3 Rare Hacks To Get Your Beats Heard Today
TL;DR
- Getting heard gets harder and harder everyday as there is more competition. Here are 3 ways to stand out:
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Use an acapella to make an “Unreleased” version of a song.
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Message artists on soundcloud
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Get on playlists
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And that’s it, now get out there and start connecting to people and selling beats!
So you’re making some AWESOME BEATS. You’ve been on a stride, getting banger after banger.
...but now what?
Man, I know it’s hard sometimes to just get your things out there asa music producer. It’s like you put so much effort into your beats and then it’s only half the work because now you have to get your stuff HEARD by people.
I know this can be a tough thing to navigate so I have three hacks that I’ve been seeing around and work very well for the producers using them.
Use an acapella to make an “Unreleased” version of a song
I’ve seen this trick around on YouTube and the reason it works it’s because it is intriguing and will get a lot of views on your video. This has been going on a lot specially with JuiceWRLD acapellas because as we all know, he left a lot of tracks unfinished before he died so everyone is craving for his next big hit.
For artists who are still among us, this is also a great technique to potentially get their attention and a future relationship to work with them, particularly if you choose smaller artists to do this. If you choose smaller artists who are still alive, you can make the song but, if it's possible, get permission to post it before you do so you don't have any problems afterwards.
Also, it works well because it completely switches up the creative process. Starting with vocals made by someone else is a great starting point to have a guide for the arrangement and also to understand what a beat might need from a different perspective.
An acapella (or a capella) is sung by a person or group of people or just a vocal without any music. You can isolate the vocal track of any song you like with a few plugins and online tools, and my favorite one is lalal.ai because of how simple it is.
After you’ve extracted the vocals you can start to work on a beat that will match the artist’s style and key perfectly.
Post your beat on YouTube and make sure to use a tool like TubeBuddy to choose all the right keywords and tags.
This hack is great to get your name out there on YouTube. Just beware that doing remixes and this whole process lies in a legal gray area. In most cases, if you are altering a song without permission from the original artist or company that owns it, then you are breaking copyright law.
WARNING: This is a risky move and I've seen many videos taken down and channels marked with copyright strikes. I'd definetly recommend having an alterative YouTube channel to experiment with things like this, that is not linked to your main channel in any way. It will still work to get your name out there, but without the risk of getting your channel penalized or demonetized.
Message artists on soundcloud
But i’m not talking about spamming them.
First, think about another music producer you like and respect, and might have a similar style to yours. Then go to SoundCloud and find what artists have made songs with their beats. To do this simply search prod by or prod x (your fav producer here).
You can filter by date added so you reach smaller artists who will be more open to listening to your beats and paying attention.
If they’ve worked with similar producers before, you know there is a high chance they’ll like your beats.
Most have some way of contacting them listed on their profiles so just grab their email or instagram account and send a message with your work.
To go even deeper, you can download one of their songs and find which key is the artists singing in, so you send a beat that is targetted and will definetly work with what they do. For this, if it’s a bigger artist, you can look them up on tunebat or, if they’re a smaller artist, run one of their songs through getsongkey or any of these other options.
Get on playlists
All good music promotion starts organically. It is crucial to connect to playlist curators in order to get on them. As I’ve said before, music is a human-first industry.
You can always do some research online to find who the Playlist Editors or Curators are (LinkedIn or a quick Google search). But keep in mind that they receive hundreds of requests daily.
I’d suggest you start small by reaching out and submitting your tracks to independent blogs and playlist curators you follow and trust. Their playlists are often the launchpad to bigger playlists.
It’ll take some research and digging, so take the time to do it right. You’ll probably find some amazing music along the way anyways, so it’s worth the time no matter what.
The time you take on this part of the process will be really appreciated by the curator. Submitting to playlists in a spammy way, not even hearing them is a surefire way to get rejected.
Also, make sure you are submitting only released material and be patient because it may take some time for curators to get to actually listen to your beats.
And that’s it, now get out there and start connecting to people and selling beats!
Don’t forget you can have a lot of new ideas for bangers for free here.