Beat Maker Vs. Music Producer: The Real Difference
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Written by Jaron Lewis
The music world, like every business, has various moving parts that work together to create art. Behind every component of a song is a person who has a special set of skills. Some of these skills come naturally, such as those who are beat makers, and other skills are learned through extensive education, such as music producers. Some beat makers feel as if they are music producers while music producers recognize the very REAL DIFFERENCE between the two.
Education
One distinct difference between a beat maker and a music producer is education level. While no doubt, both are wonderful artists, the level of education needed to be a beat maker is ZERO, while major record labels prefer music producers with some sort of Bachelor’s Degree, or previous experience interning under a prominent music producer. What does this mean? With the right software, anyone can make beats. However, it takes the right level of education to be a music producer.
Salary
Another distinct difference between a beat maker and a music producer is salary. A beat maker can make an average of $65,000 depending on what music producer the beat maker is aligned with. A music producer can make an average of $100,000 up to approximately $2 million.
The reason for this difference has to do with the amount of work needed to create a finished product, song, or album, which brings us the additional distinct differences.
The Workload
While the beat maker may spend a lot of time creating, it is just one layer of the final product. The music producer has the job of putting those layers together. Also, it is very rare that a beat maker will receive any credit on a particular song, as the beat maker is most likely to sell the beats made, relinquishing all rights to the beat.
The music producer, however, is most likely to receive most of the credit for the song, since they are the ones that put the layers together to create the final product.
There Is A Real Difference
While the difference of beat making versus music producing is very evident, there are still beat makers who insist on being called music producers. If the beat maker is the one that creates the beat and the final product, they have the right to be called a music producer.
However, if they are not the ones creating the final product, with all the layers distributed cohesive as is, then they are, simply, the beat maker. The biggest mistake you can make to a legitimate music producer is downgrade them by saying they are only a beat maker.
Wrapping Up
In conclusion, a beat maker is someone who creates a portion of the layers needed to create a final product. The beat maker will create these layers and then sell them to a music producer. At times, the beat maker will lease their layers to various music producers, but if those layers are purchased, whoever purchases them owns full rights to use those layers for the final product, and the layers no longer belong to the beat maker.
The music producer then takes these layers, and adds more layers (vocals, additional instruments, additional sounds, etc.). Once the music producer finishes adding the additional layers, they produce the final product, or song, to be released to the public.
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1 Response to "Beat Maker Vs. Music Producer: The Real Difference"
I respectfully have to disagree. Over years especially in this era as we all can see people inventing new labels or titles etc that never were a thing prior is how I feel about the Producer / Beat maker comparison. Like not everyone who’s labeled a “Producer” by your definition has the creative talent to make a beat from scratch but with the title as Music Producer it’s just automatically assumed. And you saying a beat maker is being demoted cause they are only adding a few layers towards the final product, I’d argue they are (CREATING) the single biggest and most important layers if that’s how you see it. Now by my definition of Music Producer which I consider myself to be , is someone that found a Muse or some form of inspiration and got to work taking time with sound selection, BPM, giving the track a bounce , and a identity almost like making a movie with instruments , creating a Vibe creating a feeling that’s not tangible through the cadence and frequencies in which they picked best tell this story. Having said that , every Music Producer (By My definition) is not fully knowledgable in mixing and mastering so when they get the mix as good as they feel they can , they will send the beat to a “Sound Engineer” to be mixed and mastered and that’s the their sole task. Although some sound engineers can make beats , typically they don’t and they don’t consider themselves to be a Music Producer cause they are Proud of their respective knowledge and role in the process. So the same way that every Producer is not a Sound Engineer, and every Sound Engineer is not a Producer doesn’t change the fact that the person who has the vision for this track and specifically chose certain instruments that would best give the listener the image of the story and they did it all from scratch and generally work (in a studio session) side by side with the artist and giving their input like emphasis the phrase here as the beat fades away etc is the Music Producer, the Sound Engineer is the Sound Engineer Period. Idk where people started coming up with other titles but that wild to me. By the logic of this article you saying the beat maker sells it to a producer who adds more layers , instruments or whatever to make it a final product, to me is saying the guy (Your calling a Music Producer) maybe he is but he’s a Lroducer that lacked the vision and just bought a fire ass loop that he added some strings to in a attempt to make it his own and got it mixed and mastered. Idk let the people decide what they think. All love and respect though .. – Sxvxge