The #1 Reason Your Music Sounds Terrible And You May Not Even Know It

Tariq G
Jun 30, 2020
3 min read

If you plan on taking your music career seriously or ever want people to take you seriously, you need to STOP recording with those crappy beats you got from Youtube.

The beats themselves may not suck but its the format. If you don't already, you need to start recording with tracked-out stems. They are extremely valuable and it is the industry standard to record with stems!

In this blog you will learn:

What Stems are
How they are used
And why you need them when recording with a beat

What are stems??

Simply put, they are the individual tracks of each instrument in a project. The kick, the snare, the piano, etc. They all get their own little happy track during a recording session.

Don't confuse stems and Track-Out files, they're the same thing. I say that because some artists may get confused when they see "Tracked Out files on a producer's website.

My Licensing Info

How Are They Used?

Well, there are a couple of ways. The first is that it gives the producer, the audio engineer, and even the artist ULTIMATE CONTROL.

Control of the volume of each instrument
Control of the length/arrangement of the beat
Add FX's
And so on and so forth

In order for the audio engineer to do his/her job, they need control of the stems.

This is why stems are so valuable and are the industry standard.

Why You Need Stems When Recording With A Beat

To put it in no BS terms, stems (which are exported as WAV files) are just higher quality versions of the beat compared to a regular ole' MP3.

Picture this, you come across a beat on Youtube and throw the link into some kind of Youtube2mp3 converter and download it to record with. You've already made a mistake. A few actually...

One, Producers usually upload those beats to Youtube as an MP3 which is already compressed. So you just compressed it AGAIN when you downloaded it.

Two, Producers also MASTER the beat before uploading it to Youtube. And if you master your song it's going to be double mastered. A.k.a its gonna sound like 💩.

And three, your downloading beats from Youtube illegally.

Your fans trying to get through your song

Here's an example from an artist who did the exact thing I talked about earlier with a beat produced by Robin Wesley. (Great guy btw lol)

"But Tariq, What if I can't afford the stems for a beat?"

The other option that you could do is just use the WAV file. It's still not the best but it's still way better than using an MP3.

I do not recommend WAV files for uploading to streaming platforms because that is where songs blow up. It could catch the attention of labels and radio hosts. And you do not want to miss out on success because of low quality.

Conclusion

Tracked Out files are extremely valuable when it comes to recording a song. It is IMPOSSIBLE to get that high-quality radio-ready sound from using MP3's.

To sum it up:

Using stems gives you way more control and creative freedom like Control of the volume of each instrument, Control of the length/arrangement of the beat and more

It is simply a higher quality of sound that sounds way better and is what all of your favorite rappers and singers record with.

I hope by now you see the true value in getting the beats tracked out instead of just getting the MP3.

"Keep Going"- Tariq G

P.S If you were interested in getting started with using stems I'm having a big sale where you Buy 2 and Get 2 FREE.

If not its all good, please reach out to me through my contact form here and just say hi!