclusive beat created that sounds similar to the beat you like.
Get a custom remix created of the beat you like.
Get a custom exclusive license for the beat you like and prevent other artists from using it in the future.

“Do I have to pay royalties to the producer?”

Usually with most non-exclusive licenses, you don’t need to pay royalties to the producer, but in exchange the producer still has the rights to resell the beat.

But the other side of the coin…

Most exclusive agreements usually require some type of royalty payment to the producer, usually somewhere from 1 to 10% of the back end mechanical royalties. This depends on the producer, the artist, and the song.

“Do I own the entire 50% writer’s share of the publishing?”

This is a pretty common question that gets asked, but most artists do not seem to understand that a writer does not only mean lyrics. Producers (also known as COMPOSERS) write the actual music (also known as the beat).

So you might know this, but with performance royalties, they are divided into 2.

50% = Writer’s Share
50% = Publisher’s share

The writer’s share is divided into another 2.

Music (50%)
Lyrics (50%)

So producers get half of the 50% writer’s share of the publishing. The other half goes to the lyric writers. So if you have any co-writers (or beats with hooks) you share the 50% of the lyrics share with them.

“Who gets the mechanical royalties?”

The mechanical royalties aka sales/streams money.

The artist (if independent) usually gets 100% of the mechanical royalties.

But there are times when your exclusive license purchases will cost you 1 – 10% of these mechanical royalties depending on what you work out with the producer.

“I want to license a beat that is already sold by the producer. Can I reach out to the exclusive purchaser so they can sell me a license?”

You can always reach out to a producer…BUTTTT

Once a beat’s license is exclusively sold, that’s it buddy.

There are a few creative ways around this.

If you have the budget for exclusive rights, consider getting a custom exclusive beat made that has similar vibes.
If you already have the song done, and you have an acapella, consider getting the producer to make a remix to your acapella that sounds similar to your beat.

“I recently bought a non-exclusive license for a beat. Now someone else bought it exclusively. What happens to my song?”

What happens to your song depends on the terms of your lease license agreement. There is sometimes a time limit and clauses in the contract that tells you exactly what happens to your rights in the case of an exclusive purchase to your beat.

“What happens if the beat is sampled?”

If the beat is sampled, then the sample will need to be cleared. If the sample is from Tracklib this makes it easier and more affordable, but the samples need to be cleared.

You should definitely consult a lawyer here, but in my non-legal-expert opinion if you’re not going to be going crazy with sales/streams (10,000+ copies sold/100,000 streams) it doesn’t really make sense to be clearing samples.

If you don’t clear a sample and your song blows up you can pretty much expect to give up your royalties on the song, but it could work in your benefit in the long term.

“I want to buy a beat that was already sold, can I have the producer create a similar one?”

Yes, legally you can have a producer create a similar one, as long as it’s not using the same melodies, but it can have similar vibes. It can be in the same key, same tempo, just needs to have different melody/chords.

Like I have stated before, you can use your acapella to get a remix made, or you can just do a standard custom beat agreement with the producer.

Wrapping Things Up

After reading this article, it should be pretty clear to you which way you should be going with your beat licensing.

With that being said…I personally feel like the most important points from this article are:

Get a lawyer if you want clarity on any of your questions.
Most artists are better off with non-exclusive licenses.
If you want to be safe with samples, have producers use Tracklib.
Its never too late even if the beat you want is sold.

So what were YOUR takeaways from this article? Is there a question you want to see answered here? Leave in the comments below, let me know!

To Your Music Success,
BoiGenius