Many music producers upload their beats to YouTube without tagging them. First, what is beat tagging? A tag is a short snippet of audio you add on top of your beats for 2 reasons:
- To have your artist name attached to the beat.
- To prevent other artists from downloading and using your beat without your permission.
Not tagging beats leads to a lot of artists downloading your beats directly from YouTube using websites that convert YouTube videos to MP3 files.
I have at least three artists every week coming in to record vocals at my studio to beats they got online—and yes, unfortunately, a lot of the beats weren’t purchased but simply downloaded from YouTube. The artists got away with it because the beats were either not tagged, or the tag was too musical and didn’t interfere with the recording enough to deter the listener.
So if you’re a producer uploading beats to YouTube to grow awareness for your work, just know that there’s a big chance some artists already used your beat without you even knowing. I actually know some artists who have released full albums with beats taken directly from YouTube without permission.
As someone selling beats online myself, all of my beats are tagged in a way that makes them unusable if you want to record on top of them, and yeah, I might lose some of the marketing aspects of the “free beat” world, but I honestly don’t believe this is the way to grow in the industry.
It’s only when you start looking at yourself as a serious producer and don’t let artists take advantage of you that you’ll grow.
That’s my opinion anyway.
So next time you upload your beat to YouTube, give yourself some credit and tag it.
Raz
