Prepare Your First Beat for Sale
The exact checklist to take a finished beat from your DAW to your store — files, metadata, art, pricing, and rights.
What You'll Learn
- The exact checklist to take a beat from your DAW to your store
- What files to prepare for each license tier
- The metadata and presentation that make a beat sell-ready
- How to avoid the small mistakes that kill first sales
Your First Sale-Ready Beat
A great beat that isn't prepared for sale will never sell. Here's the path from finished session to live listing.
The sale-ready checklist
Audio
- Clean, untagged MP3 (192–320 kbps) for the lease
- WAV + trackouts/stems for premium and exclusive
- Tagged preview for the store player
- Levels checked, no clipping
Metadata
- Clear, searchable title
- Genre set
- Mood set
- BPM filled in
- Musical key filled in
- Tags added ("type beat," vibe, region)
Presentation
- Square cover art (1400×1400+)
- Art consistent with your brand
Pricing & licensing
- Lease price set
- Premium lease price set
- Exclusive price set
- Custom license terms added if needed
Rights
- All samples cleared or original
- Co-producer splits documented
- Project file saved and backed up
After publishing
- Beat link shared to socials
- Beat added to your next email campaign
- Plays/sales tracked in analytics
Why this checklist matters
A beat that passes this checklist is an asset — it can be found, previewed, bought, and delivered without you doing anything. One that doesn't is just a file on your drive.
A producer uploads a beat with no tags, no art, and only a lease price. It gets zero sales in a month. They re-upload the same beat with full metadata, cover art, and three license prices — it sells three leases in the first week. Same beat. Different preparation.
- A sale-ready beat is an asset that sells itself.
- Prepare files for every license tier, not just the lease.
- Metadata + art + pricing = discoverable, trustworthy, buyable.
- Rights documentation protects every future sale.
Action Step
Run your next beat through this full checklist before you hit publish. If any box is unchecked, finish it first — then upload.