Frequently Asked Questions

Licensing

What are units?

A unit is a measurement of each time the song is distributed. The conversion below is established in accordance with current RIAA regulations.

1 unit = 1 album sold
1 unit = 10 singles sold
1 unit = 150 digital audio streams
1 unit = 150 digital video streams

The license only expires once you have reached the allotted number of units from the total of all formats together.

For example, if your song gets played 500 times on Spotify, that would be deemed as 75000 audio streams in this context.  75000 / 150 = 500, so that amount of attention would be considered as 500 units against the total being allotted.

What are STEM files?

How important is it to have the STEM files?

I think it depends on how experienced your engineer is.

I’ve known some engineers who are wizards in the studio.  They’ve made clean and powerful mixes just by using the lossless stereo mix of the instrumental. In many cases, the .wav file of the instrumental on its own is often sufficient for a reasonably well-mixed song.

With that being said, my school of thought is that if you’re already getting your vocals professionally recorded and mixed, it’s ideal to provide your engineer with all of the necessary resources in order to enable them to do what they do best.

So are they worth the extra cost?  I would recommend consulting with your engineer for their opinion.  It’s worth mentioning that if you already purchased a Standard Lease, the payment can be credited in full towards upgrading to a license that includes the STEM files.

Does my lease expire when the Exclusive Rights are sold?

Your lease will remain valid until you have reached the limit for distribution.  Since policies vary among different producers, I’ll clarify that your license does not expire automatically after a certain amount of time.

What happens when my lease expires?

You would be permitted to continue using the instrumental for non-profit purposes. For more details, please see the section above on using free beats.

Purchase

Can I make a purchase without Paypal or a credit/debit card?

At this time, all transactions are required to go through Paypal.  You can still place an order using a credit or debit card without a Paypal account.

Could I upgrade my license at a discounted rate?

Yes.  Any payment you’ve already made on on a lease can be applied in full towards the purchase of a higher tier license. To apply your credit, email Sales@VTZbeats.com.

I lost the audio files you sent.  Can you resend them?

No problem. Email Sales@VTZbeats.com and I will gladly provide download links to the necessary files.  For the fastest response, please include any details you can about the purchase.  In most cases, your order can be traced quickly if you provide the email address that was used when the purchase was made.