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You just produced a sweet beat now???  How do you get peeps to hear it, use it, rock with it and get paid?  Well there is a solution – RockBattle.com.

At RocBattle.com, producers can sell tracks (commission-free) non-exclusively or exclusively, and battle other producers around the globe for cash prizes and the title of Top Dog.

Dana Stinson AKA Rockwilder and business partner Allen Brown AKA Fat Fingers began working on this site in 2005 and created this site for the growth and development of producers in the Hip-Hop, R&B, Reggae and Pop genres.  Most recently the duo has teamed up with Beat Kangz Electronics the makers of Beat Thang Virtual software, and continuing to provide opportunities for striving producers. (Sidebar: Beat Kangz has launch at $30,000 beat contest.)

For many emcees, rappers, lyricists and singers RocBattle.com is the biggest music candy stores one could have ever dreamed of.  Most producers sell non-exclusive tracks for $10-$25.  However, remember non-exclusive means you won’t be the only one using a track.

What's in the fine print?

• The purchaser plays the 99¢ broker fee to RocBattle which is more than feasible considering the quality of the site. 
  
  
• RocBattle does not scan tracks for samples, so if you are thinking about buying a track for exclusive usage, you may want to keep that in mind.
  
  
• RocBattle has laid out the definitions for non-exclusive usage and exclusive usage very clearly, so producers should feel comfortable from a legal perspective.  Now that doesn’t mean some people won’t try to steal your work, therefore it’s still a good a idea to copyright your work with the US Copyright Office, individually or collectively.

All in all RocBattle has been summed up best by the Roc and Allen -- “RocBattle.com is a very resourceful and credible place for any producer looking to get exposure and reliable feedback.  The site is designed to help improve and further develop the craft of all producers who participate.”

So if you got the best beats, take it to battle...  Put your music where the battle is.

Source Note: Special thanks to Beats By Vsmoove.

When you are DIY artist, trying to create graphics, logo and other artwork for your CD covers, flyers and other advertising products can be an adventure and expensive. While PhotoShop is the industry standard for photo editing, many of us don’t have PhotoShop money. However there is an affordable alternative, a FREE alternative called GIMP.

GIMP a powerful and freely-distributable open-source application that is used for digital image composition, authoring, retouching and processing. With GIMP you can make parts of your image transparent, removing transparency information, crop and decrease the file size of a picture, even create abstract backgrounds and hot text effects. The examples below were all edited or created using GIMP.

If you have a good foundation on resolution/dpi, pixels and color modes (i.e., RGB vs. CYMK), there are tutorials galore available for you to learn how to use GIMP. To get you started, I have provided links to the application and several tutorials.

• Download the GIMP 2.7
• GIMP Quickes from gimp.org – Shows how to crop, resize, rotate and change the color mode of an image
• Remove The Background From An Image from Zadyball – Uses 2.2 but this is a great tutorial
• 40+ GIMP Tutorials compiled by Naldz Graphics – Golden text effect, fade effect, glass lettering and abstract wave effect and more (P.S. If you can sign up to his blog, it’s very informative and his content is diverse)