Most beat stores run on leases: the artist pays for the right to use your beat under certain limits, and you keep ownership. It's a great model, right up until the beat contains someone else's record.
If you're not sure how sample clearance works in general, start with the complete guide.
What a lease actually covers
When an artist leases your beat, you're licensing what you own: your production. You can't license what you don't own, and that includes the record you sampled. So a lease on an uncleared sampled beat gives the artist your part of the rights and none of the sample's.
That's why so many beat licenses include a sample clause.
What sample disclaimers do (and don't)
A typical clause says something like: "This beat may contain samples. The licensee is responsible for clearing any samples." It's common, and it's worth having, because it tells the buyer what they're getting.
What it doesn't do is make the sample legal. It just moves the job of clearing it onto the artist, who often can't afford it and only finds out when their song gets taken down.
Where it goes wrong
- The song blows up. Rights holders rarely chase a song with 2,000 streams. They do chase one with 20 million.
- The artist gets signed. Labels check samples before they pick up a song. An uncleared sample can kill the deal or cost the artist most of the song.
- Distribution. Distributors ask artists to confirm samples are cleared, and they act on complaints. Takedowns land on the artist, and the relationship with you suffers.
How to sell sampled beats responsibly
- Label it clearly. Put "contains an uncleared sample" in the title or description, not buried in the license.
- Price exclusives with clearance in mind. If an artist wants exclusive rights, discuss clearing the sample first, or selling a replayed version.
- Offer a replayed version. If you can recreate the part, you remove the recording from the equation. The publisher's permission is still needed, but it's one negotiation instead of two. See sampling vs interpolation.
- Use cleared material. Beats built on pre-cleared samples can be sold without any of the above.
Building beats on cleared samples
Soul Sample Club is a catalog of original soul compositions licensed for commercial use, including client work, so beats you build from them can be sold to artists and released. The one thing you can't do is sell the samples themselves as standalone files. They have to be part of your production.
