Type in “Instrumental Beats” on Google and you’ll get approximately 450,000 results. The internet is swamped with online producers who make beats and sell it from their online beat stores.
It’s super easy to create music these days and put it on a website. Social media makes it possible for producers to reach out to 10,000’s of artists without having to spend a dollar on advertising. Imagine the number of people they can reach out to when they throw in a couple of bucks for advertising.
Even though there are so many producers and instrumental beats to find online, the market is getting saturated.
The struggle of spending hours on that ‘vibe-killing’ search for the perfect beat. Having to go over 200 instrumentals before finding one you actually like and is of good quality.
With the enormous growth of online producers came a massive increase of low-quality, not inspiring and boring new instrumental beats.
After doing some research among a few hundred of my email subscribers and followers, I put together a list of the most popular websites to find instrumental beats.
If you’re an artist looking for the best instrumentals sites to find beats for your next project, keep reading. Also, if you’re a producer looking for the best platforms to sell your beats on, this guide will give you some unique insight into the online beat market.
The most popular websites to find beats
These are the most popular websites where producers hang out these days and where you’ll most likely find what you’re looking for. They are ranked in random order.
To speed up the process of finding quality music, I’ve also included some helpful filtering tips.
Of course, Google will give you 100,000’s of search results but this will also include blog posts, videos from YouTube, or outdated forum discussions.
You might be surprised that I gave Google only 3 stars on search results. However, this is not all Google’s fault!
Believe it or not, a lot of producers simply are not active on Google.
They affiliate with an already existing platform rather than building their own website. Examples are Soundee, BeatStars or Airbit. A lot of producers on these platforms don’t even have a website of their own. (More about these platforms later)
That doesn’t count for everyone of course. You will find the most popular producers on the first 3-4 pages of Google.
Filter tips:
Narrow the search by searching for specific genres. Like, ‘R&B Instrumental Beats’ or ‘Hip hop Beats’
Add ‘2019’ to your search to show the most recent instrumental beats. Like, ‘R&B Instrumental Beats 2019’
There’s a battle going on in ‘Producer World’ right now. Back in the day, Soundclick was the standard for selling instrumental beats online. I bet some of you won’t even know of their existence as their popularity slowly faded over the past years.
The power of YouTube is now overruling any and all platforms. Producers are fighting to get on page 1 for the most popular keywords.
In 2016, I predicted that YouTube would become the standard for producers. And that it will automatically bring along low- or less-talented producers. My predictions couldn’t be more accurate.
These days, it’s getting harder to come across good-quality instrumental beats. Luckily, YouTube knows you better than you know yourself.
They have the largest number of visitors per day and are constantly updating their algorithm. They use the most advanced techniques to show you high-quality results while browsing their site.
For example; When you search for ‘R&B Instrumental Beats,’ YouTube keeps track of that. The next time you visit the site, they will show you the recommended videos based on your latest activities.
Basically, every recently uploaded video that is related to ‘R&B Instrumental Beats’ or popular videos about ‘R&B Instrumental Beats’ will be recommended to you by YouTube.
And, even when you dislike an instrumental you come across, YouTube will make sure not to recommend another video of that same producer to you in the future. Pretty cool, right?
YouTube does not allow you to filter results by Genre or mood, so use these filter tips to narrow down the search.
Filter tips:
Search for your favorite ‘Artist type beat.’ If you’re a fan of Chris Brown. Search for ‘Chris Brown Type Beats’.
Add ‘2019’ to your search query to show the most recent instrumental beats. Like, ‘Chris Brown Type Beat 2019’
Add a mood to a genre. Like, ‘Hard Hip hop Beats’, ‘Smooth R&B Instrumental beats’, or ‘Emotional R&B Beats’.
Soundclick
As I mentioned, Soundclick.com used to be ‘THE’ website to search for instrumental beats but their popularity slowly faded in the past years.
Their site hasn’t been updated since 1999 or something like that. Still, it made quite the name for themselves, back in the day as they were the leading beat marketplace. Every ‘new producer’ used to start out on Soundclick. (So did I! 🤣)
This is how SoundClick built an enormous database of instrumental beats but now a lot of them sound ‘outdated’ or lack quality.
In order to find the best quality beats, you should check out the Top 50 beats in the ‘Beats/Instrumental Charts’.
Producers get into these Instrumental Charts by paying for advertisements. Presumably, they make enough money to buy these advertisements, which means they’re popular sellers among artists looking for beats.
The website is pretty easy to navigate through and you can browse by different genre from the homepage.
Soundcloud
Whenever I search for instrumental beats on Soundcloud, I always seem to run across the same results.
While Soundcloud is a major platform for (unsigned) artists, they do not really offer filtered search results for specific keywords.
For example, they have different charts on their site. For all musical genres. But not one for instrumental music.
It’s hard to find something that you like up there, and there’s no filter option to show results sorted by upload date. Only by uploaded ‘Past Week’ or ‘Past Month.’
As a producer, I said goodbye to Soundcloud a while ago. It just wasn’t paying off as my beats were hard to find on the platform.
If you’re an artist, don’t waste time searching for instrumental beats up there. There are far better platforms to find what you’re looking for.
Beatstars
Beatstars.com is really starting to make a name for itself when it comes to bringing artists and producers together. They’ve created a platform on which collaborating is made super easy. Producers can upload their instrumentals up there and monetize their content through them, while artists can upload their songs up there and do the same.
The features and services offered for producers and artists are good although it doesn’t always meet the E-commerce standards for sellers. (That’s a different topic, though.)
In 2016, I predicted that over time, the majority of producers would sign up with them. Today, they control at least 60% of the producer market share, which makes it a good website for artists to shop around for hot new instrumental beats.
The navigation functions are really good. They know the problems artists are struggling with and have some very cool features to make it easy to find beats for your next projects.
You can search by Genre, Subgenre, Mood, Beats with chorus, and BPM.
Also, you can make an offer on the Exclusive Rights of a beat, instantly from a producer’s profile.
I consider BeatStars a website similar to SoundClick but 50 times better. Their community and popularity are growing still. Also, a lot of artists that we’ve surveyed told us that they regularly visit BeatStars when they’re searching for beats.
Airbit
Airbit is a platform similar to BeatStars. In fact, they’re the pioneers of online beat selling platforms. They were the first to introduce ‘Instant Beat Stores’ where artists could instantly buy beats from producers. They’re formerly known as “MyFlashStore”. This was long before BeatStars achieved the popularity they have today.
The platform is still active and recently updated the UI and UX.
The platform has a lot fewer producers, compared to BeatStars which means the search results up there are lower.
Also, over time, a lot of producers made the switch from Airbit to BeatStars. Some still have accounts on Airbit but unfortunately, it only consists out of older beats, which means a lot of outdated-sounding beats.
On the flip side, I personally know some of the producers that stayed loyal to Airbit and they’re all incredibly talented producers. The top sellers on the platform are some of the best producers in the game. If you’re looking for quality beats, Airbit is still a great resource!
Soundee
Soundee is a new beat selling platform that was launched in January 2019. All though they are still developing the platform and updating it with features monthly, they’ve already proven to be a good resource for buying beats and selling beats online.
Even though it’s similar to Airbit and BeatStars, they do take things a step further. Where both Airbit and BeatStars lack meeting the E-Commerce selling standards, Soundee emphasizes this part of the beat selling process.
How does this benefit you as an artist?
The platform’s core features are particularly appealing to popular producers who are already selling a lot of beats and looking to work more efficiently.
In other words, the producers with the best beats!
I truly believe Soundee will overrule other beat store providers in terms of everyday operations, which means that a shift will happen eventually. Many producers that are now affiliated with other beat store providers will soon switch over to Soundee.
It’s irrelevant to rate Soundee at this point, considering they’re just getting started. Regardless, they’re definitely one to keep an eye on.
Let’s summarise the results!
Top 5 sites with the most search results
SoundClick
YouTube
BeatStars
Google
Airbit
Soundcloud
Top 5 sites with the best quality instrumental beats
YouTube
BeatStars
Airbit
Google
Soundcloud
SoundClick
What do you think of this list? Are we missing a website at this point? Let me know in the comments below.