BeatStars Pro Page vs Your Own Website: Where to Sell Beats in 2026

Horia Stan is a music producer and sound engineer at The One Records in Bucharest, Romania, and the founder of Legacies, his personal brand for websites and digital products.

If you only sell leases, a BeatStars Pro Page is a reasonable storefront and probably enough. If you also sell custom production, mixing or anything that needs a conversation, you need a website you own, because artists looking for a producer don't search a beat marketplace. Most serious producers end up with both: the marketplace for discovery, their own site for everything with a higher price tag.

Quick answer

• BeatStars Starter ($19.99/year): 0% commission, unlimited uploads, marketplace exposure. Buyers on the marketplace pay a 12% service fee at checkout.
• BeatStars Professional ($179.88/year): adds a Pro Page website with your own domain. No 12% marketplace fee on Pro Page purchases.
• Airbit: 0% seller commission since 2023, free plan with up to 20 beats. Processor fees still apply.
• Your own website: you own the domain, the content, the SEO and the client list. Best for producers who sell services, not just files.

What you are actually choosing between

These options look similar because they all have a "store". They are not. They solve different problems.

A marketplace (BeatStars, Airbit) is a search engine for beats. People arrive already wanting to buy an instrumental. You compete with every other producer on the same page.

A hosted storefront (BeatStars Pro Page) is your own shop, built on the marketplace's software. It gets your branding and your domain. It still lives inside their product, with their templates and their rules.

A website you own is a place where people learn who you are, hear your released work and decide to hire you. Beat sales can live there too, but that is not its main job.

BeatStars in 2026: the actual numbers

BeatStars renamed its plans. The old Marketplace and Pro Page plans became Starter, Growth and Professional. On the BeatStars studio pricing page, the two that matter here are:

There is a Growth tier in between that adds stem uploads. I'm leaving its price out because BeatStars' own pages list different numbers for it. Check the pricing page at checkout. The same goes for promos: the studio page advertises limited-time discounts, so the price you pay may differ.

The detail most comparisons miss is the buyer fee. BeatStars says a 12% marketplace service fee is added to the total purchase price at checkout. It does not apply to purchases on Pro Page sites or in Blaze players. So a $30 lease costs the buyer more on the marketplace than on your Pro Page. Small number. On a $300 exclusive it's not small anymore.

According to BeatStars' own Pro Page overview, the Pro Page sells beats, sound kits, services and merch, supports PayPal and Stripe, and lets you connect your own domain.

Airbit in 2026

Airbit, owned by BandLab, removed seller commissions on its marketplace in September 2023, cutting them from as much as 40% to 0%. Payment provider fees still apply. The free Basic plan allows up to 20 beats on your marketplace profile.

I couldn't verify Airbit's current paid plan prices from an official page, so I'm not quoting them. If you're comparing, pull the numbers from your Airbit dashboard on the day you decide.

Practically, Airbit is a second marketplace listing. It's not a replacement for a website either.

What a marketplace storefront does well

Be fair to it. A Pro Page is genuinely good at a few things:

• Speed. You can be selling in an afternoon.
• Licensing logic. Lease tiers, contracts and file delivery are built in. On your own site you have to set all of that up.
• Familiar checkout. Beat buyers already know the flow.
• Low upkeep. No hosting, no updates, no security patches.

If your whole business is leases to artists who already browse BeatStars, $179.88 a year for that is fair. Building the same licensing and delivery flow yourself costs more than that.

Where it falls short

The problems start when you sell more than beats.

It's built for files, not for people

A beat store is a grid of tracks with prices. An artist who wants a custom production, a mix or a full single is not buying a file. They want to know who you've worked with, what your released work sounds like, how you work, what it costs and how to start. A store template isn't designed to answer that.

My own setup shows the split. The music side of horiamc.com is built around released credits, a service page, a clear starting price and a brief form. None of that fits in a beat grid.

You rent the ground

Your Pro Page domain can be yours. The software under it is not. Plan names, features and prices change on someone else's schedule. BeatStars has already renamed its plans once. If you stop paying for Professional, the storefront goes with the subscription. Your own domain and your own site stay.

Search visibility is limited to what the template allows

When an artist types "dark pop producer" or "mixing engineer for vocals" into Google, the results that win are pages with specific, crawlable text about one person: name, location, credits, services, prices. Before you rely on any hosted storefront for that, check what you can actually edit: page titles, meta descriptions, headings, separate service pages, structured data. If you can't edit those things, Google and AI assistants have less to read.

I covered the full list in the music producer website checklist. Most of the items there are text, structure and schema, not design.

AI assistants recommend people, not storefronts

This matters more every month. Someone asks ChatGPT or Claude for a producer who does a specific sound. The assistant answers from pages that clearly state who you are and what you do. A paying mixing and mastering client from Argentina found me through a ChatGPT recommendation. That happened because my site states plainly who I am, what I do and how to book. A product grid can't do that.

If your name collides with someone else's, it gets harder still. That's an entity problem, and you fix it on a site you control. The Knowledge Panel guide walks through it.

What your own website does better

That last row is the one I'd think about longest. A domain plus a site you own is the only asset here you can't lose to a pricing update.

The setup I'd recommend

For most producers it's not either/or.

If you only sell leases

Starter on BeatStars, a free Airbit profile for extra reach, and a simple one-page site with your name, best beats, socials and a link to the store. Upgrade to Professional when buyers start coming straight to you. That's when skipping the 12% marketplace fee helps your conversion.

If you sell leases and services

Keep the marketplace for beat discovery. Build your own site for everything else: credits, services, pricing, a brief form, FAQ. Link to the beat store from the site, not the other way round. Your name and domain become the center, and the marketplace is one sales channel.

If you mostly do custom work

Skip the Pro Page. A marketplace listing is fine as a side channel. Your website is where clients decide.

The Linktree vs website post makes the same argument from the link-in-bio side. Both answer one question: where does a serious visitor land?

What it costs to do it properly

A builder like Squarespace or Wix can handle a producer site if you're willing to do the SEO and structure yourself. I compared them in Bandzoogle vs Squarespace vs Wix. The full range, from free to custom, is in how much a musician website costs.

For selling beats on your own site, you also need a checkout. That means a payment processor like Stripe or PayPal, with their per-transaction fees, plus a way to deliver files and license PDFs. That's the part a Pro Page gives you for free, so be honest about whether you want to manage it.

This is the kind of site I build at Legacies. A website for music producers is built around credits, services and a brief form, with the SEO and structured data done properly from day one, so Google and AI assistants know who you are. It links out to your beat store instead of replacing it. I've built sites in this space before, including the one for The One Records.

When to do it yourself, and when to hand it off

Do it yourself if you sell leases only, your catalog lives on BeatStars, and you're fine with a template. Starter or Professional plus a simple builder page covers it. Spend the money on beats.

Hand it off when custom production, mixing or other services are the real income, when your name competes with someone else's in search, or when you want to be found on Google and AI assistants rather than only inside a marketplace. That's structure and entity work, and it's easy to get wrong in a builder.

If that's you, look at the producer website page or the broader websites for creatives page, then send a short brief through the request form. Everything is handled in writing, async.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is BeatStars Pro Page worth it in 2026?

It's worth it if beat leases are most of your income and buyers already come to you directly. BeatStars Professional costs $179.88 a year and includes a website with your own domain, and purchases on Pro Page sites skip the 12% marketplace service fee that buyers pay on the BeatStars marketplace. If you mainly sell custom production or mixing, a website you own does more for you than a Pro Page.

Should I sell beats on my own website or on BeatStars?

Use both. BeatStars and Airbit bring beat buyers who are already searching, and your own website is where artists learn who you are and hire you for higher-value work. Selling leases only on your own site means building the checkout, file delivery and licensing yourself, and you get no marketplace traffic.

Does BeatStars take a commission on beat sales?

BeatStars advertises 0% commission on its paid plans, starting with Starter at $19.99 a year. Buyers on the marketplace pay a 12% service fee added at checkout, which does not apply to purchases on Pro Page sites or in Blaze players. Payment processor fees still apply wherever you sell.

Is Airbit better than BeatStars for selling beats?

Airbit removed seller commissions on its marketplace in 2023 and offers a free plan with up to 20 beats, so it costs little to list there too. BeatStars has the larger marketplace and a built-in Pro Page website option. Most producers list on both, because neither one replaces a website for custom work.

Can a BeatStars Pro Page rank on Google for my name?

It can rank for your name if your name is unique and the domain is yours, but it's not built to rank for service searches like "dark pop producer" or "mixing engineer for vocals". Those need separate, text-rich pages about you and your services, with structured data, which is much easier on a website you control.

Do music producers need a website if they already have a BeatStars page?

Yes, if you sell anything beyond leases. A BeatStars page sells files to people already browsing for beats. A website shows credits, services, prices and a way to start a project, and it's what Google and AI assistants read when someone asks for a producer.

How much does a website for a music producer cost?

It ranges from the cost of a domain and a builder subscription for a DIY site to a one-time custom build. The full breakdown is in the musician website cost guide on this blog. On top of the site, budget for payment processing fees if you sell beats directly instead of through a marketplace.