LiveMusicBlog

When it comes down to the time when you want to sell your beats you must have the proper contracts. Yes, this ought to be a part of your studio in a folder put away, even if it collects dust. Hey, anything can happen, P. Diddy can come knocking at your door, although Bad Boy Records contracts with their musicians are considered to be occasionally “questionable”.

When selling a beat, oral agreements won’t hold up in court and If the performer is sued on the basis of copyright infringement, without the paper saying you transferred all rights to the artist, the legal implications would shift to the creator of the beat, which is you. If eyebrows are raised by your unexpected professionalism, just tell your potential buyers that it is hardly anything personal it is just how you transact your business.

Although you could write the contract yourself, with individual necessities of your liking, it’s decidedly much prefer red that a lawyer be contacted as you could write things that are too vague such as, “in the case of a lawsuit you don’t know me”. That’s more comedy than business. One such individual to write this kind of individual ized contract for you is a music attorney. While initially expensive it will pay off tremendously if perhaps any legal matter pops up that reflects on you when it doesn’t have to. Another point to contemplate is you only need a couple contracts for selling your beat and then you are  set for life and could not ever again talk to that legal resources swindler.

There are two main categories of transactions that are common amidst a beat maker and an artist, one that gives “non-exclusive” rights and the other that gives “exclusive” rights. Exclusive rights are regularly priced much higher than non-exclusive rights. Ensure the music attorney draws up both these contracts separately.

Non-Exclusive or leased rights to an instrumental are when you sell the performer the instrumental but give limitations and restrictions on how the beat can be used. Non-exclusive rights might prevent the use of the instrumental for commercial sale or promotion, strictly for mixtape use and likewise no rights of complete ownership to resell the audio in any way. A con about a non-exclusive deal is that as a sampler you would still be held liable for any copyright infringement and not the buyer of said beat unless stated in the contract.

Exclusive rights would transfer all ownership of the instrumental to the new owner after purchase, so any legal implication would go directly to the artist. In this contract it is furthermore common to demand a number of points from the  artist’s  album on top of the  set price of the actual instrumental. A point in music industry standards is equal to 1 percent of the amount of the re Club an album generates. Some beat makers might not charge a  set price at all on non-exclusive right, and only points depending on how famous, profitable and consistent the performer’s history in music retail is. These are generally the common type of deals made by beat making record producers at successful independent and major record labels.