Beats To Rap To

Finding beats to rap to online is now easier than ever thanks to a little invention called the internet. Before the internet was around rappers needed to either know producers personally and have access to their music production/equipment, or they needed to find instrumental versions of their favorite rap song on either cassette or vinyl. In today's modern world finding the perfect rap beat can happen within minutes. Licensing these beats has also come a long way even since the early days of the internet. Let's travel all the way back to when dinosaurs walked the earth, the year is 1997 and the internet is fairly new.  Two brothers Tanju and Tulgar Canli created a music based social network called SoundClick. Initially the site worked with RealAudio streams, and then later transitioned to MP3. During the early days of Soundclick there was no instant ways to deliver beats to rappers and singers. Artists could preview the beat but then had to use Paypal pay buttons embedded on the page to order their beat(s). The music producer would then need to manually email the beats along with a license agreement to the artist that ordered them. This could take several days depending on the amount of orders that producer was getting daily. Over the years many beat selling platforms such as Myflashstore.net now called Airbit.com created not only an online marketplace for selling beats but also a way for producers to embed beat stores onto their websites and SoundClick pages. These embedded beat stores created an automated and instant way for artist to both purchase as well as receive beats via email. Through these players purchased beats were delivered via email automatically after payment was processed. SoundClick is still around today and is mainly used by the producer community, though the amount of recording artists that use the site for self promotion has reduced.
In the mid 2000s video giant YouTube launched and has grown to be the second largest search engine in the world, next to Google, which now owns YouTube. YouTube initially was being used to showcase funny videos, how to's, news, and interviews. Producers saw this as an opportunity to use YouTube to showcase their beats and production skills. Producers started posting their beats to YouTube and started titling them using the name of a popular artists that the beat is in the style of. For example "Kanye West Type Beat". This titling helped artists that were looking for a beat with a particular style and mood find the type of beat they were looking for. Since around 2010-2011 YouTube really took off in terms of the place to find beats to rap to online. The beginning of the "type beats" craze began to take off. Producer Cashmoney AP was one of the first producers to create videos using Type Beats. Twenty-three-year-old Guadeloupe-bred producer CashMoneyAp was first introduced to the concept of “type beats” in 2010. “A Jason Derulo type beat, was the first type beat I ever listened to". These beat videos typically include a direct link to the beat within the video description. These links will usually take the customer to the producer's website and or Beat Marketplace profile where they can license the instrumental. 

Here are the top 3 places to find type beats to rap to:

• Youtube
• Beat marketplaces
• Individual producers

There are also websites like SoundClick and SoundCloud where recording artist can find beats online. Artists can also discover producers through streaming services like Spotify, Deezer etc. Many producers are publishing their instrumentals/beats on the streaming services. 

Here are the Top Beat Marketplaces in 2021

• BeatStars
• Airbit
• Traktrain