A producer's work lives inside other people's releases. Your beat is on a song, but the song is on someone else's profile, in someone else's dashboard and under someone else's name. Without your own records, you lose track of where your work is, what you agreed and whether you were paid. You do not need software for this. You need one list and a monthly habit.
Start a placement list
Open a spreadsheet and make one row for every song that uses your work, including ones that have not been released yet. These columns cover most needs:
- song title and artist
- release date and the link on streaming platforms
- your role: producer, co-producer, beatmaker, mixing or mastering
- the credit exactly as it appears, for example "Produced by Elvin Rza"
- ISRC or UPC, if the artist can share them
- licence type: lease, exclusive, work for hire or a custom deal
- fee agreed and whether it has been paid
- your share of the song, if any, and where the signed paper is stored
- who to contact
Add the row as soon as the deal is made, not on release day. Then update it when the song comes out. After a year you will have a clear picture of your work.
Get the credit right before release
Many placements go wrong in one place: the credits. When an artist submits a release, the producer and writer names are typed into the metadata. If your name is missing or spelled differently, the credit does not appear, and you become hard to find.
Before the artist submits, send them the exact name you want to be credited under, and the role. If you wrote the music, say that too, since producer and composer are different credits. Use the same spelling everywhere, on every release and every profile. When artists add credits in the CULT portal, they enter these names, so a quick message in advance prevents a mistake that is awkward to fix later.
Find your songs on the platforms
Do not wait for artists to tell you. Once a month:
- Search your producer name on the streaming services and on YouTube.
- Open songs you worked on and look at the credits view in the song menu. It lists the producer if the release provided it.
- Read the description of YouTube videos. Many artists mention the producer there.
- Set up a search alert for your name and your tag.
- Ask the artist for the release link when a song is announced.
Platforms show credits in different ways and some songs show none. A missing credit does not always mean the artist left you out. It may be a metadata gap that can be fixed, so ask.
Track beat sales and licences
If you sell beats online, your store or marketplace gives you sales reports. Export them every month and copy the key details into your own file: the beat, the buyer, the date, the price and the licence type.
The licence terms matter more than the sale. Write down what each licence allows: the number of copies or streams, whether a music video is covered, whether you can still sell the beat to others, how long it lasts. Keep the receipt or the PDF for each sale. Then you can answer, months later, a question like "can this artist use this beat in an advert?" without guessing.
When you sell exclusive rights, take the beat out of sale everywhere and mark it as sold in your list. When you lease the same beat to several buyers, keep each lease limit written next to the buyer's name, so you notice when a song grows beyond what the licence covers.
Splits and money
If you have a share in a song, write it down before the release, not after. A short split sheet signed by everyone lists who owns what percentage of the recording and of the composition. Keep it with the list. Memory and chat messages are weak evidence when money starts coming in.
Later, compare what you receive with what you expected. Ask the artist or the label for statements, and match them to your list. For releases under your own name in CULT, you see streams by platform and country for each reporting period, with the source and period on every report. For other people's songs, the artist or label has those numbers, and you can ask for yours.
A thirty-minute monthly routine
- Add new deals and releases to the list.
- Search the platforms for new credits and compare them with the list.
- Export your beat sales and update the licences.
- Check unpaid fees and follow up politely.
- Look at the pattern: which styles are leased most, which artists come back, which source brought each deal.
That last step is where the analysis becomes useful. If most placements come from two artists you met through referrals, put your time there. If one style sells more than the rest, make more of it. Numbers kept for a year tell you what to do next.