4 Essential Steps to Seeing Success as a Samplemaker in 2023

Sending out samples is one of the most effective ways to get placements, beat sales, and recognition in the industry. There are a ton of ways to send your loops out, but some work much more effectively than others. Today, we are going to break down the 4 essential steps to seeing success as a samplemaker in 2023.

Step One: Master Your Craft
This is easily the most important step to reaching your goals as a samplemaker. In today's industry it's not that hard to make a good loop, but just making good loops isn't going to cut it. If you want to make the most of your career, you need to spend a lot of time experimenting and adding your own unique sauce to the things you create.

The mindset that has gotten my loops to where they're at is simple - create without the need for a home. I don't mean a physical home, but a home for the thing you're creating. Not EVERYTHING needs to be sent out or made for the purpose of releasing it. Make some samples with zero expectation to see what kind of weird sh** you can add to it - that's how waves start in the industry. 

Step Two: Stay Organized
Staying organized is an underrated part of samplemaking, and even more underrated in music production as a whole. Make sure you are keeping your files easy to access, sorted by genre or month, and save an MP3 and WAV of each sample in case a specific one is needed. 

Personally, I organize my samples by 3 categories: by genre, by month, and project files. Any time I finish creating a loop I'll save the project file to the "project files" folder, export an MP3 version for my "by month" folder, and export a WAV version for my "by genre" folder. This way, I've got both file types for every sample, and can access the project file easily in case I need to make any changes. It's also beneficial to sort them like this because you have an easy way to send out weeklies, and if someone needs a specific genre of loops, you have folders for each genre you make to send them so they don't have to pick out the loops from a crowd of other genres.

Luckily for you, I made a free organization template that you can download here. This is the exact way I keep all my stuff organized, and it even includes a split sheet for you to customize based on your terms. 

Step Three: Build Email Lists
Building email lists is how you keep the producers you send loops to organized. When building your email lists (yes, plural, not email list), you want to focus on two things: the primary genres of whoever you're sending to, and who you are sending to. 

I've found the best results come from making a separate email list for each genre of samples you create. Let's say you make dark samples and melodic samples. Chances are, most people who make dark beats do not consistently make melodic beats, so why send them both and make them do the sorting? Instead, make one list for dark samples, and one list for melodic samples. 

It is also important to factor in who you are sending to. If you're connected to a bigger producer like TM88 or Ronny J, you likely should not be sending them every sample you make. Let's be honest, we have a couple misses every once in a while and not every loop will be a 10 out of 10. For those guys, it's better to send out individually or in a very small separate list where you only send the best of the best that you make. 

Okay, you know how to organize email lists, but you, like many others ask the question "where do I find producers to add to my list?". There are all sorts of ways to get connected with other producers, and a lot of you overthink it. Let's do a little experiment right now - open up Instagram on your producer account right now and look through the first 10 stories at the top of the page. I bet you anything that someone shouted out another producer, shared a post to their story, or tagged a producer you're not connected to yet. Take the time to look into them and see what they make, and send them a message - congrats, you've just connected with someone.

Other ways of finding new people to send loops to can include:
-music production discord servers (join ours here)
-looking up "___ type beat" and see who's on the front page
-going to a local studio
-comments on literally any producer's social media
-looking up "producer" on TikTok and filtering by recent
-looking up "producer" on IG and filtering by recent
-Beatstars charts
-music production Subreddits
the places you can find producers is endless. Don't overthink it.


Step Four: Sending Samples Out
The last step to being on your way to fame and fortune from samplemaking is actually sending the samples out. There are a bunch of ways to get them out, but I highly recommend using Mailtrack. Mailtrack used to only be a service for checking if people respond to your emails, but now you can send emails through them as well. They're cheaper than most other email services, and more effective as well because the emails get send out individually through your Gmail instead of one mass email that has a "bcc". You can also customize the email to say the recipient's name and other info so it feels more personal. Everyone who's making movement in the industry as a samplemaker right now use Mailtrack, and I recommend you do the same (by the way, this is not a sponsorship, I just love what Mailtrack has to offer).

I go through how to use Mailtrack, break down a sample I just got a placement with, and talk about these 4 steps a bit more in-depth in my most recent video, feel free to check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8GkuYOCclQ&t=1s&ab_channel=StaffordBeats


I hope this helped, and good luck with your samplemaking! If you need more help or have any questions, feel free to DM me on Instagram @staffordbeats_

-Stafford @ theproducercrate.com