Beats on Bragster.com and Twitter

While the summer goes back and forth in London, the team@lacantina has been working on various projects...

First of all, the good guys at Bragster.com have kicked off a collabo with The Beat Cellar and will be featuring a couple of our beats on their "best of" videos. Banging hip hop beats and kids doing crazy stunts (or "dares", as they're officially referred to...) is a perfect combo..........we know you can't wait to check it out, so head over to www.bragster.com

Second, La Cantina Productions is finally on Twitter. Yes, yes, kinda old news now and should've been done years ago...but we wanted to have a think about how to make the most of the art of tweeting before jumping on board...

So now that you can find us @lacantinaprod make sure you start following us...you know there will of course be some special love for our followers...

Keep on enjoying the summer people...

Radio and Blogs

Word up

Haven't been posting on our BeatCellar blog for a while because...we have a new blog! We just launched TheRapBuzz.com as a way to share our passion for hip hop, and at the same time filter and digest for you the most important news out there in the rap world. So that's us guys who produce your beats, as a new activity we have now turned into bloggers as well...ah, we just love the web too much...

And then...we recently appeared on Radio Siena in Italy. Oh yes, one of our lovely artists wanted to interview us and find out why we spend all our time locked up making beats and running a website (and a blog as well now).

Fun times...the snow keeps falling on London and those beats just keep coming...

Ai!

Talk to us

Ah yes, you can now talk to us! We have set up a live feedback page where you can ask questions, share ideas and rate us...along with the rest of our artists.

We're going to test this for a while and see how it goes. If it gets killed by spam we'll pull the plug on it, if however it becomes a useful resource for constructive feedback and cool ideas it'll live forever.

So, let's hear it...head over to www.getsatisfaction.com/lacantinaproductions and get posting! Who knows, we may even reward the best ideas and suggestions with free beats...who knows...

 

Everything a Rap Artist Needs

After a few weekends of non-stop coffee and cigarette filled work we have finally managed to re-design and update our world famous resources page...

The cool new page now features:

- Loads of useful articles ranging from using rhyme schemes to effective email music marketing
- A fresh look & feel which is much easier on those tired eyes of yours

- Cleaned up new links to sites we recommend

We have also hunted down and hired some amazing writers who have already contributed their thoughts to these pages...of course, there is more to come from them in the following months

AND, mailing list subscribers will receive all new articles before they are published online. This is on top of special offers, new beats and other lovely freebies...(yes, we like being nice)

Enjoy people

New beats and beatmaker

Even more new beats have been uploaded, have a listen....

And...another beatmaker joins our world famous production team, I-Cue. His beats are technically excellent and add yet another style to our melting pot of sounds (for real..)

Unlike Sockola, I-Cue wasn't hired while the founders of this site were intoxicated, but he applied himself online and simply knocked us out of our chairs. Way to go man!

New beats and a fresh look

New beats have been uploaded and the catalogue has been re-designed...ai!

We did love the pictures on our old one (really) and liked to believe that you did as well. Stunning visuals and rap beats, a winning duo.

But then one day while cooking pasta we realised we had too many beats. And because we want your beat tasting experience to be as seamless as possible, we cut the pics and put all our bangers on one plate. Yes. (send us feedback if you hate it...!!)

And last, make sure you check out the first new beatmaker to join our world famous production team, Sockola. A fan of Reason's NN-XT, the man is known to love digging the crates for underground euro latin pop gems and being whack at Xbox first person shooters. He was hired one dark night when Jerry Spina and Stone Tone where too intoxicated to understand the implications of their actions.

Ai ai!

Selling Rap Beats Online - A few words on our birthday...

Life rolls by quickly. Life online rolls by even quicker, and LaCantinaProductions.com today celebrates four successfull years of happy beatmaking and online business.

We've learnt loads in four years, but if there is one thing that has really stood out, it's the fact (read carefully, fact) that it ain't easy. Creating one of the web's top audio production sites has taken a tremendous amount of work, passion, enthusiasm, time and money. It didn't just happen...

That's why it annoys us we've gone from having 5-6 quality sites selling beats online to what now are probably close to a hundred beatsomething.com's. Sure, competition is a positive force, it fuels innovation...but the problem is that we're not seeing innovation, just hopeless imitation.

Why? Because it looks like the new online rap beat biz opportunity is not about selling beats anymore, but telling others how to do it, and charging for the privilege. The craziest thing is that these "secrets of selling beats online" ebooks make it look like child's play...to the point that anyone who reads them feels they are perfectly capable of selling beats online and making six figure profits. Ha ha

Of course these ebooks are BS. Yes, they point you in the right direction, but it's not only about knowing how to do it, it's knowing how to do it better than everyone else. And if that wasn't enough, they fail to mention that without QUALITY beats, no one goes anywhere.

So what's our advice? Don't be foolish and throw your hard earned cash down the internet money making dreams drain just because some ebook tells you so. There's no more space for beat sites, the market is bursting (a search for "rap beats" on Google brings up 507,000 results, yes).

Instead, join an existing audio production site. Have a look around, pick the best ones (not the open to all buy and sell beat sites, you'll never get noticed there) and send them your beats along with a well written email. Trust us, if you're talented you'll eventually have your beats online, without having wasted thousands of dollars on building and promoting yet another buyrapbeat.com

So while we blow out the four candles on our birthday cake, we hope we've helped you with this simple, yet vital piece of advice...happy birthday LaCantinaProductions.com

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

New London offices!

We made it..oh yes we did...La Cantina Productions has finally found the perfect location for our new studio/offices!

It did take a while, but from Monday 6th of Nov we'll be cooking our beats from Stroud Green Road, Islington, London. As described by Wikipedia, Stroud Green Road is "a microcosm of what London Mayor Ken Livingstone once described as "The world in one city." There can be few places with such a tension-free racial, cultural and class mix."

Sounded like the perfect home for a group of international hip hop beatmakers...

Full address will be posted on Monday once the move is complete. From then on, if you're based in London or just passing by, knock on our door...

They're up!

Yes, yes, yes...! The new beats are up...!

Get rhyming!!!!!!!!!!!

A few important things...

So...

We know you must all be thinking "damn these guys, they tell me in June that they're posting new beats and we're now in August and still no signs of any fresh new head bangerz on their catalogues...they too high to update their website or what??"

Well, you're right (no, not regarding us being too high...!) we're just "a bit" behind schedule...and we're sorry! But man it's been a busy summer...

We're hunting for a new home/office to live and work in here in London, and thanks to a couple of dodgy estate agents things have turned out to be way more difficult than you'd usually expect...it's hard out here for a producer........

On top of that, add the fact that the hip hop scene back in Roma, Italia has taken notice of what we do (it's taken us nearly three years, but hey...things move slooooowly back at home) and we've therefore had to fly back to meet & greet all the fantastic new artists who were just dying to rhyme over our beats (not kidding...!). And that takes time. (!)

So...once we find a new home/office, things will pick up and we'll get round to uploading these lovely new beats who have now been patiently waiting on the C drives of our computers for nearly three months...

Yet again, than you for your patience...we'll get there eventually............promise!

La Cantina Productions Team

New beats coming you way...

...quicker than you can say southernplayalisticadillacmuzik !

We've got a broad range of banging new beats dying for rhymes................

Keep checking this space!

A tough market

Ciao everyone,

Just a quick note from all of us here at LaCantinaProductions.com, it's been a while that we've been wanting to shout this out on the waves of the web...

In the last two years, the online beat market has literally exploded, with hundreds of sites popping out everywhere out of nowhere, cluttering the web and making our job much harder. We've got to a point where anyone thinks they can make beats, put up a website and make more cash than jay-z and master p put together...wish it was that easy...

I can think off the top of my head of maybe 5-6 other sites/production teams who are serious, professional and work as hard as we do on the kicks, snares and HTML coding. All the rest, an immense waste of time, space and valuable bandwidth.

Unfortunately, due to the way Mr. Google works, these garbage sites often get picked up and are among the top ten results for searches relevant to us. It's a shame, coz they make all of us look like a bunch of desperate wannabee's...

But nevertheless, rest assured that if you're one of our artists, you're in the right place. We work hard day and night (really...!) to make LaCantinaProductions.com what it is and keep it on top of the piles of garbage out there. We offer you more than the average beat website (free promotion anyone?) and are always looking into ways to give you that something extra to help you in your musical career. And of course, we love it.

So keep on making your music, and thank you for being our artists. We really, really, do appreciate it.

La Cantina Productions Team

Optimising, optimising, optimising...

Today's been the search engine optimisation day...

We've now got a sitemap (XML and HTML) and a robots.txt file

Don't worry bout what this means...just hope that the big google now notices us a bit more, bringing us more visitors and you more beats!

As for the rest, the new beats are coming and don't forget that we're hiring !

Expanding our team...and other updates...

And yes the time has come, we're looking for new beat makers to join our team! The demand for our beats has grown so much that we now need more people to help us keep all our hundreds of artists worldwide satisfied...

We're first posting a quick message on our blog about this, and we'll soon have an official page up on our site...if interested, drop us a line on info @ lacantinaproductions.com

As for the rest, we've made some minor SEO tweaks to our site which should help our rankings and we've also expanded our Italian and French pages which should soon be up and running...


That's all for now...new beats coming your way very soon...