Distributing music to Spotify with free youtube beats

Question

My friend makes his own music except for the fact that he uses "free beats for profit" from Youtube.

He only uploads on Youtube, but he's starting to want to use music distributors to upload to Spotify. My question is: can he upload to Spotify without any trouble or does he need to be in contact with the original maker of each beat?

in makinghiphopby zipopz

43%

16d

prod_dustyb

16d

You know the answer. The real title of this post should be "How long can I go without paying the producer?"

Three scenarios:

Nothing happens because the song gets 900 views so all that's missed is $0.0008 in royalties
The song blows up and the producer asks you for credit/royalties, and you work together to get that squared away (and you likely continue a relationship).
The song blows up and the producer asks you for credit/royalties, and you try to ghost or reneg, and the producer sues you and you lose out time/money, and you lose a relationship with a producer that helped you craft your hit.

Producers get it, people rip beats all the time. We're watching and will jump in when it's strategic to.

AuthenticCounterfeit

16d

He’s gonna get in trouble because money is involved, at minimum. You can’t make money off shit you didn’t pay for, and that sounds like his plan.

It’s a terrible idea to try and steal an album’s worth of beats, just absolutely hustling backwards.

Dyeeguy

16d

The whole point of those beats is to share the revenue with the creator right..? Should be simple to do

zipopz

16d

I dont know man, seen this post ( https://www.reddit.com/r/makinghiphop/comments/hy6sud/can_i_use_free_for_profit_beats/ ) and it's making me think otherwise

Dyeeguy

16d

The “for profit” means generate profit

So yah just need to credit the producer when distributing to make sure they get their cut

doctorlongghost

https://linktr.ee/drlongghost

16d

As other's noted, he should consider sharing a revenue split with the beat maker. Check the YouTube description/license for each beat and see if it mentions a split. If it doesn't, while he is certainly free to give the producer(s) a split anyway, he probably doesn't need to. If they don't spell out the terms of the license and merely say "free for profit" then I think it's pretty sensible to assume that it's (completely) free to use it for profit.

TapDaddy24

Insta: @TapDaddyBeats

15d

Most free beats on YouTube are actually free non-profit. Meaning you're welcome to download the beat and even publish what you do so long as you're not accepting profit for it. Which is generous for producers to recognize that some people are doing it for fun.

But if you wish for your music to be on official platforms where listeners are and profits are distributed, you need the proper license to do that. Pretty much every "free" beat on YouTube has a license that can be purchased specifically for that.

So I'd recommend making music and dropping it in a non-profit manner if you're just having fun rhyming. And I'd recommend buying the license if you're looking to do anything beyond that.

There are beats out there that are free for-profit. Meaning actually free beats you can make money off of. However most of those have some sort of gotcha that's like "monetizable only on YouTube". So be careful with that.

But there are a rare few that are truly free for-profit. Even I have 3 actual free for-profit in my 350+ catalogue of beats. I drop one anytime I reach a twitch goal.

P.S. DM me if you'd like the links for the 3 actual free for-profit beats in my collection which I'd be fine with you distributing to Spotify.

GoldenUther29062019

15d

Consider other people using the same beats too and pay the person making the music please.

whatsthepoint28

15d

maybe this isn’t the right thread to post this on and a silly question but I make beats and post them on YouTube- am I able to upload a beat to streaming that is also up on my YouTube as free for non-profit? Especially if no one buys a license? I feel like yeah but 🤷🏾‍♂️

makellbird

15d

As stated on ADED.US Music Distribution, it will cause overlapping listings… the DSPS will pick up on this immediately (with acoustic ID AKA audio fingerprinting) and red flag it.

donrld

15d

Another day another stealing post