With so many websites out there offering free r&b beats it can be tempting to use them to make all your tracks
. And save the money its costs to get a whole load of beat packs each time you want some new sounds.
But if you ask me I think this is building your whole music career on a house of cards.
Dont get me wrong I have thousands of samples on my hard drive and many which I got for free. But I only use this stuff for demos and when it come to music that I send out to radio and record companies, I always stump up the cash and buy the beats I need.
I know a lot of you are going to think is paranoid but I have two main reasons I use this process.
Reason 1: Beat Quality
The first reason (and some would say the most important) is that I need to make sure that everything I put into my mix is the best quality it can be.
You know the old saying that if you put crap in you will get crap out. Well that is so true for R&B.
If you use the free stuff you will have no idea of the sample rate and you might even be putting MP3s into your master track!
Once you add a whole bunch of effects, your mix will sound like trash!
Reason 1: Copyright
The big picture...
So you spend hours making your tracks and getting everything sounding nice. Things go well and you send your music off to be played on the radio full of free r&b beats.
What happens if your track takes off and starts to get played all over the place? Then suddenly you have to pull it and admit you dont own the beats?
If you had any record company interest at all they will run a mile if youve been using stolen samples.
In the music biz these days a lot of record companies will just release the tracks that an artist has already made at home. Would you want to put your career at risk by putting out stuff when you dont know where your samples have come from?
For me that is too much of a risk because I want my music to keep paying my bills forever ;-)
Final thoughts
Its up to you really, if youre just messing around go for the free r&b beats, but if you want to build a career keep everything honest.