Is Paying For Anno Domini Features A Good Business Move?

Full disclosure I have never done it, I shy away from Anno Domini after once making a video and homie appearing in my comments. 

I read their terms and conditions and they had clearly not updated their pages with each contest… I was a little too liberal in the words I used to criticize that. 

Ain’t no freedom of speech in corporate America. 

That being said, this is not an article about their business practices. Enough people like buying their beats and it’s not my place to judge them. 

Unless they want to rep their city, upon which you should probably find beat makers in your city and I don’t think anyone from Montreal is linked up with Legion Beats or any of the affiliate squads. 

If you make music you have for sure come across their advertisements for feature packs. 

They acquire the rights to some verse, then they sell that verse to people in packs. You get the stems and real deal licensing. It becomes yours to release commercially as an official part of your catalogue, you can even add the vocals to any beat. 

End of the day the decision to utilize that type of resource is relative.

Let’s address the fact you aren’t likely getting that organically earned feature you crave

To your favourite artists, music is a business. 

One of the ways they make money is to sell features. In theory you could sell features too, although rappers who make no money will judge you for it. I’m pretty sure that on paper a lot of the professional features you see online have bags involved. 

The difference is a person with a monetized flow can invest in that feature knowing the song will make that money back and most people haven’t made 100$ off music yet. 

In the Gucci Mane autobiography he says the best investment in his career was a 6500$ expense. Five thousand went to Bun B and 1500$ to Killer Mike for the Black Tee Remix (I think). He made it clear that it was a game changer.

End of the day you probably don’t have a more popping career than Gucci Mane did in the mid 2000’s as he was coming up. I often think about how if he was willing to find that money and pay it, maybe that’s more the mentality we need to take in this game.

Most people you want to work with have managers and label folk who will make them charge you. 

It’s on us to finance our own greatness.

Anno Domini beats and features aren’t exclusive but that’s fine

There are a lot of people who have the same Snoop Dogg chorus right now. 

If you want it too, it will cost you 5000$ on the Anno Domini website. I’m fairly certain when they were selling these in packs they were significantly cheaper. End of the day there’s a whole lot of people who probably could never do a song with Snoop, who now have one in their credits.

There’s one school of thought that will say these folk did not earn this. On the other hand, someone created a product that provided these folk the legal right to “work with Snoop” and by paying the price they did in fact earn that privilege. You could literally do it too.

My mother could buy that Kurupt verse for 2000$ and make a song if she wanted to.

What I will say is that most of the people who have taken advantage of this deal did see some organic traffic growth. While it may be a corny move, it appears to have been a positive for those I know who’ve paid those fees. They know they will be shamed but they do it because it gets them fans.

Maybe your brand wouldn’t benefit from arbitrary features, but there are a lot of people who steal songs and add verses as it is.

The people who pay to do it legit definitely earned that feature a lot more than homie stealing a song off YouTube and modifying it.

Buying those features is a tactic but it isn’t actually a collaborative effort

Let it be said there is probably an ROI on using an Anno Domini feature when it’s done correctly. 

Where I think a lot of people have issues with the concept is that it doesn’t feel collaborative. You are taking something that was made, without considering you at all, and writing around this preexisting song element. While you are still making art, the celebrity is really not contributing to your song in a way that is special.

It’s always about the ego eh?

For a lot of people their music is personal and collaborations need to be based on a relationship. A lot of those people would even be willing to pay for features, like Gucci Mane did, under the condition that the artist put real effort into making it a real collaboration. Buying the same feature as anyone else and flipping it is far more transactional in nature than many artists are comfortable with.

Which is probably why most artists don’t make a lot of money.

I’m not sure I’ll ever buy an Anno Domini feature pack, but it’s unfair to just criticize them as valueless. 

It’s not going to save your career, but with a plan it can spike some new listeners into your life.

Live Long and Prosper Everyone