In 2011, Curtiss Kingshould have been on tiptop of the world. The producer, after working with successful rappers like Ab-Soul, had just placed a beat with two artists on Young Coin. On summit of that, XXL was writing about him.

To gloat, he went to a liquor shop near his Southern California dwelling and grabbed a copy of the magazine. But when he got to the counter, there was a problem. He was broke.

"I couldn't beget the magazine," Male monarch tells Complex. "I prove up to the annals, like, 'Hey, man, this is my proper noun.' He'southward like, 'Okay, sure dude.'"

King'south story gets to the heart of the problem with beingness a producer, fifty-fifty one who appears successful to the outside world: you're often strapped for cash. Artists accept a long time, if ever, to decide if they want to use one of the dozens of beats they often receive. From at that place, information technology'due south a wait to meet if you brand the anthology. And from there, it tin be up to a year until you actually get paid.

King needed a change. So in 2013, when his "life was in a really bad place," a friend and mentor introduced him to an entirely different way to make money as a producer, 1 that is now reinventing how beatmakers get paid and how rappers notice beats, and causing no shortage of controversy in the procedure. He started leasing beats.

Music-making duties in hip-hop have traditionally been divided evenly betwixt the rapper and the producer when making an anthology. This was a sectionalization of labor that grew out of rap's original DJ/rapper split, as memorialized in the title of the classic 1988 DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince anthology He'south the DJ, I'yard the Rapper. At commencement, those pairs would work together exclusively to consummate a project. But with the commercial and critical success of Nas' 1994 debut Illmatic—which split beatmaking duties up between a dream squad of L.E.S., Big Professor, Q-Tip, DJ Premier, and Pete Rock—the model of producer-as-freelancer, providing beats to different artists, began to take hold.

Simply with all of those changes, one thing notwithstanding held true. Barring the occasional fiasco or outright bite, each beat would exist teamed with just one vocal. The idea of someone like DJ Premier having Gang Starr and Nas record on the aforementioned beat, and releasing both songs, was unthinkable.

How an AOL Chatroom Changed the Game

That is, until Abe Batshon showed upwardly. In 1996, Batshon was an aspiring songwriter who would often connect with producers in AOL chatrooms. He couldn't afford the 4- or v-effigy price tags fastened to the beats he liked. So, out of a combination of ingenuity and desperation, he came up with an unprecedented idea.

Abe Beat Stars
Image courtesy of Abe Batshon

He hit up a producer in a chatroom, request to apply a beat. He offered to pay something, simply less than the sale price—nether the condition that the producer could even so sell the trounce to someone else. Thus the concept of a non-exclusive license for a beat was built-in.

Batshon wouldn't plow his thought into a full-fledged business until 2008, when he started Beatstars, an online marketplace for beats. By the fourth dimension he did, the thought of getting not-exclusive licenses for beats—leasing tracks, instead of buying them—was starting to proceeds currency among a young generation of producers to whom marketing on social media was 2nd nature.

The way leasing works is that a producer allows his or her beats to be used past an artist for a toll and terms the producer sets—the creative person can but have their song available for a limited amount of time, for instance, or only sell a sure corporeality of copies. The catch is, the producer can brand that same bargain again with a different artist, and so some other one, then another one. So you tin can take tons of artists doing their thing on the same beat.

Because of the not-sectional nature of the deal, prices are much lower than the going rate for exclusive rights to a beat. Prices for leases sometimes become as low as 99 cents, but tend to hover in the $20-$fifty range, depending on what format the artist wants the vanquish in (mp3s are cheapest; receiving the individual tracks of the beat separately, so y'all tin remix or chief the track, is the most expensive).

A Kid on MySpace Becomes a SuperStar

SuperStar O is an Ohio-based producer who is, well, a superstar in this new world. If y'all're not a producer, you lot may not know his proper noun. But enquire your friend who makes music in his or her reanimation, and you'll see eyes start to widen.

In 2008, SuperStar O was just another kid making beats and putting them on his MySpace page. But after a knack for online networking led him to connect with more than experienced beatmakers, he concluded up discovering online marketplaces for beats, and shortly thereafter got into leasing his creations. Now, he tin make up to $30,000 a calendar month leasing beats for between $20-$fifty a pop.

SuperStar O 1
Image courtesy of SuperStar O

SuperStar knows other producers who have been making large money leasing beats since the early 2000s, but has seen the marketplace explode since he really got into information technology.

"There's so many more people that are interested in it," O says. "Nosotros're in a generation right at present where there's merely tons of people fascinated by [making music], which is actually cool. Then manifestly, once people get fascinated by that, they're like, 'Hey, I can make money from this? You mean I can sell these?' That'southward why it'southward blown upwards to the level information technology is now."

Why Beats Are Like Toothpaste

To find why leasing beats has go and so pop, you've got to look at both the supply and the demand sides. The barriers to entry for a producer accept fallen dramatically in contempo years due to technology. J Hatch, the co-founder of the producer coalition istandard, points out that it used to cost a lot of coin to become a producer.

"You had to get an MPC [sampler/drum motorcar], which was maybe $i,000," he remembers. "You had to become a soundboard. Y'all had to get a booth. These things were a lot more than expensive back then. You were spending $10,000, $12,000 just to say yous're a producer. Present yous can download beat-making software on your phone. Yous can get a Kaotica Eyeball to record yourself; you tin do everything on your laptop. So yous go from spending $12,000 to maybe spending $1,000, and you can make just as practiced beats as yous could've then."

Since information technology's at present easier to get started, more than and more than people are becoming producers, resulting in a glut of music—there are literally millions of beats to choose from on platforms like Batshon's or RawHeatz. To match that, there are e'er more people rapping, and they need admission to beats, often for equally cheap as they can manage. Even artists with label deals are finding their budgets slashed in recent years. So the idea of getting a shell inexpensively, even if you run the risk of having someone else use it too, becoming extremely appealing.

And then with beats then cheap, does the quality endure? Not according to Curtiss Rex. The price to lease a beat out from King may be $xxx, simply that doesn't hateful the music is whatever less good that the stuff he gave to TDE. The best way to illustrate that point, he asks? Toothpaste.

"I always compare [leasing beats] to Colgate," he starts. "Colgate is not going to make a bottom production. They stand by the quality of whatever that is attached to that name. [It] has to be a top tier quality. Even if y'all're submitting to artists who are seen by a lot of eyes, it doesn't necessarily mean that their professionalism or their demand is more of import than someone else who is willing to pay money to invest into your career."

'What Exercise You Expect for $0.99?'

Not everyone is thrilled with this new state of affairs, of form. Producer J.Oliver has washed songs for Meek Mill, Trey Songz, French Montana, and Young Thug. He characterizes artists leasing beats every bit taking "the cheapest road out." "At that place's so many artists out here and the artists don't desire to spend money," he explains. "They don't desire to pay money for beats."

Sometimes, leasing beats can backlash. If someone else comes along and decides they like a beat you lot've leased enough to buy information technology outright, complications can ensue. J.Oliver says that he frequently gets requests to remake beats from people who are unable to renew their temporary buying because the beat has been sold exclusively to someone else.

"I just did information technology last calendar week for somebody," he says, laughing. "Somebody hit me up and said, 'Yo, my daughter sang on this vocal, and the producer already sold it, so can you re-make it?'"

J. Hatch explains that leasing likewise causes friction inside the producer community itself, with some composers feeling like leasing is driving overall prices downward, and gives the impression of lower-quality piece of work being prevalent.

Most people presume that records that are being leased are not that person's best... If I'm goin' to Macy's to buy a pair of gloves, they're gonna exist good quality, I'thou probably gonna have 'em for a couple years. If I go to the dollar store and I selection a pair of $0.99 gloves, what do you lot expect for $0.99?

"You're taking the value out of what's being presented as a meliorate quality record," he explains. "Well-nigh people assume that records that are being leased are not that person'south best, or just stuff they maybe have lying around and they're willing to sell at this [depression] price point. You gotta recall about it like a store, right? Yous tin get to Macy's or y'all can go to the dollar store. You wanna purchase a pair of gloves at the dollar shop, or y'all wanna purchase a pair of gloves at Macy's? If I'g goin' to Macy's to buy a pair of gloves, I'thousand probably spending $20-25, they're gonna be good quality, I'k probably gonna have 'em for a couple years. If I go to the dollar store and I pick a pair of $0.99 gloves, what practise yous expect for $0.99?"

Only folks like SuperStar O and Curtiss Male monarch are fighting the perception that low price equals low quality. Male monarch, for one, has no interest in selling beats to prominent rappers anymore. He says that he made every bit much money in his get-go few months leasing beats as he did in 10 years of grinding for placements with major artists and corporations—and he tin can utilise the fourth dimension saved in not attending countless all-nighttime studio sessions just to network to spend with his family unit. And you never know—i of your leasing clients might accident up.

"Knowing that you could work with the next Kendrick Lamar and withal make your money in the meantime—assist pay your bills, help have care of your family—all that stuff is style as well important to me correct now," he says. "I would never go back to the manufacture, I don't care how much money is existence offered, it's not worth the headache."

Anti-Social Rappers Club

Batshon points out that marketplaces like his are collapsing music industry boundaries. Big hits like Hereafter and Rihanna's "Selfish" came from a producer using his platform. And he's noticing that big publishers are starting to arrange to the new reality he helped create.

"Nosotros're starting to see all these major publishers alter their deals for the online producer," he says. "Considering the online producer has become self-sufficient, has adamant their own fate, built their own business without the aid of Big Brother."

In improver, Batshon points out that a generation of artists raised on social media detect it perfectly natural to utilize the internet to notice beats, even after they get successful. He looks forward to a future that looks a lot like his own mid-90s by.

"The type of personalities [of] a lot of younger artists are very anti-social. A lot of them are introverts, so they rely on the net for their social activity. What you lot're starting to see is that young entrepreneurial minds, because they accept such a shut interaction with their fans on social media, don't experience like they demand to rely on anybody. They're not waiting around for management to transport them beats. They're not waiting around for A&Rs or publishers or labels to transport them beats. A lot of these artists are going to the cyberspace outset. They're checking their Twitter DMs from producers, they're on BeatStars, they're on YouTube discovering beats. That's just how immature folks are collaborating, man. I think the future is really amazing."