A beat can often be sold in the form of a non-exclusive license music, it’s up to the artists to decide if that’s a problem for them.
Honestly, if you are an artist who does not have many followers and has not signed with any label, you will get more out of non-exclusive licenses, because by investing little money, you will be able to release more music and your fan base will increase until you are ready to take the next step.
On the opposite side are the artists signed by a label or with many followers and more powerful numbers, to them if I recommend that they acquire an exclusive license.
Different types of non-exclusive licenses
The types of license depend on each producer, you can offer Mp3, Basic, Premium and Unlimited licenses… The most expensive one offers you more rights, although the most sold license is the Premium one, because it offers the maximum audio quality, the trackout of the beat by track and monetization.
It is recommended that artists always try to buy the Unlimited license, if it is within their budget, it is the best way to save stress in the future.
Because if you buy a license music with a limit of 2,000 streams for example and you exceed the limit, you are legally bound by contract to do a license upgrade, but imagine that the beat was already sold exclusively… You could not do the upgrade as the beat would not be available anymore.
- Exclusive licenses.
When you acquire an exclusive license, there are no restrictions on your rights of use. You can also use the beat in different projects, exploiting the beat to the fullest.
When you buy an exclusive beat, you are the last person to get that beat…
The beat may have been sold in the form of a license before, but people who have already purchased the beat may continue to use it without problem, until it exceeds the license music limit or expires, since they have their legal license to use it.
There is a section in the exclusive contract that informs about this.
These are the most common differences between exclusive and non-exclusive licenses, although there are more aspects to take into account, such as royalties, publications and copyrights, which we will go into more detail on, as this is a very important part.
In recent years exclusive sales contracts have changed, better adapting to the industry standard. The two ways to sell exclusive rights are selling exclusive rights and selling exclusive property.
When selling exclusive rights the producer is still the original author of the music, he can still collect publishing and publishing rights from writers.
By selling exclusive property, the producer sells the beat, including all interests, authorship, copyrights…etc. These offers are also known as contract work, basically the artist retains the actual ownership of the rhythm, and from that moment on will be considered the legal author of the rhythm.
I would never contemplate this last option because I don’t think this type of contract is ethical, that each artist should be respected for his work and his name should be on every publication should be something mandatory.