How To Find Hip Hop Instrumentals

There are thousands of websites offering free and paid hip hop instrumentals, but sifting through the numerous sites and finding high quality, royalty free, instrumentals can be difficult. In this article I will give you some tips and advice on how to find the best hip hop instrumentals.

Maximum Sound Quality

When downloading instrumentals avoid using mp3 audio. Although mp3 audio may appear to sound great on your iPod the audio format is heavily compressed to reduce file size. As a result of file size compression the sound quality is also reduced.

For the best sound quality always download instrumentals in wav or aiff format. If wav or aiff is not an option find another instrumental.

Royalty Free

If you plan to use hip hop instrumentals for commercial or radio use you need to ensure the instrumentals you download are royalty free. This means the producer gets no royalties if you profit from their music.

In the past several rappers and labels have been sued because royalties or samples on the tracks have not been cleared.

Avoid Torrents And Illegal Downloads

Using torrents, illegal sharing sites and P2P software to find free instrumentals is something you should avoid at all costs. Not only do these sharing platforms spread malware and viruses but I can bet anything you download has been illegally obtained. It's impossible to know whether the track you are downloading is actually royalty free, or the samples used in the track have been cleared.

Produce Your Own Music

Producing your own hip hop beats is actually very easy. All you need is a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and some samples or loops.

The biggest tool used to produce hip hop and rap beats is the MPC and the SP1200. Although the SP1200 is now out of production artists such as Pete Rock still use it to this day. The MPC is probably used by the majority of hip hop producers today.

Downloading Legal Hip Hop Instrumentals

Ensure you use a reputable producer, or website when downloading instrumentals. Always read the terms or use policy. If you can't find any usage policy or terms try to contact the producer or website before downloading. You want royalty free instrumentals. Nothing more, nothing less.

Expect to pay for an instrumental. If you want quality, put your hand in your pocket. This is your career, and your future, you don't want a poor sounding instrumental behind your vocals do you? If you eventually end up famous every track you've released on the web will come to light. You want to make sure when they do, they sound good.

Fortunately there are various websites that offer membership subscriptions that allow you browse and download from thousands of instrumentals. Most are only a few bucks.