How I Made My Beats Discoverable (For Real)

I’m Kayla. I make beats out of a tiny room with one window and a squeaky chair. For a long time, my beats sat in folders. No plays. No cuts. Just dust. Then I changed how I share. (I dug into the full story of how I made my beats discoverable for real in another piece if you want every gritty detail.) Not magic—just small moves, done steady. Here’s what I used, what flopped, and what actually brought artists to me.

Quick note before we start: I’m not a guru. I’m just a person who tried stuff, messed up plenty, and then kept going.

The Day My Beats Stopped Hiding

One night last spring, I renamed a beat from “Gtr_150bpm_13” to “Rod Wave Type Beat – Sad Guitar – 150bpm – G minor.” I added a cover with a cool blue tone and clean font. I posted it to YouTube and BeatStars. I went to sleep.

In the morning, it had 1,200 views and two lease DMs. Same beat. Better packaging. That was the first click in my head.

What Worked For Me (Short List)

  • Tight titles and tags with BPM, key, mood, and “type.”
  • Short video clips on TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, posted often.
  • A clean store page that loads fast.
  • Simple email list with clear updates.
  • Real community spots (Discord, Reddit, collabs).
  • YouTube Content ID to protect my work.

Let me explain what I used and how it felt, tool by tool. If you’re still wondering what you actually need to make beats, I broke down my minimal setup in another piece.

BeatStars: Where I Actually Sold Stuff

I used BeatStars for two years. I moved from the free plan to a paid plan after three months.

  • What I loved: The player is clean. The licensing setup is easy. I like the stats page. I used coupons to push slow beats on Fridays. People found me by tags alone.
  • What bugged me: It’s crowded. If your title is weak, you’re invisible. Also, top spots get most of the love.
  • Real result: After I fixed titles and covers, I sold 17 basic leases in three months. One beat, “Detroit Bell Type Beat – Dark Bounce – 148bpm – A minor,” made five sales by itself. That never happened when my names were messy.

I used cover art I made in Canva. Bold text. One mood word. One color per series. It sounds silly, but it helped artists remember the vibe.

Airbit: Great Store, Less Walk-By Traffic

I tried Airbit for six months. I liked the embedded store on my site.

  • Good: It loads fast. The pricing grid is simple. I like how easy it is to build bundles.
  • Not so good: I got fewer organic plays than BeatStars. When I pushed traffic there, sales were fine. But it didn’t feed me new listeners on its own.
  • Real result: 8 sales in six months, all from my own links. Still worth it for my website store.

YouTube: Titles, Thumbnails, and Chill Patience

I post beat videos and Shorts. Nothing fancy. I film a little desk shot, or I use a static cover with a small waveform. I also dug into a detailed YouTube beat-selling guide that sharpened my approach to titles, thumbnails, and channel layout.

  • What I learned: Long titles help search. I keep a clear formula:
    Artist Type Beat – Mood – BPM – Key – Year
    Example: “Jersey Club Type Beat – Fun Bounce – 140bpm – F minor – 2025”
  • Thumbnails: Big text, two colors max, one mood word. Mine say things like “Melancholy” or “Club Bounce.”
  • Real result: One “Yeat Type Beat – Rage Bells – 145bpm – D minor” hit 23k views in 10 days. It sent 640 clicks to my store. Three leases came from that one.

I also add chapters for “Hook starts 0:20” and “No tag version 1:10” so artists can hear what they need fast.

TikTok, Reels, and Shorts: The Quick Spark

Short clips did more for my reach than anything else. Most of them were built right on my phone using my favorite app for making beats on the go. If you need a bigger blueprint, this concise social-media strategy to sell more beats helped me line up content across every platform.

  • What worked: Posting daily for 10 days. Using clean captions. Adding the BPM in the text. And yes—hands in the frame. People like seeing hands on keys or pads.
  • What didn’t: Over-edited clips. Heavy text. Using trending memes that don’t match the beat.
  • Real result: A Reels post of my “afrobeats x amapiano” drum pattern hit 48k views. I got 12 store clicks that day and one exclusive inquiry (didn’t close, but still nice). On TikTok, a phonk loop with a car drift clip reached 37k views in a week. That drove 200 new followers and one lease.

SoundCloud: Reposts Helped, Bots Didn’t

I still love SoundCloud for testing ideas.

  • Good: Easy feedback. Repost chains got me early ears. I used RepostExchange to trade reposts, but I kept it to folks who match my sound.
  • Annoying: Bots. Weird DMs. I ignore them.
  • Real result: My “Lo-fi Study Pack Vol. 1” got to 9,400 plays with two repost trades and one Discord push. One rapper from Toronto found me there and leased “Snow Night – 85bpm – C minor” for a hook demo. That turned into a paid feature later.

Spotify (via DistroKid): Beat Tapes for the Slow Burn

I release beat tapes every 6–8 weeks. DistroKid makes it simple.

  • Good: Fast uploads. Spotify for Artists shows me which cities react. I use that to target ads when I run small tests.
  • Meh: Editorial playlists are hard to land. Also, YouTube Content ID is an add-on, so watch your setup.
  • Real result: Tape 3 got 12k streams in two months with no ads. I pitched through Spotify’s form and also used SubmitHub and Groover.

SubmitHub: I sent 27 pitches. Got 3 adds and real feedback. The notes stung a bit, but they helped.
Groover: Better reply rate. Cost adds up, so I send only my best two tracks. I got 5 playlist adds and one YouTuber placement.

Content ID: I Used Identifyy

I signed up with Identifyy to protect my beats on YouTube.

  • Good: It caught reuploads and helped me claim a few videos that used my full tracks with no credit. Peace of mind.
  • Watch out: If an artist buys a lease, you need to whitelist them. I keep a simple Google Sheet with email, beat title, license type, and date. That saves stress.
  • Real result: I cleared two accidental claims in a day by sending license proof.

Metadata: The Boring Part That Pays

Here’s my quick checklist before I upload anything:

  • Name the file with title, BPM, and key: “Rod Wave – Sad Guitar – 150bpm – Gmin.wav”
  • Add cover art that matches the mood.
  • Put writer info and contact in the file metadata.
  • Include BPM and key in tags across all sites.
  • Add 3–5 “type” tags that match the drums and the vibe, not just the artist.

This alone made search stronger on YouTube and BeatStars. You know what? It also made me feel more pro.

Community: Where Collabs Come From

I hang in the ProducerGrind Discord, and I peek into the BeatStars Discord once a week. I also post on r/makinghiphop’s weekly feedback thread.

  • Real story: A singer from Dallas heard my “Warm RnB Rhodes – 90bpm – A major” in a Discord listening session. We did a quick collab. She posted a clip on Reels. That clip sent 300 profile visits to me and one exclusive offer (we closed at a fair mid-range number).

Just like producers can fumble a promising collab by coming on too strong or missing the vibe, plenty of guys blow real-life “link-ups” for the same reasons. If you want a lighter (but eye-opening) take on avoiding those missteps, peek at these common mistakes every guy makes when hooking up—the article dishes out practical, candid advice that’ll help you read the room better in and out of the studio