Get It Out.
How to release the song that's been sitting in your folder. Written after asking a few hundred artists what they made with the beats they bought — and hearing the same answer over and over.
Why I wrote this
I emailed a few hundred people who had bought beats from me and asked one question: what did you make with it?
A lot of you answered. And the same thing kept coming back.
It's been in my folder since February.
I got the songs ready, I just didn't like the studio quality I had so I haven't dropped them yet.
Most of the beats I bought felt amateurly done on my end. I didn't understand mixing until this year.
I'd like to completely re-write and re-record it so it's less rushed.
Nobody said they couldn't find a beat. Everybody said they couldn't finish.
So this is about finishing. It's short on purpose.
1 The song is probably more finished than you think
You have heard your own song more times than anyone else ever will. That does two things to you. It makes every flaw enormous, and it makes the parts that work invisible.
The listener hears it once, on a phone, half paying attention. They are not listening for your de-esser.
Here is the honest test. Do all three:
- Play it on your phone speaker, no headphones
- Play it in a car
- Play a released song you like, then yours, back to back at the same volume
If it survives all three and you would not be ashamed to send it to a friend, it's ready. It doesn't have to beat the released song. It has to belong in the same room as it.
If it fails, it usually fails for one of five reasons, and they are all fixable in an afternoon.
2 The five fixes that do most of the work
Ninety percent of “it sounds amateur” is these five things. In this order.
- The vocal is too quiet or too loudNot a taste thing, a numbers thing. Your vocal should sit clearly on top of the beat without the beat disappearing. If you have to strain to hear a word, it's too quiet. If the beat feels like it's behind a wall, it's too loud.
- Nothing is cutting the low end off the vocalThere is rumble under your voice you cannot hear on laptop speakers but that makes everything muddy. Put a high-pass filter on the vocal and pull it up to around 80 to 100 Hz. This one move fixes “muddy” more often than anything else.
- The vocal isn't compressedYour loud words are too loud and your quiet words vanish. A compressor evens that out. Start with a ratio around 3:1 and pull the threshold down until the loudest lines are being reduced by 3 to 6 dB. That's it.
- The S sounds are stabbingIf “sss” hurts on headphones, you need a de-esser. Most free vocal chains have one. Two minutes.
- You have no referenceLoad a released song by an artist you actually sound like into your session. Switch between it and yours constantly while you mix. Your ears lie to you after twenty minutes. The reference doesn't.
That's the whole list. Everything past this point is polish, and polish is not what's keeping your song in a folder.
3 You don't need a studio
Several of you told me you're waiting until you can record somewhere better.
Some of the biggest songs of the last ten years have a vocal recorded in a bedroom on a cheap mic. What separates those from yours is not the room. It's that they finished.
Things that are free or nearly free and good enough:
- Voloco — genuinely good vocal processing on a phone. If you're recording on a phone anyway, this closes most of the gap on its own.
- BandLab — free, browser based, has a mixer and mastering built in.
- Audacity or Reaper — Reaper is a full studio for sixty dollars and there's no time limit on the trial.
- A duvet — throw it over your head and the mic. Sounds stupid, kills room reflection, works.
A blanket, a phone and a free app beats a perfect studio you never book.
4 When to stop
Set a limit before you start. Three sessions. When session three ends, the song is done, whatever state it's in.
Without a limit you will keep going forever, because there is always one more thing. That isn't perfectionism. It's fear wearing a smarter outfit.
The song does not get better after the third pass. You just get more tired.
5 You already own the right to release it
This is the one that surprised me most, so let me be direct.
If you bought a lease from me, you are allowed to put that song out.On Spotify, Apple, YouTube, all of it. That's what the licence is. You do not need to ask me. You do not owe me anything else.
Check the licence you bought for your specific stream and sale limits, and if you genuinely can't tell what you're allowed to do, email me and I'll tell you in plain English. That's a free answer, always. The licensing page spells out what each tier includes.
Nobody should have a finished song sitting unreleased because they weren't sure if they were allowed. If that's you, that's on me for not being clearer.
6 Getting it on Spotify, in an afternoon
- Export as WAV, 44.1 kHz, 16 bit
- Pick a distributor. DistroKid is about twenty dollars a year for unlimited songs. Others exist and they all work.
- You need: the audio file, cover art at 3000 × 3000 px, a title, and the producer credit
- Credit the beat properly in the title or the notes. Something like (prod. BE-TWIIN). Not for my benefit, it's how people find who made the sound they liked
- Upload. Allow two to three weeks before your release date if you want a chance at playlists, or just send it now if you'd rather not wait
That's the whole process. It is genuinely an afternoon.
The checklist
Tick it. Release the song. It stays ticked on this device.
Last thing
Send it to me when it's out. I mean that.
I made the beat and I almost never get to hear what happened next. The people who wrote back to me this month sent albums, music videos, voice notes, and one song that had been sitting untouched since February. That was the best day of work I've had in a long time.
Whatever state it's in, I want to hear it.
mgmt@betwiinbeats.comMarcello — BE-TWIIN