Beat licensing, explained
When you buy a beat online, you do not buy the beat. You buy permission to use it, under conditions. Those conditions decide how far your song can go, who earns what when it does, and what happens if it blows up. This guide goes through every part of a beat licence that matters before you pay, with the TH6 licences as a worked example.
Short answer: a beat licence is written permission to use a producer’s beat in your own song. The producer keeps the copyright. A lease is non-exclusive and usually capped by streams or sales; an exclusive takes the beat off the market but is still a licence, not ownership. Before you pay, check the limits, the allowed uses, the master and publishing splits, and whether the beat contains samples.
By TH6 · Updated
You buy a licence, not the beat
The producer owns the copyright in the beat. A licence is a contract in which the producer says: you may use this beat in your song, for these purposes, up to these limits. A lease can cost € 75 instead of thousands precisely because the producer keeps ownership and can license the same beat again.
That makes the licence text the most important part of the purchase, more important than the price. Two leases at the same price from two different stores can give you very different rights. One allows unlimited music videos, the other counts views. One lasts forever, the other runs out after a few years.
The two rights inside every song
Every song carries two separate copyrights, and beat licences are written around both of them.
- The composition is the music and the words as written. On a song made with a leased beat, the producer wrote the music and you wrote the lyrics and the topline, the melody you sing or rap. Money from the composition is called publishing.
- The master is the finished recording of your song. You made it, but it contains the producer’s recording of the beat. The payout from Spotify or Apple Music for your song is master income.
A beat licence decides how both are shared. That is what the splits further down this page are about.
Leases: non-exclusive and capped
A lease is a non-exclusive licence. The producer can lease the same beat to other artists, before you and after you. In return it is cheap, and you can release straight away.
Most stores sell leases in tiers. The cheaper the tier, the lower the limits and the fewer the files. These are the limits you will run into on beat stores:
- Streams: the total plays of your song across Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and the rest.
- Sales or downloads: copies sold on iTunes, Bandcamp or on CD and vinyl.
- Video views: some leases count the views of your music video, or allow only one video.
- Radio and live: some leases cap the number of radio stations or paid shows.
- Time: some leases expire after a number of years and have to be bought again.
At TH6 only the streams are counted. Every lease includes the same uses (selling, video, radio, live shows and sync) and none of them expire. The tiers differ in streams and files: the Basic Lease (€ 75) runs to 100,000 streams, the Premium Lease (€ 110) to 150,000, and the Unlimited Lease (€ 300) has no cap and comes with the stems. When a song passes its number, you pay the difference to the next tier, never the full price again.
MP3, WAV and stems
The tiers also differ in what you download. An MP3 is compressed: fine to write and record a demo on, not what you want on Spotify. A WAV is the full-quality file. Stems, also called trackouts, are the separate layers of the beat (drums, 808, melody and so on), so an engineer can mix your vocal into the beat instead of laying it on top.
Every TH6 lease comes with the WAV (24-bit) and the MP3 (320 kbps), and the Unlimited Lease adds the stems. If a store only gives you an MP3 on the cheapest tier, check that you can upgrade before you release.
Exclusive: off the market, still a licence
An exclusive licence takes the beat off the market: nobody can lease it after you. There are two things it does not do. It does not cancel the leases that were already sold, so other songs on the same beat stay online. And it is not a transfer of copyright. The producer still owns the beat; you own the exclusive right to use it.
Buying the copyright itself is a buy-out, a separate deal with its own price. Under Dutch law, where TH6 is based, an exclusive licence has to be agreed in writing, and a transfer of copyright needs a deed on top of that (article 2 of the Copyright Act). That protects the buyer as much as the producer.
Because earlier leases keep running, ask how many there are before you buy an exclusive. At TH6 you get that number in writing before you pay. More on the choice in lease or exclusive?.
Splits: who earns what
Most beat licences give the artist the larger share of the master and split the publishing between the writers. The exact numbers differ per store, and once a song starts earning they matter more than the price you paid.
At TH6 the split is fixed and written on the licence. You keep 90% of the master and TH6 keeps 10% (with a second producer, 5% each). The publishing is 50/50: TH6 as composer of the music (with a second producer, 25% each), you as writer of the lyrics and topline, with no extra publisher share on top.
An example. Say your song earns € 1,000 in master income from streaming. With a 90/10 split, € 900 goes to you and € 100 to the producer. Separately, your collecting society pays publishing royalties to the writers in the registered shares, here half to you and half to TH6.
The producer tag
A tag is a short voice or sound that identifies the producer. On leases it stays in the beat. It keeps a lease cheap, it makes the beat useless to people who rip it off YouTube, and it credits the producer even when someone forgets the credits. Taking the tag off is something you negotiate on an exclusive, in writing. More in what is a producer tag.
Samples inside the beat
A licence can only give you rights the producer has. If a beat contains a sample of someone else’s record, your lease does not cover that sample, and the owner of the record can have your song taken down even though you paid for the beat.
In the EU the owner of a recording can object to a fragment of a few seconds, unless it has been changed so much that nobody can recognise it. So ask before you buy: is there a sample in this beat, and if so, is it cleared? Every sound in a TH6 beat is played, recorded or programmed by TH6, or comes from a source licensed for commercial use.
YouTube and Content ID
Some producers register their beats in YouTube Content ID. Then every video that uses the beat gets claimed, yours included, and the ad money from your video goes to the producer unless you dispute it. Check the licence for this before you buy.
TH6 does not register beats in Content ID, so a TH6 beat will not claim your videos. It works the other way round too: on a leased beat, do not opt your own song into Content ID through your distributor, because it would claim the other artists who leased the same beat. Distributors such as Ditto refuse leased beats for Content ID for exactly that reason.
Checklist before you pay
- Which limits apply (streams, sales, views, radio, live), and what happens when you pass them?
- Can you upgrade by paying the difference, or do you have to buy again?
- Does the licence expire?
- Which uses are allowed: music video, radio, live shows, sync for film and ads?
- What are the master and publishing splits?
- Does the beat contain samples, and are they cleared?
- Is the beat registered in YouTube Content ID?
- Do you get the licence in writing, on your artist name?
Ready to release? The step-by-step guide for releasing on a leased beat picks up where this one ends.
Frequently asked questions
Do I own a beat after I lease it?
No. You own your song and your part of it (your lyrics, your vocal, your recording), but the beat stays the producer’s. You have a licence to use it on the terms of your lease.
Is a lease enough to put my song on Spotify?
Yes. A lease is written for exactly that: releasing a song on streaming services, up to the limit of your tier.
Does a beat licence expire?
Some do, after a number of years. A TH6 licence does not expire and does not need renewing.
What happens if my song passes the stream limit?
You upgrade to the next licence. At TH6 you only pay the difference, and nothing comes offline in the meantime.
Can two artists release songs on the same leased beat?
Yes. That is what non-exclusive means. If you want to be the only one, buy an exclusive or have a custom beat made.