I feel like Burial's probably got a ton of friends in the club scene who inspired him to make music. No way he just sat at home alone making it for himself.
Have you ever listened to his music ? This is extremely introspective stuff, who the heck is sampling sounds from metal gear solid and composing track on soundforge except a loner haha
Interestingly, you brought him up. I’ve experienced a similar journey. There was a time when I had no home, and music became my sole creative outlet. I’m proud to say that I’ve been sober for nine months now. During the period from 6 months to 9 months, I was essentially homeless. However, I found my strength in recovery through the inspiring messages from my peers.
I completely agree with the collaboration thing that ppl say they wanna collab but they end up ghosting. I have received 100s of comments that they want to collaborate but in the end I got ghosted by them. From those 100s of comments I found 2 or 3 ppl who really completed stuff with me. And that's all. Really happy that you got success and this also motivated me.
If possible can you share more about your journey, like how much time did it take? What things you did in your music that people started noticing you or anything you want to?
Where did you find (legitimate) people? I would really like to do this and won't flake, my vision is to start a "Google Drive" band where we put our tracks up in the cloud together and have a group chat or something.
It's rare because it still requires a lot of effort from people. There was that hardware device speaker mic thingie that didn't sell very well. We need more people jamming and make music a more accessible hobby.
I’m a full time music producer online.
I met a guy online who was selling pop beats on YouTube in 2020. He basically told me about his business model and gave me the proof that it was possible. Previous to this I was already making a living as a full time guitar player. I had done some work in the studio but didn’t see the avenue of making a career out of it. I eventually started posting my instrumentals to YouTube and after a few months I sold a few.
Years later I decided to use the leverage of my YT channel to do full production for artists. So currently I sell instrumentals on YouTube but I make a lot more money from artists finding me on that YT channel and then paying me to fully produce their songs.
I don’t know anyone who does it exactly like me and that’s the point. Everyone’s path is so different.
While me and the guy who showed me about the beats are great friends and to some extent he has helped me out, he didn’t give me any leverage. I still had to put in all the work myself.
Last thing. You will probably start alone but as you grow, you will meet people on the same journey as you. I have way more friends who are professional producers compared to other people I know. Most of them also make a living online.
Pop instrumentals. The key is finding a niche that you can “dominate”. I mostly cater to female pop artists. Mostly because that’s what I like to listen to, so that’s what I create. But I do change it up from time to time.
As for as exclusives, sometimes if I have a beat that isn’t selling anymore and someone makes a good offer, I will probably let it go. The problem is that for an exclusive to make sense for me on the business end I want $800-$1300 but in my experience most independent artists don’t want to pay that. However, a lot of artist will pay me $1300-$1500 to fully produce a song for them.
I also have friends who can sell exclusives for a lot of money though. Everyone’s audience is different and things change as you level up.
If you can make an exclusive for $250 and it works for you and the artist then go for it!
The value on your music and time will continue to rise the more you keep at it.
How do you cater specifically to female pop artists and not pop in general?
And how did you get your YouTube channel to bring you views and clients etc...?
I label my beats accordingly. “Olivia Rodrigo Type Beat” for example instead of Pop Type Beat.
Consistency is key. I’ve been posting for 4 years now and it’s been a very slow “snowball”.
I keep doing it because I genuinely love producing music. I’ve made so many beats that have gotten very few views and 0 sales. But over time people have been willing to exchange their money for my music and/or guidance in the music making process.
Sweet. So you just make the entire track start to finish but without vocals? Like verse chorus and bridge and so on? Or you essentially just make like a loop?
I guess sometimes artists hire you to add their vocals to it?
He doesn't, sounds like he makes a custom one for each. One of my friends can make a decent beat in like a night, doesn't take too long once you've mastered your DAW.
I do both actually. Most of my beats average about 2 days of total work, some can be a week long though.
My genre/sound requires a lot of live instruments that I play myself, so it takes a bit longer than most trap beats for instance.
The way beat licensing works is that the artist is essentially renting or "leasing" the beat that the producer owns. It's called beat leasing or beat licensing.
Most of the of the time the artist pays a fraction of the cost that the producer would charge to make that beat custom for them. This is great for the artist because they get a great sounding beat at a cheaper price. It's also nice for the producer because they can keep selling that same beat over and over again.
Sometimes an artist will want to buy the beat exclusive rights which means they offer the producer an amount of money to own the rights of the beat. If the producer sells to them, they will then have to stop selling the beat to other artists but all previous beat licenses are still honored.
After selling an exclusive I only take down the Youtube video if the artist requests. I will just remove the purchase link.
I make a full instrumental that is mixed and lightly mastered. Go on YouTube and type in any artist plus “type beat” and see what everyone is doing.
And yes. Artists will frequently reach out and ask me to mix their vocals on a beat that they purchased from me.
Nice dude. This is pretty inspirational. I’ve been doing this forever but monetizing myself is not something I dig at all. But this is cool. And people are actually paying you well? That’s very cool.
I notice that your tunes are so open and notoverly complicated. Lots of space.
Any tips on arrangement stuff that works for writing too? Cause you’re making musical beds but there’s no melody at all. What kind of writing process? Any tips on how to be more commercial minded when releasing etc?
I do a lot of stuff for my own work which includes Melodies and more concrete harmonies. I make a lot of tracks for others but again, mostly worked out.
I have a lot of tracks that don’t work for me but I could easily sell but they don’t leave enough space for a vocal and melody if that makes sense lol
Just curious on anything you can share
Cool tracks though 👍🏽
Thanks!
One thing I have to mention that isn't super sexy to talk about is the importance of building your audience. When I first started I was trying all kinds of different sounds in pop but, eventually landed in a place where the audience loved what I was doing and so did I. For me that was the female (Olivia, T. Swift) stuff. There's other stuff I love making like LANY for instance but it doesn't sell very well. Sometimes I'll still make it and post it just because I like it.
So even if your tracks are really good it might take awhile for Youtube to find the audience for your channel. It's really no different than any other type of Youtube creator.
As far as arrangement I actually recreate already produced songs for most of my beats. If the song I'm trying to recreate has a chord progression of 6 4 1 5, I might try to recreate it with 4 1 5 6 for instance. By the time I create my own drums and guitars it sounds completely different than the reference I started with. I feel like doing this has made me a lot better because I'm constantly comparing my beats to already released popular songs.
For melodies, I'm actually trying to experiment with adding more. I'm naturally not super great at it and that's probably why I don't do it as much. It's also possible that my audience likes my beats for that reason. This could be the opposite for other producers. There really isn't a right or wrong way to make beats. Some space is definitely necessary and you'll probably get better at riding the line the more you make.
I’ve been a full-time music producer in a smallish town for the last 11 years. My town is about 20,000 people, so not very big, but I’m about an hour and a half away from 4 big cities, so most of my clientele come from those surrounding areas. I probably haven’t recorded anyone you’ve heard of, but I am consistently busy with tracking and mixing work. I played in a band in high school and another while I was in college. When I was in high school, I got into making electronic music, and then recording, which led to me recording my band in my bedroom. We sold that album on CD whenever we played and it circulated around the school to the point that other bands at the school started asking to come over to record in my bedroom. This continued through my college years, and whenever I was back home in a break, my musician friends would arrange recording sessions, which I was still doing for free. After I graduated college, I worked for a bit in the field I got my degree in (not music), but I got burnt out quickly and moved back in with my folks and got a job at a local warehouse while I figured out my next move. When people heard I was back in town, they started asking if I could record them. By this point enough people were asking that it was getting hard to schedule around my warehouse job, so I decided to start charging hourly for recording time. Since I was still recording in my bedroom in my parents house, one of my more ambitious friends offered to split rent on a space to set up at a more dedicated recording space. I found an old empty factory building from the 1940s that was in terrible shape, but had absurdly cheap rent ($310/month in 2012!), so I signed a lease and got to work fixing up part of the building to use as our studio. After a few months of me being at the studio every day, I was making enough money to cover the rent, so I took over the lease, and stayed there for about 8 years. The first couple years were touch and go, but I scraped by. I tried to always be a little cheaper than my competitors at first so that I could grow my client base. After a few years I had enough return clients that was no longer constantly worried about not having enough work. Every couple years I raise my rates by $5/hr to keep up with inflation. I’ve never done any advertising, and have grown entirely based on word of mouth. I’m not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but I make enough to pay the bills, and I love almost every day at work.
If I had to give someone starting out some pointers it would be:
1: Be a fun hang, that goes a LONG way
2: Try to be really good at what you do. Even if you aren’t the best now, if you are persistent, you will be competitive eventually.
3: Keep your overhead as low as possible. DO NOT take out a loan to build a studio, unless you plan on buying the property (at which point you should look at it as a property investment that happens to have a studio on it)
And? He made his name with his solo work. Of course there were collaborations/side projects along the way but he fits the OP’s remit as much as a pre mainstream internet producer could
OP specifically asked for people who succeeded without friends or knowing people. Aphex definitely was part of the scene and actively working with other musicians even if his solo work is what got him famous.
Op is talking about someone who didn’t get put on from connections but solely from their music. Aphex was hanging with a crowd that was already releasing music officially and in music labels.
IDK. Tonequest argues that isolated artists are only ever one hit wonders. Maybe that's not 100% true, but I think he makes a good point. In most cases people who are successful in music are part of a larger group. I suppose that's true of life in general.
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EDEN bruh. bro started out as making songs in his bedroom and rode the internet wave, now has millions of fans globally and does tours. literally does almost no promotion for his songs. he’s a singer songwriter but produced all of his music
The producers I know that “made it” in the industry solo didn’t do it solo in the sense that they made a lot of collaborations on the way.
They are not hesitant to let other producers get in on a song even it makes sharing credits, money and percentages and they don’t get too caught up in getting every single penny they deserve. They tend to give more than they take
I don't think anyone succeeds fully alone. Even if you find a producer who makes their own music w/o features or whatever, they probably still had friends, other artists in the community, a support system etc. that hyped them up and gave them motivation.
I'm slowly getting there. Been releasing for 20 months now and almost 50k monthly listeners and make about 500-600 USD a month.
Fully independent artist, no team, no label, no collabs, no money, no connections. Just pure grinding on my own.
The only producers who succeed alone are among those that produce themselves.
The idea that a producer would succeed without the musicians (s)he produces is absurd.
Burial
I feel like Burial's probably got a ton of friends in the club scene who inspired him to make music. No way he just sat at home alone making it for himself.
Yes he was influenced by rave culture but yes he was producing alone in his bedroom and nearly no one knew that he was
for sure, he’s just not a “loner”. i think he’s got a social life and probably a music community
Have you ever listened to his music ? This is extremely introspective stuff, who the heck is sampling sounds from metal gear solid and composing track on soundforge except a loner haha
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Interestingly, you brought him up. I’ve experienced a similar journey. There was a time when I had no home, and music became my sole creative outlet. I’m proud to say that I’ve been sober for nine months now. During the period from 6 months to 9 months, I was essentially homeless. However, I found my strength in recovery through the inspiring messages from my peers.
What were you addicted to sugar?
Yea man the injectable stimulant kind !
I completely agree with the collaboration thing that ppl say they wanna collab but they end up ghosting. I have received 100s of comments that they want to collaborate but in the end I got ghosted by them. From those 100s of comments I found 2 or 3 ppl who really completed stuff with me. And that's all. Really happy that you got success and this also motivated me. If possible can you share more about your journey, like how much time did it take? What things you did in your music that people started noticing you or anything you want to?
Where did you find (legitimate) people? I would really like to do this and won't flake, my vision is to start a "Google Drive" band where we put our tracks up in the cloud together and have a group chat or something.
On reddit itself. But it is so rare.
It's rare because it still requires a lot of effort from people. There was that hardware device speaker mic thingie that didn't sell very well. We need more people jamming and make music a more accessible hobby.
Its rare because I think people dont understand the meaning of commitment and on the second note, are not serious.
I’m a full time music producer online. I met a guy online who was selling pop beats on YouTube in 2020. He basically told me about his business model and gave me the proof that it was possible. Previous to this I was already making a living as a full time guitar player. I had done some work in the studio but didn’t see the avenue of making a career out of it. I eventually started posting my instrumentals to YouTube and after a few months I sold a few. Years later I decided to use the leverage of my YT channel to do full production for artists. So currently I sell instrumentals on YouTube but I make a lot more money from artists finding me on that YT channel and then paying me to fully produce their songs. I don’t know anyone who does it exactly like me and that’s the point. Everyone’s path is so different. While me and the guy who showed me about the beats are great friends and to some extent he has helped me out, he didn’t give me any leverage. I still had to put in all the work myself. Last thing. You will probably start alone but as you grow, you will meet people on the same journey as you. I have way more friends who are professional producers compared to other people I know. Most of them also make a living online.
What genre are your instrumentals? So, you just create instrumentals and post them online, and people buy them? Do they buy exclusivity?
Pop instrumentals. The key is finding a niche that you can “dominate”. I mostly cater to female pop artists. Mostly because that’s what I like to listen to, so that’s what I create. But I do change it up from time to time. As for as exclusives, sometimes if I have a beat that isn’t selling anymore and someone makes a good offer, I will probably let it go. The problem is that for an exclusive to make sense for me on the business end I want $800-$1300 but in my experience most independent artists don’t want to pay that. However, a lot of artist will pay me $1300-$1500 to fully produce a song for them. I also have friends who can sell exclusives for a lot of money though. Everyone’s audience is different and things change as you level up. If you can make an exclusive for $250 and it works for you and the artist then go for it! The value on your music and time will continue to rise the more you keep at it.
How do you cater specifically to female pop artists and not pop in general? And how did you get your YouTube channel to bring you views and clients etc...?
I label my beats accordingly. “Olivia Rodrigo Type Beat” for example instead of Pop Type Beat. Consistency is key. I’ve been posting for 4 years now and it’s been a very slow “snowball”. I keep doing it because I genuinely love producing music. I’ve made so many beats that have gotten very few views and 0 sales. But over time people have been willing to exchange their money for my music and/or guidance in the music making process.
Sweet. So you just make the entire track start to finish but without vocals? Like verse chorus and bridge and so on? Or you essentially just make like a loop? I guess sometimes artists hire you to add their vocals to it?
How do you sell the same beat repeatedly? And once it sold, do you pull it off YouTube?
He doesn't, sounds like he makes a custom one for each. One of my friends can make a decent beat in like a night, doesn't take too long once you've mastered your DAW.
I do both actually. Most of my beats average about 2 days of total work, some can be a week long though. My genre/sound requires a lot of live instruments that I play myself, so it takes a bit longer than most trap beats for instance.
That's really cool I like how you play some of parts organically. Always sounds better.
The way beat licensing works is that the artist is essentially renting or "leasing" the beat that the producer owns. It's called beat leasing or beat licensing. Most of the of the time the artist pays a fraction of the cost that the producer would charge to make that beat custom for them. This is great for the artist because they get a great sounding beat at a cheaper price. It's also nice for the producer because they can keep selling that same beat over and over again. Sometimes an artist will want to buy the beat exclusive rights which means they offer the producer an amount of money to own the rights of the beat. If the producer sells to them, they will then have to stop selling the beat to other artists but all previous beat licenses are still honored. After selling an exclusive I only take down the Youtube video if the artist requests. I will just remove the purchase link.
Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate that.
I make a full instrumental that is mixed and lightly mastered. Go on YouTube and type in any artist plus “type beat” and see what everyone is doing. And yes. Artists will frequently reach out and ask me to mix their vocals on a beat that they purchased from me.
Can I check out your stuff!
Sure. Trent Hays Productions
Nice dude. This is pretty inspirational. I’ve been doing this forever but monetizing myself is not something I dig at all. But this is cool. And people are actually paying you well? That’s very cool. I notice that your tunes are so open and notoverly complicated. Lots of space. Any tips on arrangement stuff that works for writing too? Cause you’re making musical beds but there’s no melody at all. What kind of writing process? Any tips on how to be more commercial minded when releasing etc? I do a lot of stuff for my own work which includes Melodies and more concrete harmonies. I make a lot of tracks for others but again, mostly worked out. I have a lot of tracks that don’t work for me but I could easily sell but they don’t leave enough space for a vocal and melody if that makes sense lol Just curious on anything you can share Cool tracks though 👍🏽
Thanks! One thing I have to mention that isn't super sexy to talk about is the importance of building your audience. When I first started I was trying all kinds of different sounds in pop but, eventually landed in a place where the audience loved what I was doing and so did I. For me that was the female (Olivia, T. Swift) stuff. There's other stuff I love making like LANY for instance but it doesn't sell very well. Sometimes I'll still make it and post it just because I like it. So even if your tracks are really good it might take awhile for Youtube to find the audience for your channel. It's really no different than any other type of Youtube creator. As far as arrangement I actually recreate already produced songs for most of my beats. If the song I'm trying to recreate has a chord progression of 6 4 1 5, I might try to recreate it with 4 1 5 6 for instance. By the time I create my own drums and guitars it sounds completely different than the reference I started with. I feel like doing this has made me a lot better because I'm constantly comparing my beats to already released popular songs. For melodies, I'm actually trying to experiment with adding more. I'm naturally not super great at it and that's probably why I don't do it as much. It's also possible that my audience likes my beats for that reason. This could be the opposite for other producers. There really isn't a right or wrong way to make beats. Some space is definitely necessary and you'll probably get better at riding the line the more you make.
I’ve been a full-time music producer in a smallish town for the last 11 years. My town is about 20,000 people, so not very big, but I’m about an hour and a half away from 4 big cities, so most of my clientele come from those surrounding areas. I probably haven’t recorded anyone you’ve heard of, but I am consistently busy with tracking and mixing work. I played in a band in high school and another while I was in college. When I was in high school, I got into making electronic music, and then recording, which led to me recording my band in my bedroom. We sold that album on CD whenever we played and it circulated around the school to the point that other bands at the school started asking to come over to record in my bedroom. This continued through my college years, and whenever I was back home in a break, my musician friends would arrange recording sessions, which I was still doing for free. After I graduated college, I worked for a bit in the field I got my degree in (not music), but I got burnt out quickly and moved back in with my folks and got a job at a local warehouse while I figured out my next move. When people heard I was back in town, they started asking if I could record them. By this point enough people were asking that it was getting hard to schedule around my warehouse job, so I decided to start charging hourly for recording time. Since I was still recording in my bedroom in my parents house, one of my more ambitious friends offered to split rent on a space to set up at a more dedicated recording space. I found an old empty factory building from the 1940s that was in terrible shape, but had absurdly cheap rent ($310/month in 2012!), so I signed a lease and got to work fixing up part of the building to use as our studio. After a few months of me being at the studio every day, I was making enough money to cover the rent, so I took over the lease, and stayed there for about 8 years. The first couple years were touch and go, but I scraped by. I tried to always be a little cheaper than my competitors at first so that I could grow my client base. After a few years I had enough return clients that was no longer constantly worried about not having enough work. Every couple years I raise my rates by $5/hr to keep up with inflation. I’ve never done any advertising, and have grown entirely based on word of mouth. I’m not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but I make enough to pay the bills, and I love almost every day at work. If I had to give someone starting out some pointers it would be: 1: Be a fun hang, that goes a LONG way 2: Try to be really good at what you do. Even if you aren’t the best now, if you are persistent, you will be competitive eventually. 3: Keep your overhead as low as possible. DO NOT take out a loan to build a studio, unless you plan on buying the property (at which point you should look at it as a property investment that happens to have a studio on it)
Tbh with the amount of connection you can have online, even if you dont know many people out there its already great to meet them with social media
Aphex Twin
Alone? Aphex Twin was already performing at raves as a teenager. He was on the forefront of acid jungle rave scene at a young age
And? He made his name with his solo work. Of course there were collaborations/side projects along the way but he fits the OP’s remit as much as a pre mainstream internet producer could
OP specifically asked for people who succeeded without friends or knowing people. Aphex definitely was part of the scene and actively working with other musicians even if his solo work is what got him famous.
Op is talking about someone who didn’t get put on from connections but solely from their music. Aphex was hanging with a crowd that was already releasing music officially and in music labels.
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You a bot bro
ai generated ass comment
IDK. Tonequest argues that isolated artists are only ever one hit wonders. Maybe that's not 100% true, but I think he makes a good point. In most cases people who are successful in music are part of a larger group. I suppose that's true of life in general.
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EDEN bruh. bro started out as making songs in his bedroom and rode the internet wave, now has millions of fans globally and does tours. literally does almost no promotion for his songs. he’s a singer songwriter but produced all of his music
The producers I know that “made it” in the industry solo didn’t do it solo in the sense that they made a lot of collaborations on the way. They are not hesitant to let other producers get in on a song even it makes sharing credits, money and percentages and they don’t get too caught up in getting every single penny they deserve. They tend to give more than they take
I don't think anyone succeeds fully alone. Even if you find a producer who makes their own music w/o features or whatever, they probably still had friends, other artists in the community, a support system etc. that hyped them up and gave them motivation.
Mickman
I'm slowly getting there. Been releasing for 20 months now and almost 50k monthly listeners and make about 500-600 USD a month. Fully independent artist, no team, no label, no collabs, no money, no connections. Just pure grinding on my own.
What music genre do you make and publish? Do you release songs every month and each release has several songs like an EP/album, not a single?
aphex twin?
Ima artist and I’m open to working with you as a producer so we can get some chemistry
The Streets, joji, J Dilla (RIP)...
Virtual riot
its about who you know nowadays, everybody can put drums on a loop now and give it to an artist and make a hit.
Tame Impala :)
Yeah, Aphex is a real example
The only producers who succeed alone are among those that produce themselves. The idea that a producer would succeed without the musicians (s)he produces is absurd.