Glossary · Licensing
Beat lease
A beat lease is a non-exclusive licence to use a producer's instrumental, sold at a low price with defined limits on streams, sales, video views and term. The producer keeps ownership and can lease the same beat to other artists.
Beat leasing is the standard way instrumentals are sold online. The producer keeps the beat, keeps selling it, and grants each buyer a non-exclusive licence defined by a set of caps: a maximum number of streams, a maximum number of units sold, a maximum number of music video views, a term of years, and usually a required production credit. Higher-priced tiers raise the caps and add file quality — MP3 at the bottom, WAV, then trackout stems.
Two things about a lease surprise artists after the fact. First, the caps are real. Exceed the stream limit and you are supposed to upgrade the licence, and licences typically expire, which means a track that keeps earning may need re-licensing. Second, the composition question is usually left unresolved. Most lease agreements grant the right to use the recording of the beat and say little or nothing about the songwriting share in the underlying composition, which means the producer may remain a co-writer collecting through The MLC and ASCAP or BMI regardless of the licence fee you paid.
Content ID adds another layer. Many producers register their own instrumentals with YouTube Content ID, so a video using a leased beat can attract a claim even though the lease is valid. Whether that is resolvable depends on what the licence says about video monetisation.
The misunderstanding, and it is universal: "I bought the beat." A lease is a rental of permission with limits and an expiry. If you want the beat withdrawn from sale and the composition settled, you need an exclusive agreement that says so in writing.
Read the licence PDF before you buy. Producer's advice, not legal advice.
Related terms
- Exclusive beat agreementAn exclusive beat agreement is a contract in which a producer stops licensing an instrumental to anyone else and grants it to a…
- Non-exclusive licenseA non-exclusive license grants permission to use a work while leaving the owner free to grant the same permission to anyone else.
- Producer pointsProducer points are a producer's percentage share of the sound recording's income, expressed in points where one point equals one…
- Songwriter splitA songwriter split is each writer's percentage ownership of a musical composition.
Definitions on this site describe the United States system. I am an artist who has been through this, not a lawyer.
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