This seller guidebook contains all the essential information that you need to know in order to make good use of the Beat Brokerz platform. It covers many topics, some related to the music business in general and some related specifically to Beat Brokerz features. We recommend you take a few minutes to browse the topics in order to get a clear understanding of all the opportunities that are available to you.
Welcome to Beat Brokerz! We will help you along with your beats business and provide all of the assistance you need to maintain it in a professional way. If you're committed to a career in this industry, then we are committed to helping you make it a successful one!
We pay out sales commissions on an automatic schedule as detailed on our fees & commissions page. Currently, all payments are sent out via PayPal masspay. This means that you need to keep a current PayPal email address on file with us where you would like to receive those payments.
Note: If you are unfamiliar with how PayPal works, it's very simple... you create an account at PayPal with your email address, enter your bank information, and Paypal will transfer your earnings directly into your bank account. For more information, read the article: How do I get paid? on Paypal.
By law, we are also required to collect certain personal information from our sellers for tax reporting purposes. If you do not wish to claim your earnings using your social security ID, you may choose to apply for a Tax ID for your business with the IRS. Either way, we need to collect this tax information from you.
Note: This information only applies to sellers within the United States.
The Beat Brokerz charts are the primary and most obvious way for buyers to begin exploring beats on our site, and get "recommendations" as to what's new and what's trending in the market. It's the first, and most effective line of promotion that we have for beats. Therefore, many of our promotional packages are centered around it.
The primary role of our charts is to "suggest" beats to buyers, in the form of ranked lists, being driven by the marketing value of those beats. In other words, we try to suggest beats to buyers that have the best opportunity to sell.
Firstly, all of our primary charts are designed to expose a beat from every active producer on our site before we begin to rank multiple beats from any single producer. This helps us to maximize the exposure of our whole producer base to our buying audience. It also helps producers to maintain a high ranking beat in the charts.
Secondly, every sub-genre chart on the site will contain a different set of top ranking beats which does not overlap with any other chart in the system (including the main chart). Again... for the purpose of exposure.
When it comes to the actual ranking of a beat, we consider many factors which lend to it's "marketing value". Our goal is to evaluate each beat in our system based on it's earning potential. Like any good broker, we want to recommend to buyers the most valuable products first. So we look at some general signals in order of importance.
Of course, we can't give away the exact details of how we calculate our rankings since it's sort of a trade secret. But we can at least guide you in how it all comes together.
There is no better indicator that a piece of music has the potential to sell, than if somebody buys it! Of course, how frequently it gets sold, how many different people it goes out to, and how much it sells for are also all important indicators.
Some producers sell on other platforms as well as Beat Brokerz, which is fine with us. But if you decide to funnel your sales through your Beat Brokerz store, then there may be some excellent chart ranking benefits for you which just might improve your sales even further. We're just saying...
When you run feature promotions on a piece of your music on Beat Brokerz, we recognize your investment into your music as a strong indicator that it has earning potential. Otherwise, why would you be paying to promote it... right?
When we rank beats, we look at how much has been invested into them recently in the form of feature promotions. So besides the benefit of the feature itself, running a feature promotion(s) on your beats gives extra ranking power in the charts for days to come.
Another way we analyze marketing value of music, is by the way people interact with it. Watching the patterns of how people interact with your music gives us a better idea of how engaging it is. It's no secret to us that engagement is a metric which may not have a specific dollar value, but it leads to future sales which definitely have a dollar value!
Encouraging people to interact with your music on Beat Brokerz will have a lasting effect on your rankings in our charts. Although engagement is not as powerful as sales and promotion, it provides a continual bump to your rankings across the board. Do you have your Facebook, Twitter, Soundclick, and other social accounts linked up yet? Hint. Hint.
Our assessment of producer reputation is mostly robotic. It mostly affects your producer ranking. We crunch a bunch of numbers and call it your "reputation". This number gives us an indicator as to the quality of your catalog as a whole. We look mainly at the number of beats you have available, the number of purchase options you offer, how many of your beats have high definition artwork (yeah, we're superficial), how many track outs you offer, if your beat descriptions are actually "descriptive", and if you offer discounts.
When you upload beats to your Beat Brokerz catalog, we require you to upload "tagged" versions of your music which will be streamed from the site and made available for free download. All music featured in the Beat Brokerz marketplace is available for free download.
Free downloads are your digital business card. It's true, some people may take your business card and pencil their name on it because they are too cheap to buy their own. But then, that's just one more person handing out your business card. Your goal is to get your business card into the hands of as many serious buyers as possible. When serious buyers show up, do you really want them going home without your business card?
We recommend you render your tagged mp3's at a reduced quality bit-rate which will make it unsuitable for production use, and make sure to record your producer name prominently and regularly over the track as a watermark.
Subscription fees allow us to service your account and customers with high end servers, distribution, product support, and also help protect your business assets with legal services and fraud prevention monitoring. We enjoy servicing all producers, but having a paid account shows that you are taking your business seriously and we reward that investment by ranking your music higher in our charts and listings.
We also take commissions on sales to cover transaction fees and marketing dollars spent to bring buyers to Beat Brokerz to buy beats. Marketing costs are the primary basis for our commission structure. If we acquire the customer for you, we keep a standard commission to cover those costs and keep the business profitable. If you acquire the customer yourself and we just administrate the deal, then we keep a substantially smaller commission on the order just to cover transaction fees and escrow administration.
It's pretty straightforward, we track your own marketing efforts that you've paid or worked for yourself through your own channels when you deploy a flex app, promote your brand page, or operate your own website. Anytime business is conducted via your own channels, our commission on those sales drops substantially. In principle, we expect a certain portion of every sale is attributed to "marketing costs". If you paid for that marketing, that portion should go to you; If we paid for it, it should go to us.
The profitable commission that we keep from any particular sale (typically less than 15%) is how we keep Beat Brokerz in the black.
For a specific breakdown of our commission structure, visit our fees & commissions page.
We know you're ready to start uploading music and breaking out in the marketplace, and we want to help you do that as quickly as possible.
A large part of your success will be attributed to how well you prepare yourself for it. Setting up your Beat Brokerz account properly is one of those preparations. In other words, the more attention you pay to the presentation of your business, the more attention (and eventually money) that buyers will pay to you.
Note: “Less than complete” profiles will surely receive “less than maximum” results. We recommend you complete each section of your Beat Brokerz profile as soon as possible after starting your membership. Each section is used in different capacities for presenting and marketing your music in the marketplace.
Your Beat Brokerz producer profile will receive traffic from Google searches, site searches, various promotions, charts placements, and other sources. The more complete you make it, the better your results will be.
Your producer profile encompasses the core elements that drive your business. We collect information about your branding, music affiliations, contact details, and other preferences. It is important that you complete this information fully and accurately.
Note: Your producer profile needs to be setup before your music will even be published in our marketplace.
- Hover or Click Your Username (top of page)
- Click “Edit Account”
- Click “Producer Profile”
Soundclick is a music charts site which is an alternate stomping ground for producers who have established themselves online. Although Soundclick is not built as a music licensing platform and does not offer any of the business tools that you will find on Beat Brokerz, we recognize the value of the exposure and engagement that producers receive from an active presence in the charts there. With our easy integration method, we'll help you keep the business end of things tidy and professional.
If you haven't already, we encourage you to create a VIP account at Soundclick to promote your brand. When you go this route, you'll also want to invest into a custom layout for your page, which will be used on both Beat Brokerz and on Soundclick to promote your brand.
We provide additional services to producers who verify their Soundclick account and link it with their Beat Brokerz account (such as automatic beat imports and additional promotional services). In order to verify your Soundclick account, you'll need to put some custom html and css codes on your soundclick page which will allow us to ensure you are the owner of the account and synchronize your services.
After you've placed the custom html and css codes on your Soundclick page, you'll need to enter the numeric portion of your Soundclick band ID into the appropriate field in your Beat Brokerz soundclick profile and save it.
Once your Soundclick account is verified and linked to Beat Brokerz, we are able to synchronize/import music between your catalog on Soundclick and your catalog on Beat Brokerz. You can directly import beats from your inventory management page on Beat Brokerz.
When your catalogs are synchronized between the platforms, meaning your beats on Beat Brokerz are correctly associated with your beats on Soundclick via their song ID for your verified account, then we can accurately promote links to your Soundclick beats as an added benefit when you purchase promotions on Beat Brokerz.
Go To PromotionsBeat Brokerz will help you to keep your business activity connected through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (among others). If you don't currently maintain any social accounts from these services, we suggest you consider the benefits that these services offer for growing your fan/follower base.
When we market your beats, we offer your listeners and buyers the opportunity to connect with you on any of your available social channels. The idea is to create loyal and connected customers. Also, growing your fan base and followers is a great way to build name recognition in the industry. Enter the links to your social accounts in your producer profile and we'll use them in various capacities.
We offer an easy way to connect your Beat Brokerz account with your Twitter accounts (which could be more than one). When you connect a Twitter account, you can have tweets automatically posted to your Twitter stream when you make additions or updates to your inventory, or when you earn new achievements on Beat Brokerz. This is a quick and easy way to push additional relevant tweets out to your followers regarding your music.
- Hover or Click Your Username (top of page)
- Click “Edit Account”
- Click “Twitter Connect"
Much like the Twitter integration, if you connect your Facebook account with your Beat Brokerz account, we can keep your Facebook friends up to date with what's going on with your catalog. When you add new beats or earn new awards or achievements, we can push a friendly message out to your Facebook wall to let people know.
Beat Brokerz also uses Facebook connect technology which allows you to authenticate (log in) to Beat Brokerz automatically when you are logged in to Facebook. Generally, logged in sessions on Beat Brokerz expire after a couple of hours of inactivity (for security reasons). But if you stay logged in to Facebook, we'll detect this and log you back in to Beat Brokerz whenever you come back.
- Hover or Click Your Username (top of page)
- Click “Edit Account”
- Click “Facebook Connect”
Once you've properly completed your account setup and profile configurations, uploading your music and keeping your catalog accurate should be your top priority. Your music may speak for itself, but the top earners take the time to make sure their music is dressed for success.
Your seller dashboard is a command center for your beats business. You have easy access to account assets, subscriptions, balances, and engagement metrics. Your dashboard page is where you land immediately after logging in to the system.
Search for help on any topic in our integrated help center. Documentation, interface tours, and live task walkthroughs can all be launched on demand!
Your user activity badge indicates when you have unread system notifications. You can also see a history of recent emails which have been sent to you via the Beat Brokerz platform, and a list of account advisories which will help you complete essential tasks.
Click your account username to access the links to all of your public facing platform pages (such as your beat catalog, brand page, music app, producer profile, etc).
Your membership status indicates the type of seller account you are currently subscribed to, and when your subscription is set to expire. If your subscription is setup through Paypal, renewal payments are automatically processed a few days before your expiration and your new expiration date is updated accordingly.
Your account balance shows the total amount of money due to you for sales and affiliate commissions. We also show you the next date that we'll be sending a payment to you based on the type of account subscription you have. Due to our payment policy, your full account balance may be split across multiple future payment dates.
For a detailed breakdown of past payments, account balances, and upcoming payment dates, click the "Next Payday" link.
Your current points balance is the amount of promo points that are available to you in your account. Promo points are used to buy site promotions on Beat Brokerz.
If you have a positive account balance, you may be able to exchange a portion of your balance for points at a special discounted rate. You'll see a icon by your points balance when this offer is available.
Incoming offers are custom offer negotiations that you currently have open with potential buyers. If you have any open offers that need your review, you will have an indicator of the number of offers which need your attention.
Each membership plan has it's own inventory limit associated with it. Your music inventory dashboard display shows a quick count of how many inventory beats you currently have, and what your current total limit is.
You can immediately see which of your beats is top ranked in the Beat Brokerz charts, and what rank it is. If you have your Soundclick page verified, you'll also see which of your beats is top ranked in the Soundclick charts also. See the section on your Soundclick Profile for more information about verifying your account.
Occasionally, you'll see your beat ranked differently in the charts than what is shown on your dashboard. For example, you might be showing at #25 on the dashboard, but showing #24 in the charts. This can happens if beats are removed from the charts for reasons such as the beat being sold exclusively, or the author removing it from the system.
The activity overview consists of aggregate statistics regarding the total amount of page views, visits, unique visitors, plays, etc, that you have received across all of your channels for the selected time period.
You'll see the following stats where they apply.
The activity breakdown shows all of your engagement statistics broken down by individual channel. Everything that happens on the Beat Brokerz platform which is not directly a result of your own promotional efforts is grouped together and reported separately from activity that is a result of your own promotional efforts. This way you can easily see the difference between what Beat Brokerz does for you, and what you do for yourself.
The trending charts give you a running look at your recent history of engagement stats (plays, downloads, etc), and chart positions.
Review the complete history of your buyer orders with easy search and sort lookup.
Manage your music catalog and publishing statuses from your dashboard.
Your customer list provides up to date contact information and recent order details for all your licensees.
Use a flex app to combine your own music with music from other producers on the Beat Brokerz platform and deploy it to websites and mobile apps, or use the instant hosted solutions from Beat Brokerz.
When artists make you offers to buy your music, you get a complete birds eye view of all your negotiations from your dashboard.
For paid producer accounts, an unlimited number of custom licenses can be created to sell your music any way you want.
You can create both public and private discounts to upsale your catalog and assist your own promotional efforts.
Make bids on site promotions to improve the ranking of your music in the Beat Brokerz charts and increase your opportunity for sales.
Add and remove beats from your customized affiliate catalog and favorites lists which can be featured in your own flex apps.
Also, each of the widgets on your dashboard can be individually customized and tailored in a number of ways!
In order to add a new beat to your inventory, you need to upload the tagged version of your music, the untagged version (which will be delivered after purchase), and a teaser image. Make sure these items are prepared before you begin the process. You will also need to provide various "classification" details about your beat in order to correctly categorize your music.
Once a beat is added to your inventory, you can then configure advanced options for the beat such as what purchase options are available, and which delivery files should be delivered with various licenses.
Procedure
- Hover or Click Your Username (top of page)
- Click “Seller Center”
- Click “Music Inventory”
- Click “Upload A Beat”
Click the browse button and select the tagged version of your beat from your filesystem to upload. After you've selected the tagged beat from your drive, click the upload button to upload it.
Click the browse button and select the untagged version of your beat from your filesystem to upload. This file will be delivered when the beat is purchased. After you've selected the production quality/untagged beat from your drive, click the upload button to upload it.
Click the browse button and select the teaser image that should go with this beat. Teaser images should be the same width and height, and also need to be a minimum of 250 pixels wide/tall. After you've selected the beat teaser image from your drive, click the upload button to upload it.
Enter a descriptive title for your beat. We have some helpful recommendations in the music presentation section of our guidebook.
Enter a complete description of your music composition (what inspired it, what components does it include, what makes it special, etc). We have some more helpful recommendations in the music presentation section of our guidebook.
Click the "classification details" step to enter classification details for your beat which include the musical genres, instrumentation, hook info, mood, and more.
Select up to 2 beat genres which best describe the musical style of this beat.
Use the free keyword tagging feature to add your own keywords to the beat which help describe the music. Enter one descriptive tag at a time and hit the enter key, or click the icon to apply the tag.
Select the most appropriate tempo specification for your beat.
Choose up to 6 distinctive instruments that describe the core sound of your beat.
Choose up to 4 effects. Some beats may feature more than 4 of these effects to one degree or another, so choose the effects that are used the most.
If you have a hook available for the beat, choose which characteristics best describe the performance of the hook.
This field is optional. If you have a hook on your beat, describe the mood of the hook. Otherwise, you can indicate if your sound has a specific mood that it complements.
You should indicate in step 3 of the beat setup whether you have previously registered this music with a peformance rights organization, and if there are any other authors who should receive credits on the beat.
A purchase option is simply a combination of (license terms + price + delivery files).
Setting purchase options for your beats allows you to offer multiple licenses, files, and prices for buyers to choose from. By default, every new beat you list for sale will have a pre-defined set of purchase options enabled. These purchase options default to the Beat Brokerz "standard" terms.
When you decide to modify the purchase options for a beat listed in your beat store, you have the ability to assign custom license terms to each purchase option, and modify individual prices for each purchase option.
Check the box by any purchase option that you want to be available for the beat. Each purchase option will have it's own price and set of licensing terms chosen.
Whichever purchase option that you select as "default" will be the first purchase option suggested to buyers when they browse your beat. We recommend you follow our license suggestion strategy.
Configure a purchase price of no less than $10.00 for each of your enabled purchase options.
Finally, you can choose between the default Beat Brokerz licensing terms or your own custom license terms for each purchase option.
We require you to upload at least one untagged delivery file as a bare minimum for every beat, however, you may upload more than one version for different purchase options. For example, you can upload a version with and without a hook, or a track separated version which can be used for mixing and mastering.
When you upload a new file for delivery to any of your beats it will be delivered with ALL purchase options by default. If you want to it to be delivered with only specific purchase options, you must uncheck "All Licenses" and check only the specific purchase options from the list that you want your file to be delivered with.
You can hide a beat from your music catalog and remove the ability for customers to purchase it without actually deleting the item from your inventory. When an exclusive license is sold for a piece of music, it is unpublished automatically. If you sell an exclusive license offsite, you will need to manually unpublish your beat.
Similarly, if the exclusive conditions of a beat have been satisfied, you may want to re-list the music for sale by publishing the beat again. Any beat that has been unpublished/published will still receive charts benefits from it's prior sales history.
Procedure
- Hover or Click Your Username (top of page)
- Click “Seller Center”
- Click “Beats Inventory”
- Click “Edit” next to the appropriate beat in your inventory.
- Scroll down the edit screen and click the "Publishing" side tab.
- Uncheck the "Published" checkbox to unpublish, Check it to republish.
- Click "Save" at the bottom of the page.
Any given beat from your catalog can be "retired" from the Beat Brokerz charts. When you "retire" a beat from the charts, then it will not be chosen for any of the top charts listings, and another one of your beat from your catalog which has not been retired will be promoted as the top ranking beat.
You can remove a beat from your inventory entirely, which will delete any associated audio and listing details from the system permanently. Once a beat is deleted, it cannot be republished unless you add the beat to your inventory again from scratch. Once a beat is deleted from the system, and you choose to add it again, it will no longer receive any charts benefit from prior sales history.
Procedure
- Hover or Click Your Username (top of page)
- Click “Seller Center”
- Click “Beats Inventory”
- Click “Delete” next to the appropriate beat in your inventory.
You will find a running list of orders processed for your music in your seller center. Each order entry will include the order number, date of order, music licensed, your total earnings, and the order status. Order statuses are color coded for your convenience.
Color Code | Description |
---|---|
Green | Product delivered, licenses issued, order completed. |
Orange | Order not fully processed, licenses not yet valid. |
Red | The order has been canceled and any licenses revoked. |
The actual status of each order can vary, depending on what stage of processing the order is in. Typically, orders will be color coded green and completed immediately after checkout, however, there are certain cases where we may need to delay processing of the order due to fraud prevention filters, payment holds, etc. In these special circumstances, we'll post notes to the order as information becomes available.
- Hover or Click Your Username (top of page)
- Click “Seller Center”
- Click “Buyer Orders”
Click the icon to view the details of the order including: customer info, order comments, licenses issued, payments collected, and communication options.
As part of our privacy policy extended to buyers, and to protect customers from having their email address repeatedly added to mailing lists from placing an order in our marketplace, we do not include their email address in the order details. If you need to contact the buyer after a sale, you can phone them directly or optionally use the built in order update form which will send them an email.
In many cases, you may see the notes on the order indicate that we received a payment which was some amount larger than the total price of your beats on the order. This would be because there were other beats on the order from other producers. We only show the beats that belong to you in your order details.
Sales reports are available in your seller center. We provide overview reports on your seller dashboard, and detailed monthly breakdown data as well. The reported dollar amounts on all sales reports reflect your actual earnings after our fees are deducted. This makes your reports accurate for tax reporting and actual income purposes.
- Hover or Click Your Username (top of page)
- Click "Seller Center"
Your seller center dashboard consists of a few charts and graphs that provide recent history sales summary information.
The monthly sales breakdown shows line item sales data for every month of the current year. You can also select previous years to view reporting data for. Each yearly report can also be exported to an Excel spreadsheet by clicking the "Export to CSV" button at the bottom of the report table.
Beat Brokerz allows you to create your own custom licenses without writing legal contracts. You only need to configure the primary usage limits, and we write the legalese for each of your agreements.
If you do not set up any “custom licenses” to use for the sale of your beats, then they will automatically fall under our default “standard” license terms which are designed to be sufficient for general purposes. The point here is that you have the flexibility to sell your beats however you like.
Note: Pricing is not tied to your custom licenses. Custom licenses are merely terms that you and the buyer agree to abide. The price that the license is sold for is set individually for each beat to allow for discounting or other pricing variations per beat. The price that the customer pays and the agreement terms are together called “purchase options”.
To create a custom license (set of terms) to use for your purchase options:
Once you have created a custom license, you'll be able to “assign it” to purchase options when you set up each of your beats. In this way, you are able to sell your beats at any price and with any terms you feel appropriate.
There are a number of different rights assignments that can be customized for each of your licensing agreements. You'll want to understand how to use each of them and how they impact your earning potential in this music business.
One of the ways that you can customize the licensing terms for your music is by specifying a "Royalty Rate".
When selling a license through Beat Brokerz, the royalty rate can be set anywhere between 0 and 100%. As outlined in the Beat Brokerz licensing agreement, the royalty rate is the percentage of royalties you'll be entitled to collect after any "free copies" you've allowed in the license have been exhausted.
When you sell a license with a Royalty Rate under 100%, that means that if the song were to generate mechanical royalties, such as if it were to be sold for more copies than your allowed "free copies", then the royalties due to you would be less than the full amount allowed by law.
So, a Royalty Rate of 50% would mean that a record company selling a ton of copies of music that uses your beat, would only have to pay you 50% of the standard royalties that would be due to you, (since the license you issued them only obligates them to pay 50% of your due royalties).
Similarly, if you issue a license with a "Royalty Rate: Free" (0%) term, that's even worse, since that means that no royalties would ever need to be paid to you for any amount of copies sold.
Typically, you want to leave this rate at 100% ALWAYS. You can increase the amount of "free copies" that your customer can sell to make the license more attractive, but leave your earning potential intact in case the music becomes a hit, or ends up selling a ton of copies.
If you're making a deal with a bonified record label or an established artist, sometimes, the only way to get them to include your music on an album would be to offer them a reduced royalty rate. Which is why we have the royalty rate as a negotiation point. But in that case, you know that you will be receiving a significant amount of royalties already on the backend, and who will be paying them.
Bottom line, leave your royalty rate at 100% whenever possible unless you know what you're getting yourself into.
The primary motivation for buyers to purchase your music is for the right to use that music to make a profit. You can offer them a certain amount of "free" copies to be sold or distributed without the requirement to pay royalties to you.
When selling a license through Beat Brokerz, the "Royalty Free Copies" amount can be set anywhere between 0 and Unlimited. As outlined in the Beat Brokerz licensing agreement, the licensee is permitted to sell or give away an amount of copies up to this limit without the obligation to pay any royalties on those copies.
When you sell a license with a 2,000 Royalty Free Copies limit, this means that the buyer will be able to record and distribute 2,000 copies of his music without the need to pay you any royalties. This copies limit includes all copies distributed, whether they were given away as promotion, or actually sold. So if the artist is offering the music for download on a website, whether paid or not, this limit would be exhausted after 2000 downloads.
After the royalty free copies limit has been exhausted, that does not mean that the buyer has to stop selling or distributing the music, it only means that they are legally obligated to account for and pay royalties on those distributed copies.
Tracking down and getting your licensees to pay royalties could prove to be a difficult task and may not even be worth it in most cases, so a healthy royalty free allowance on your license in exchange for a little more up front cash may be an acceptable compromise for you.
At the time of this writing, the statutory royalty rate for mechanical licensing is 9.1 cents per copy. If you sell a license for 5,000 royalty free copies at a price of $65.00, it's like the customer is paying you up front for the sale of those first 5000 copies at a rate of 1.3 cents per copy.
It's pretty common for a producer to settle for a reduced royalty rate on a certain amount of copies for up front cash, while still retaining earning potential if the music was ever to sell past that limit.
Whenever you license your music with a royalty free copies allowance, there is the question of how long the licensee will have to distribute those copies. Enter the "Royalty Free Term". This license condition regulates the amount of time that the buyer has to take advantage of the royalty free benefits. Generally, you'll want to allow your licensee's at least 12 months to distribute their music for free, but allowing an even more generous "royalty free term" can provide extra value to your licenses without a significant risk to your earning potential.
If you've allowed 2,000 royalty free copies on your license, and a royalty free term of 12 months, this means that your licensee is liable to begin paying royalties to you either immediately after they've distributed 2000 copies, or after 12 months have elapsed, whichever comes first.
The royalty free term on any given license should correlate to the amount of free copies allowed. The more royalty free copies that you grant your buyer, it stands to reason that they should have more time to take advantage of that allowance. It's up to you to decide what is reasonable for each given license, but 1 million free copies allowed is not much of a benefit if you only have 1 month to distribute them.
Whenever you license your music with a royalty free copies allowance which is limited by a royalty free term, there is the issue of when the royalty free term begins. Technically, the royalty free term begins as soon as the license is issued, which is at the moment the artists buys the beat. This poses a problem for the artist because they still need to record the music, master the music, and release the music which takes time.
The grace period is a licensing option which allows the artist, well... a "grace period" to perform the previously mentioned tasks. It sets up the license so that the royalty free term doesn't begin immediately, but rather after the music is officially released, or after the grace period expires, whichever comes first. This allows the artist to take advantage of the full royalty free term that is allowed by the license.
If you're including royalty free copies with a royalty free term in your license, it's a good idea to allow the artist at least a few months "grace period" to release the music. Unlike the royalty free term (which should typically increase proportionately with the royalty free copies limit), the grace period is a timeframe which doesn't need to vary widely across your licensing scheme.
Tip: You don't need to get too generous with your grace period, as it's a courtesy to your buyer and asking them to release the music sooner than later is a reasonable request.
Exclusive licensing is a commonly misunderstood (and mishandled) arrangement for producers who are inexperienced in the music business. Some producers even have contracts with verbiage (likely that they wrote themselves) that state that they're passing all rights for the music over to the buyer, which is a re-assignment of copyright. This would be a mistake.
Important: Selling an exclusive, and selling your copyright are two entirely different things. If you sell your copyright, you are also selling your right to ever collect another dime on that music ever again. I doubt that's what you want to do.
Selling an exclusive (at least on Beat Brokerz) means that you are granting the licensee the right to record and release their music before you license that music out to anybody else, which means that the beat is "exclusive" to them during that period. It does not mean by any means that they become the "exclusive" owner of that music.
An exclusive license is an assurance to the buyer that nobody will release a song on that beat while they are working on releasing theirs. Therefore, an "exclusive" is a protected period of time that is promised, not an assignment of rights. And you can begin licensing the music again after the exclusive period ends, or the licensee releases their music.
By granting an "exclusive" license period to a buyer, you will be giving up your licensing revenue on that music for the exclusive period, or until the artist releases their music, whichever comes first. When you price your exclusive licenses, take that into consideration based on how much you would expect that beat to earn if you hadn't licensed it exclusively. But remember, it's not like you'll never be able to license that music again.
Also, if you're working out a deal with an established artist who you know will be pushing a lot of copies, you might need to use the exclusive period to close the deal while still charging a small(ish) licensing fee because you expect that there will be significant royalties generated on it over the long term.
Offering sale prices and discounts are a staple for successful business growth. That's why we encourage all of our producers to offer a few purchase incentives for buyers in the form of discounts and special offers. At Beat Brokerz, we provide flexible configuration options for your discounts so that you can be creative with your promotional offers.
Public discounts have the potential to be advertised throughout our marketplace and in your catalog. They are automatically applied to buyers orders when your qualifications have been met. We present your automatic discounts forefront to help you up-sell your orders and offer buyers extra incentive to add more beats to their order.
To help your buyers understand the technicalities of qualifying for your discounts, we automatically include a “How It Works” laymens terms break down with your advertised discounts. This way you can optimize your description to "sell" the discount, while we will explain to them exactly what they must do to "get" the discount.
Coded discounts are NOT advertised in the marketplace. You can add codes to your promotions that the buyer will need to enter during checkout in order to activate the discount. Use coded discounts to offer private promotional deals and inside track incentives.
Tip: After you've created new discounts in the system, we recommend you test them out by adding your own beats to the shopping cart to make sure that it works as you expect.
When it comes to configuring new discounts, there are a only a few basic configuration options that are needed to activate the discount. But there are also a series of advanced configuration options that can be used to target very specific orders and promotional uses.
The first set of configuration options set up how an order will qualify for your discount. The settings here are pretty self explanatory with a single caveat.
If you are going to be setting up a discount where you give away free beats after the customer adds a certain number of beats to their order, you will want to set the qualification amount to include the free beats. For example, if you want to set up a buy one get one free scenario, you'll be giving away 1 free beat; but you only want to give away the free beat when the customer has 2 beats in their cart. Therefore, you'll set the qualification amount to 2.
The maximum qualifying amount is an optional setting which provides a more fine grained control over your discount. It can be used to set up your discount to only apply to orders within a specific range. For example, you may decide to run a promotion where you offer a 10% discount on orders under $50. In this case, you'll want to set your maximum qualifying amount to $50 so that it doesn't apply to orders that exceed that amount.
The second set of configuration options set up the actual discount that will be given to orders which have been qualified for the discount. The settings here are self explanatory, however, if you are setting up a buy one get one free type of scenario, make sure you have included the free beat in the amount set up in step 1.
The presentation of your discount plays a role in it's effectiveness. All discounts carry the benefit of saving buyers money, but the title and description you give to them can help to draw attention and make them feel more attractive. Your buy one get one free discount may be the exact same as someone else's, but a little creative distinction may give you a competitive edge when it comes to selling.
There are a series of advanced options available to you that provide additional control over how buyers are able to interact with your promotions.
You can add discount codes to your discount. When you use discount codes, the discount will not be promoted publicly in the marketplace or in your catalog. Buyers will need to enter the code during checkout in order to receive the discount (assuming the order qualifies based on the settings you set in Step 1). You can send the discount codes out with other promotional efforts to encourage social followers and subscribers.
Another advanced configuration feature of your discounts is the cumulative discount setting. When you configure "cumulative discounts", they can apply to orders on top of each other. Typically, we only qualify orders for your most relevant discount, and then ignore any lesser ones that the order may qualify for. For example, if you have a discount of $5 for orders over $50, and another discount for $15 off orders over $100; if a customer buys $120 worth of beats, we will qualify the order for the $15 discount only, even though it also qualifies for the $5 discount. If you wanted the buyer to receive both discounts for a total discount of $20, you'll need to set both discounts to be "cumulative discounts".
Using advanced configuration, you can limit your discount to specific license types in your catalog. This gives you the flexibility to promote (or target) specific types of purchases with your discount. For example, you might want to provide a $5 discount to buyers who purchase 2 of your basic licenses, but a $15 discount to buyers who purchase 2 of your premium licenses. To accomplish this, you'll want to set up two separate discounts, one of which targets basic licenses, and the other which targets premium licenses.
A single discount has the potential to apply multiple times in a single order. Such as the case of buy one get one free, when the buyer adds 4 beats to their order. Technically, the first two beats qualify for buy one get one free, and then the second two beats qualify for the same discount a second time. With the "max uses per order" advanced setting, you can control how many times the discount will apply to a single order. In the example just given, if you set the max uses to 1, only the first set of two beats would qualify for the buy one get one free, while the third and fourth beats would still be sold at full price.
Due to the flexibility of the Beat Brokerz discounts you can create, there may be circumstances where you have multiple discounts which could be applied to an order. As we mentioned previously, our system will generally pick the most relevant discount automatically when this happens. But if you find yourself in one of those unique circumstances where you need to specifically control which discount we pick first to apply to orders, you can change the "discount weight" to force it to be qualified before others.
Discounts with lighter weights (smaller numbers) will be used first to discount orders if they qualify. Our recommendation is to leave this number at it's default value and let our system do the math automatically, unless you really need to override our logic.
You should understand a few things about licensing in order to make accurate business decisions regarding your music. How much you earn in the music business is dependent on the way you license out your music, and who you license it to.
Income for your music can be split into two categories: licensing fees, and royalties. Beat Brokerz is your vehicle to get placements and collect licensing fees.
In the music business, you make money by licensing your music, and the fee you collect is based on the budget and the needs of the music buyer. The principles are fairly simple: the more the buyer wants to do with the music, the higher the licensing fee should be. This makes sense, because a greater ability for the buyer to exploit your music for profit should also result in a greater upfront compensation (licensing fee) to you (the author).
Licensing fees are only one part of your potential income as a music producer. Royalties are how profit is split between contributing authors of a work after it has been licensed and exploited in the music business. The amount that each author is entitled to is based primarily on what was agreed to when the music was licensed.
There are basically two different types of royalties that you can earn as a music author.
The first type is called "mechanical royalties" in the music business. You earn mechanical royalties when your music is distributed for individual use (singles, albums, mp3 downloads, etc). The maximum amount an author can expect to get from each copy distributed would be what is called the "statutory rate" (9.1 cents at the time this was written), which happens to change from time to time as determined by the government. The person or company distributing the work (such as a record label) is responsible for accounting for how many copies they have distributed and paying out royalties to authors.
How "mechanical royalties" are addressed by your Beat Brokerz licenses.
When you set the "royalty rate" in the mechanicals section of your licensing terms, you are setting a percentage (between 0% and 100%) of the current full statutory rate that you agree the buyer will owe you for mechanical copies distributed. If you license your music at a 100% royalty rate, you'll be entitled to a full 9.1 cents per copy distributed of your music. If you license your music at a 50% royalty rate, you'll only be entitled to 4.55 cents per copy distributed.
The second type of royalties are called "performance royalties". You earn performance royalties when your music is performed for an audience (radio, internet streaming, live shows, jukeboxes, etc). The amount that you collect in each scenario will vary depending on how/where it was performed, and more importantly; if you have somebody to collect the royalties for you. Performance royalties are collected by PRO's (Performance Rights Organizations). Some notable ones are ASCAP, BMI, & SoundExchange. You must register your work with these organizations in order to have any hope of collecting performance royalties for your music, since they are set up to monitor and collect for these types of uses.
How "performance royalties" are addressed by your Beat Brokerz licenses.
Your right to collect performance royalties are always specifically preserved when you license your music through Beat Brokerz, regardless of what "royalty rate" you have agreed to. This is a key benefit of licensing your music through Beat Brokerz.
Beat Brokerz is built around the concept of "pre-approved" licensing, or purchase options. By defining a range of pre-approved licenses (terms and prices), you make your music instantly available for purchase by the most common types of music buyers. Think of it like placing a pre-packaged product on your shelf that buyers can purchase without a negotiation. If you have a pre-packaged product that fits the buyer's needs, they can simply pay the asking price and instantly get the music + license without any hassle.
On the flip side, buyers that need to license your music for uses that aren't addressed (covered) by your pre-approved licenses will have the opportunity to negotiate a customized license with you through the Beat Brokerz "make an offer" system.
The following licenses are "default" for music licensed on Beat Brokerz. These terms represent the standard license agreements offered for music sold in the Beat Brokerz marketplace. With a paid membership, you can change these or create your own licensing terms.
Overview:
Record a single song ("master recording") on this beat. The first 2000 copies that you sell or give away in the first 12 months will be royalty free! If royalties become due, the author requests to receive the full current statuatory rate per unit. The author requests either an audible credit ("shout out") to be recorded on the completed song, or a written credit to be included in the title or credits section of the completed song.
No "exclusive use" warranties are granted by this license.
Overview:
Record a single song ("master recording") on this beat. The first 5000 copies that you sell or give away in the first 12 months will be royalty free! If royalties become due, the author requests to receive the full current statuatory rate per unit. The author requests a written credit to be included in the title or credits section of the completed song.
You are permitted to perform this music in a live show or concert. You are also permitted to receive radio play under the terms of this license.
Also, synchronize this composition in a Music Video, or YouTube Video with the right to broadcast it Worldwide for a period of 2 years.
No "exclusive use" warranties are granted by this license.
Overview:
Record a single song ("master recording") on this beat. The first 5000 copies that you sell or give away in the first 12 months will be royalty free! You will also have a 3 month grace period to release your song before the royalty free period begins. If royalties become due, the author agrees to a discounted royalty rate of 75% of the current statuatory rate per unit. The author requests a written credit to be included in the title or credits section of the completed song.
You are permitted to perform this music in a live show or concert. You are also permitted to receive radio play under the terms of this license.
Also, synchronize this composition in a Music Video, or YouTube Video with the right to broadcast it Worldwide for a period of 2 years.
By purchasing this license, the author warrants that no additional licenses will be issued for this composition, constituting "exclusive use", until you have released your first recording, or a period of 3 months have elapsed.
When a buyer has special requirements or needs that aren't addressed by any of your standard licenses, then it may be necessary for them to get special terms or pricing from you.
The Beat Brokerz "make an offer" system allows buyers to define their own licensing terms, and send them to you for approval. You have the opportunity to negotiate the terms + pricing, and issue custom licenses to buyers on an individual basis. For professionals, this negotiation process is an essential part of the music business which can determine whether you even have a shot at getting the business.
Each beat in your catalog that is available for purchase on Beat Brokerz, has a "Make An Offer" button associated with it. When the buyer clicks this button, they have the opportunity to create their own custom licensing terms (including a price) that they will send to you as a custom offer.
You will receive an account notification when you have a new offer which needs to be reviewed. Your responsibility as a seller is to log into your account, click the link to review the offer, and give your consideration to the buyer.
Note: The key points to examine for each offer are the specific terms that the buyer is requesting, the files that they are requesting to download, and the price that they are offering to pay. If the terms don't seem to fit the pricing, you will have the opportunity to change them before accepting the offer.
When the buyer submits an offer, part of their offer includes whether they require only the "mixed down" beat (such as mp3), or whether they require the track separated files "trackout". Regardless of which files they have selected, you are responsible for providing the music in the requested format if you accept the offer.
When you receive an offer (or an updated offer) from a potential buyer, you always have the opportunity to modify the pricing to match the terms or vice versa. When you choose to "offer new terms", you will change the offer in any way necessary so that it makes business sense. When you offer new terms to the buyer, the buyer will receive a notification and have the opportunity to purchase under the updated terms.
Of course, you may also communicate back and forth with the buyer in the form of "offer comments" in order to better assess the buyers needs before accepting the offer or offering new terms. This process is called the "negotiation process". It allows you and your buyer to come to an agreement before any transaction is made.
After you've reviewed an offer, in order to allow the buyer to purchase you must do one of two things:
If you don't accept the offer, or offer new terms to the buyer, the offer will sit for a maximum of one week without activity before it "expires". If after accepting the offer or offering new terms the buyer does not purchase within 5 days, the offer will also expire. Negotiation can be re-opened on an expired offer only by offering new terms.
Once you've accepted an offer, and the buyer has made the purchase transaction, the offer will be updated with the order information and permanently locked and archived. You can review it at any time, but no new negotiations or comments can be posted to it.
Sampling is one of the staples of hip hop music. Unfortunately, many producers don't understand (or sadly... don't care) when it's legal and when it's not. The truth is, a good sample can make your music sound great, and kill your chances of any real placements at the same time.
Whenever you create an original work, either music composition, lyrical content, or sound recording, you own an inherit copyright on that work. That means that if anybody wants to use what you've created in their own work (such as sampling), then they are obligated to get your permission (via a license) and typically pay you royalties on the backend. This is what is called "clearance".
It works the same way when you sample somebody else's work. When you take an audio sample of another recording, re-use a melody, or record another performance of existing lyrics, then you are obligated to get permission to do that and work out an agreement for paying royalties to the copyright owners of the work you borrowed.
It's illegal for an artist (or record label) to release music which contains samples that have not been cleared. For that reason, no serious music buyer will consider purchasing music which contains samples for the simple fact that they cannot release it! And if they do, they could be sued for damages by those who own the copyrights to the samples.
Even if a clearance has been obtained for samples on your beat which can be legally transferred to your buyers, serious music buyers are still on the hook for paying royalties to each sample owner (including you) after their music has been released. Each author with a copyright interest in the beat represents another hit to the artists bottom line. So unless you've got a cleared sample for a major artist (not typical), no record label (independent or major) is ever going to touch your beat.
The bread and butter of online sales are buyers that buy impulsively. If a buyer makes a decision to buy, you want to have something ready to sell them on the spot. These are the types of people who you will target with your pre-approved licenses. Typically, these types of buyers are concerned less with how tightly the license fits their needs, and more with how easily (and quickly) they can access the product.
A good pre-approved licensing strategy (such as the default Beat Brokerz licensing options), includes purchase options that appeal to a range of buyers.
Certain music buyers are only willing (or able) to pay a small fee, typically $25 or less to get the untagged version of your beat. We understand that your work is worth a whole lot more than $25. But the name of the game is to offer people something for $25 rather than offer them nothing at all. For this reason, we recommend a license with a basic right to use the music, and a simple high quality untagged MP3 download. Remember, this type of user is not going to be doing anything major with your music, but they are willing to put a little bit of money in your pocket anyway.
These buyers are more serious about their work than low budget buyers, and typically aren't motivated primarily by a tiny budget. They are willing to pay a premium price as long as they know their interests are well taken care of. We recommend a pre-approved license option with a mid-range price point (around $65.00), more generous rights, and the inclusion of WAV + Track Separated (trackout) files as a download format. Trackouts serve as an additional incentive for these buyers on top of the more generous licensing terms.
Occasionally, buyers come along who just absolutely fall in love with your music and want to take the beat off the market while they work on their project. These buyers are willing to spend more than the premium rate, and we suggest you give yourself the opportunity to make impulsive 3+ digit sales by offering a "limited time" exclusive option license for these buyers. Refer to our guidebook section on exclusives for more information on "limited exclusives". Besides this, a more expensive license option also serves another purpose in the sales strategy (outlined in the next section). So even if you don't want to offer an "exclusive" type pre-approved licensing option, we recommend you design some sort of higher end license.
Your default licensing option is like your "recommended license" to the buyer. We recommend you make your premium license the default recommended license. The reason for this is simple; buyers are more likely to purchase your "premium" rate license if it is suggested to them by default. Look at it this way... you want to make the buyer decide to buy your "cheaper" license rather than hoping that they decide to buy your "more expensive" license. Also, when given multiple options to buy, buyers that are not budget-restricted, (more often than not) make a choice that's not the cheapest, but not the most expensive either. So assuming you've offered at least one other "pre-approved" license above and below your suggested price point, you have set yourself up well to make the sale at your "premium" rate.
Licensing out your music is a contractual agreement. It's pretty safe to say that documenting the agreements you have with your buyers is an extremely important part of your business, and is the primary insurance policy you have on your music.
It's easy enough to write up a contract and send it out with your music as part of a transaction. But if push comes to shove and your music is being exploited for big money, what documentation do you really have? If you don't have a signed document, then the defense of your rights is effectively reduced to a "he said she said" argument. The honor system may be a good choice if you loan a power tool to a friend, but it's a poor choice for a business strategy.
Getting physical signatures in the "give it to me now" digital world can be a problem. That's why most producers (and sadly, most beat selling websites) ignore the problem completely. If you pull out an unsigned document and claim it's what a buyer agreed to, then the buyer can easily pull out their own unsigned document and claim the same thing. Who's telling the truth?
Beat Brokerz solves this problem by using digital signature technology and a public access verification system to document the agreement. It all happens instantly without any delay to the buyer, but provides the same comfort and protection of a physical signature without you lifting a finger.
When your music is licensed, a certificate is generated which contains the exact terms of the agreement between you and the buyer. This certificate is then signed by us digitally and sent out to both you and the customer. This certificate is your insurance receipt and documentation of the agreement.
The authenticity of the certificate can be verified at any time using our online verification tool. It can also be verified offline in the case of court litigation. If any of the terms in the certificate are altered, then the certificate will fail validation indicating that it's not the official agreement. It will also fail validation if the buyer did not complete payment under the agreement, or if the buyer is refunded or requests a chargeback.
The care you take in promotions and marketing will make the biggest difference in your ability to license music and make sales on a regular basis. Aside from learning the ropes about the Beat Brokerz licensing platform, a critical factor for success will be the attention you pay to the details in your presentation strategy. Having a well groomed presentation will set the stage for great business relations, while having a poorly presented or incomplete catalog will likely leave you behind the curve.
The quality of your catalog as a whole can be evaluated through the consideration of some key area guidelines. These guidelines are by no means definitive or all inclusive, but we have identified these areas as essential components of a professional appearance.
The more beats that you have uploaded to your catalog, the more beats that we can help you sell. But more than that, a complete catalog sends the message that you are professional and committed to the cause, and not just a hobbyist. Some producers only upload a few beats and then leave it at that for various reasons. If you have a lot of music available for licensing, it's worth the effort to get it all cataloged on Beat Brokerz. We understand that you might have more than just a few beats under your belt, but there is not much we can do about the fact that making more money generally requires making more effort. Even so, we've managed to relieve the burden quite a bit with our beat import features available in your seller account.
The completeness of the details you provide for every beat play a bigger role than you might think.
The images you associate with your beats gives them individual identity and also conveys a lot of information related to your beat in just a glance. Hence the old adage, "a picture is worth a thousand words". One common mistake we hate to see is when producers don't put in an effort in to pick an appropriate graphic for each of their beats; and instead use a generic graphic for every beat in their catalog. Artists browsing your catalog cannot glean any useful contextual information about your beats by glancing at the images, and visually your catalog just looks boring. And the last thing you want a potential buyer to think when they hit your catalog is that your music is boring.
Beyond selecting a unique and descriptive image for your beat, it's important that you attach a high quality (high resolution) image so that it can look good at different sizes. All beat images on Beat Brokerz are displayed at a 1:1 ratio (square), and we recommend you upload images that are a minimum of 250 pixels wide and 250 pixels tall. Following this guideline is yet another detail which can either help your music to stand out as professional, or fall into the background as amateur.
Naming beats is an underestimated form of art. A good beat title can help sell a beat, while a poor beat title can do absolutely nothing for your music, or even worse, make it seem like an after school project. While we cannot give you the intuition to master this art, we can at least provide you with a few tips on what makes a good beat title and what makes a poor one.
The description you give to each of your beats is yet another underestimated sales tool for your music. A beat description will give your music extra character and identity. Many producers, including seasoned ones, elect to skip the effort of writing some sort of individual beat description for each of their beats, but this is a mistake.
An example of a poor beat description is leaving contact details on how to contact you for more information. This does not help an artist to settle on "owning" your beat and therefore does not help you sell it. It is simply a space filler. Is your music just a space filler too, or does it actually mean something?
Your beats are like your babies. You created them and you have poured your heart and soul into them. At least, that's what a beat description should convey to the artist. A short paragraph, a short story, a short essay, or a small book, it's up to you; but the idea is to give some depth and character to your music. Describe what you accomplished with this beat, or what inspired you to create it, or just any reason why it's special.
When you provide a thoughtful description to your beats, artists will remember it and it will make them feel smart if they can share it. An artists music is personal to them, and if they know that the music is personal to you also, it can help them connect to the beat and the song will have a complete back-story. Taking the time to write a thoughtful and beat specific description takes extra time, but who do you know that's successful and put in a minimum effort?
This should go without saying, but a complete classification of your music makes it much more attractive than a missing or incomplete classification. Classification of your music includes indicating the proper genres, instrumentation, mood selection, effects tags, and free tags. The more information that you provide, the more ways that artists will be able to find it and the more "substantial" the music will feel when viewed.
At Beat Brokerz, our goal is to put your music in as many artists hands as possible to give you the best chance for sales and placements. However, we would never stoop so low as to pimp your music out and call it "digital distribution".
We feel it's our duty to warn you about certain "digital distribution" pitfalls for producers.
We've had producers ask us over recent months about putting music on streaming platforms such as Spotify, Last.fm, Rhapsody, Slacker, etc. In fact, we know of at least one beat selling website that has regularly boasted that they will distribute your music to these platforms for you. Unfortunately for producers, it does more harm than good.
It may seem like a good idea, with the promise of royalty kick backs for streams and plays, but...
Firstly, your music will be streamed in high quality without any voice tags or any other protection from artists who would just rather record the stream than pay you to download it. And in return you get a few pennies.
The problem is apparent. These platforms were designed for music listeners. But as a producer, your audience is not music listeners. Your audience is music MAKERS. Therefore, your earning potential on these platforms is severely crippled from the start. And then you factor in that shady artists can get your beats without tags for free, and the amount of sales that you will lose because of that... and you have one bad recipe.
We definitely believe that you should distribute your music, but it should be distributed to the correct audience and in the correct manner to protect your interests.
Flex Apps allow you to push your brand and your music out to your own custom website and/or domain name, and keep a full commission on all of the sales you make since you'll be promoting it on your own. You can use a hosted app interface, deploy easily to your own content management system, or build your own interface on your website using HTML & CSS.
As a producer using the Beat Brokerz platform, your producer profile is automatically equipped with its own flex app which can be customized, deployed to websites, and/or used stand-alone through a hosted app interface.
A hosted app interface is a self-contained website that we provide for you which features only the music and content from your flex app. It requires zero-configuration, is available immediately, and is updated for you automatically. You can choose from any of our available hosted interface designs.
If you already have a website, or want to build your own, you can deploy the flex app to your own domain which will allow you to use flex widgets or do your own theming. We have plugins for Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla. You can also deploy manually to any website using our manual deployment option if you aren't using a content management system.