Timbaland and Gary Marella-founded beat marketplace Beatclub attracted considerable attention in the music production business when it launched in 2021.
Beatclub is a music platform and marketplace for artists, producers, and songwriters that connects the creative community with record labels, music publishers, licensing companies and independent artists. The platform’s paid service for creators costs $179.88 per year.
The Beatclub platform gives its users access to superstars like J Cole, Justin Timberlake, Mike Dean, Tainy, Tommy Brown, Federico Vindver, Angel Lopez and more. It attracted investment from Hipgnosis and Anthem Entertainment last year as part of its series A-2 funding round.
China-based music streaming service NetEase Cloud Music also operates a beat trading platform called Beatsoul, and Timbaland’s Beatclub has teamed up with NCM’s platform in an effort “to revolutionize China’s beat marketplace”.
According to the announcement, under the partnership, “hundreds of signature, premium” Beatclub beats will be introduced to NetEase Cloud Music’s Beatsoul, described as “China’s premier beat transaction platform”.
Beatsoul lets registered musicians on NetEase Cloud Music monetize their original beats.
NCM said that the Beatsoul platform is “wildly popular with music creators” and has been “the backbone of numerous beats that have gone viral” in the market.
Amongst those beats are Feng Shi Guo de Sheng Yin Shi by beatmaker Zy, which has been streamed 500 million times on NetEase Cloud Music.
Tieing into its positioning in the beat buying and selling market in China, NetEase Cloud Music claims that it “leads the hip-hop and EDM movements in China.”
NCM said that musicians have “complete control over licensing scope and pricing” when they use Beatsoul, and that “100% of the profits go directly to the beat producers with zero platform commission fees”.
“I’m excited for artists and producers in China to have access to my beats and Beatclub’s producers beats. Some of the most incredible artists in the world are in China that we haven’t even discovered yet.”
Timbaland
Commenting on the partnership with NetEase Cloud Music’s Beatsoul, Timbaland said: “I’m excited for artists and producers in China to have access to my beats and Beatclub’s producers beats.
“Some of the most incredible artists in the world are in China that we haven’t even discovered yet.”
NetEase Cloud Music claims to be “at the forefront” of bridging Eastern and Western music.
In December, Vivian Wei, Vice President of Copyrights at China-headquartered music streaming platform NetEase Cloud Music, told us about the company’s strategy for connecting Western artists with Chinese fans.
The company also claims to have “solidified” its “position as a cultural conduit” with the recent additions of music catalogs from K-pop companies like JYP Entertainment and Kakao Entertainment.
NetEase Cloud Music reports to have had approximately 149 million cumulative music tracks on its platform at the end of 2023.
The platform was also home to 684,000 registered independent artists who had uploaded over 3.1 million music tracks to its library by the end of 2023.
Music Business Worldwide
