10 Tips for Buying Rap Beats Online

Because we love you all (yes we do) we want you to know what you're doing when you're buying rap beats online. There's lots of stinking crap out there, so these tips are here to guide you through the blinding dirt and find the shining light...ok ok enough philosophical talk, enjoy the tips and good luck with thA beats!


1. Music Licenses – Understand them

Know the difference between exclusive and non-exclusive licenses. An exclusive license will grant you the exclusive (hence the name) right to use the beats for your projects.

A non-exclusive license will give you the right to use the beat for your musical projects, however the producer retains the right to sell the beat to other artists too.

2. Music Licenses – Know which one to buy

Exclusive licenses can be expensive, but essential if you’re looking to commercially release an album. If you’re however recording a demo or mixtape, a non-exclusive license is fine, however make sure you check with the producer what rights you get as these will vary from site to site.

3. Prices, don’t pay too much!

Owners of beat sites often get carried away by their big ego’s and will charge inflated prices for standard beats.

A rough guideline for prices follows:

Non-Exclusive Licenses - $15 - $50

Exclusive Licenses - $100 - $1000

Of course, the above prices depend on the producer’s popularity and talent. However, we would not recommend paying more than $1000 for an exclusive license bought online from someone you have never met in person.

4. Websites, only buy from trusted ones

Any proper online business will make sure they have a trustworthy image. Therefore make sure that the site you’re buying from has at least one or two of these:

- Full contact details, phone number, email, mailing address

- Privacy Policy

5. Look for trust symbols

On top of the above, the website should also have third party trust symbols. These are certifications from other companies that prove the website is trustworthy and not fraudulent.

Some symbols to look for are:

- BBB Certification

- Paypal Verified

- Shopping reviews

- Hacker Safety Certifications

- Antivirus Safety Certifications

Also make sure these symbols link through to another page that explains what they mean and how the website in question fits the criteria.

6. Email the site and check if they reply

Crazy, but certain beat sites will not bother doing this. Would you want to do business with someone who doesn’t care about talking to you?

Also, this will prove that the website is a serious online business with a team of human beings running it properly.

7. Look for testimonials

This is not essential, but it’s always good if you can see that others have dealt with the site before and have been satisifed with their beats.

8. Avoid producers who only use a Soundclick/MySpace page to sell beats

A domain name costs less than $15 a year, surely it’s not a good sign if someone doesn’t even have the money to buy that and set up their own independent website?

9. Search for the site on Google

This is a quick easy way to check a site’s reputation. Do any bad comments show up, or anything else unusual?

10. Is the site alive?

Does anyone update it or is it dead? We’re all very busy making beats, but adding some small updates once in a while is within everyone’s reach. Therefore look for blog posts, new beat uploads and even small updates such as changing the current year noted on the site!

The debate of the beat

We’ve often had hot debates about this while chilling out in front of our keyboards and computers after a kick/snare session: what beats do artists actually want nowadays?

It’s apparent from what you can find on most other beat sites that “crunk” is very fashionable at the moment and that heavy synthy dre beats never fail to sell. We offer you a varied menu of musical dishes, some fall under these categories while others just have a insane life of their own…

But, what is it YOU like? When we used to rhyme we always looked for beats that literally gave us words…in most cases these tended to be very mellow emotional French style instrumentals, or wild concoctions of electronic sounds meshed with hip hop drums (and I guess you can at times hear these styles on our catalogue), but is that what the modern day emcee is after?

A quick look at the charts places Timbaland at the top, what about that? We agree he has produced some banging instrumentals (dirt off your shoulder) although using the same kick, snare and hihat on every single of nelly furtado’s album is a bit of a cheap production trick boy!

But so……what do you like, and more importantly I guess, why do you like it? Beat tastes are very subjective, but isn’t it cool to chat about it?

PS
Ah man we’re deep, how many other beat websites have such profound thoughts on their blogs? :-)

May

What a month

First of all, one of our most successful in terms of beat sales (it must be that the imminent arrival of the summer is getting your rhymes bouncing….we love that).

Second, May finally brought Nas to London and we had the chance to go and see him rock the crowds live. From “NY State of Mind” to “The Message” to “One Mic” and “Made you Look”…they were all there. He’s now touring Europe, so if you’re one of our artists from the old continent make sure you don’t miss out on this incredible show.

Third, we’ve come across a few very talented producers who will shortly be joining our team. It has taken us a while to find beatmakers with the right sound for La Cantina Productions, but we’re getting there and these guys are pure fire. Introductions and beats to follow shortly.

So, the month isn’t over yet and we’re of course looking forward to more….!

Ai ai

The otherz...

As you all know, we're not the only beat website on the internet. There's loads of us. We've mentioned previously how we feel some are respectable beatmakers, while others just end up using valuable bandwidth.

A few days ago one of these competitors (which I won't name coz it's not necessary) tried to "seduce" us into joining their affiliate program. An affiliate program is essentially a system through which you promote someone else's product/service on your website and get paid a commission for every sale you generate. We've never seen such a long and schmoozy email.

So of course our reaction was "what the f???? Why would we want to promote a competitor's beats on our website?" We were promised lots of cash and glory, but heck no...we're not your average whores..

We're happy to partner with like minded beat websites, but we're not going to make money for someone else at the expense of our hard work on the beats. We want you to rhyme over our beats, not someone else's...not matter how much we get paid to push you their way..

Feel better I got that off my chest...while Lupe sings "kick, push" I'll return to the beats......

Oh yeah and by the way, Google just gave us a PageRank of 5...in other words it means the biggest search engine in the world loves us even more...that can only be good news...

Code code...

Finally made the fix on on our HTML to make our site look great on both IE and Firefox

Added a much needed social bookmarking button, so start bookmarking us on Delicious, Furl, Digg etc. etc. !

Back in action!

Ciao all,

We've had a bit of a misadventure in getting our high speed internet connection set up in our new office (landline markers anyone??), but yes, we've made it now.

Yes yes we know, sounds like we're always moaning about something, but hey must be that we're getting put to the test by the gods of the beat!!

Anyhow, we've been hearing some great tracks from all of our artists (exclusive and non-exclusive buyers) and damn that shit is hot!! There's some real talent out there guys, make sure you keep on sending us your work!

But well, now that we're all set in our new temple of beats in North London (and I have finished deleting all the spam attempts on this blog) we can start functioning properly again. So, expect new bangers soon and also a long awaited newsletter packed with those creative tips you've been so eagerly waiting for...

Ai ai!

Your favourite beatmakers, LaCantinaProductions.com