So, you’ve decided to start selling beats on BeatStars, but you’re not sure which plan is the best for you? Wondering if upgrading to a more expensive BeatStars Professional plan is worth it and will save you from fees? I’ve got you covered – by the end of this post, you’ll have a clear understanding of BeatStars pricing.
Update: In September 2024, BeatStars introduced new changes to their subscription plans. In short, the new Growth plan is essentially the same as the old Starter, and all conclusions from this post now apply to it. For more detailed information, check out my new blog post here.
First things first, how much does the BeatStars paid plan cost?
Let’s start with the basics – the cost of BeatStars subscription plans. Currently there are two paid plans on BeatStars: Starter and Professional. The Starter subscription costs only $19.99 per year, while the Professional subscription costs $19.99 per month (or $179.88 if paying annually).
Both plans let you upload as many tracks as you want, sell sample packs and services, give you access to analytics, and allow you to accept PayPal payments. In short, they give you all the tools you need to run your business. The Starter plan, however, has some limitations. For example, you can’t send more than 20 personal messages per month to other users, and you have only 50 monthly LemonAIde credits (which is so unimportant that I don’t even want to talk about it).
A slightly more important difference between the Starter and Professional plans is that you can only have 4 active licenses: Basic, Premium, Unlimited, and Exclusive. To add another license, you’ll need the more expensive subscription, but in most cases this is not necessary.
The service fee problem: Is there a fee on the BeatStars marketplace?
When comparing BeatStars plans on their pricing page, you will see a line that says BeatStars Marketplace Seller Commission is $0. It appears that none of the plans have a seller commission.
Technically this is true, but instead BeatStars takes a fee from your customers. For example, if an artist wants to buy your beat on BeatStars Marketplace for $30.00, they will see at checkout that they have to pay $33.60 (not even mentioning any additional taxes). This $3.60 is a service fee that BeatStars introduced in August 2023 and that has our entire producer community slightly upset.
Your customers will be charged this fee regardless of your plan. Or, if you prefer, you can pay this service fee yourself, which means you will receive 12% less from each sale. No commission for sellers, huh?
The key difference between BeatStars Starter and Professional plans
And here we come to the main point. To decide which BeatStars plan is best for you, just ask yourself one simple question: How do your customers find you? If your main source of traffic is outside of BeatStars (i.e. YouTube, social media, search engines), then you should go with the Professional plan.
On the other hand, if most of your sales are generated by BeatStars itself (i.e. buyers find you through the search function of the marketplace or you are one of the lucky ones who manage to make the BeatStars promotion work), then it makes no sense to pay for the Professional plan as it does not give you any benefits.
Basically, the only difference between the BeatStars plans is whether or not you can use the Pro Page – a customizable page that works like a standalone website, where you can drive traffic from YouTube and where the service fee does not apply.
So if I choose the Pro plan on BeatStars, I won’t have to pay this new service fee?
Not exactly. Whether or not a fee is charged depends on where the sale was initiated, not on your plan. If an artist finds a beat through a search on BeatStars, a service fee will be added to the order, even if the seller has a BeatStars Professional plan. If an artist finds your beat on YouTube, but the link in your video description only points to your BeatStars profile, a 12% service fee will also be added to the order.
⚠️ So to avoid the service fee, your sales must be processed outside the BeatStars website, i.e. on your own website (like the one you’re reading this post on) or on a Pro Page, which is only available with the Professional plan.
So what’s the bottom line?
If you have any traffic outside of BeatStars and it can generate you more than $19.99 per month, you should consider subscribing to the Professional plan. If you’re just starting out and aren’t sure if you can make any sales at all, the Starter plan is your option because it won’t burn a hole in your budget and still allows you to upload an unlimited number of tracks to your catalog.
Of course, no one is stopping you from jumping right to the Professional plan just because $20 a month isn’t a big deal to you and you want to get a Pro Page like all the big guys on YouTube. That’s your choice, nobody’s judging 🙂
P.S. Can I sell beats on BeatStars for free?
I’m not 100% sure, but it seems that BeatStars does not have a free plan for sellers at the moment. When you create a seller account, you simply don’t see any options other than the Starter or Professional plans. You may be able to downgrade to the free plan when your current paid subscription expires, but overall, there’s just no free plan on BeatStars at the moment.
Previously, the free plan on BeatStars offered a rather limited set of features: you could only upload 10 beats and the number of active licenses was limited to two.