It’s a question I get asked a lot, so here’s a brief blog post to explain my reasoning. Users of the smoothbeats only site will notice that whilst full length versions of the beats are available for preview, they’re “tagged” with a low-level voice saying “Smoothbeatsonly.com. R&B Instrumentals and Beats.”
By the way, that’s my voice, albeit artificially pitched.
I don’t think there’s anybody left in the world who doesn’t know that music piracy is a huge problem. Some visitors to the site use audio “scraping” programs. These programs record the audio output of the browser into a file which can then be used to burn CD’s, distribute across the internet and so forth. I know that some visitors use these programs to “grab” instrumentals from the site – to take away and write with before returning later to purchase a license. That’s cool – I don’t have an issue with that at all.
However, some people choose to record over the tagged beats and then try and sell the resulting tracks. That’s illegal.
The tags are there to protect my customers who legitimately purchase a licence. Once a license is purchased, download versions of the instrumentals have the tags removed. The purpose of the tags is to protect the rights of legitimate customers. If you’ve paid a license fee, you deserve to have a version of the beat that the pirates don’t have access too. That’s only fair.
I hope this goes some way to explaining my reasoning! Let me know your thoughts.
