BeatStars vs Soundee — BeatStars Alternative for Producers (2025)

Overall pricing approach

BeatStars and Soundee use very different pricing philosophies. BeatStars focuses on yearly seller plans with no free tier, so you commit upfront but don’t juggle monthly subscriptions. Soundee offers a more flexible ladder, starting with a permanent free plan and then monthly or yearly options as you grow, which suits producers who want to test the platform or scale gradually.

BeatStars plan structure

BeatStars provides three seller plans, all billed annually:

• Tiered options aimed at moving from starter to more advanced setups as your catalog and needs expand.

• All seller plans include unlimited beat uploads, so you’re not constrained by catalog size.

• A short free trial period lets you test paid plans, but switching away later can feel costlier because billing is annual-only.

• Because there’s no always-free tier, BeatStars is better suited to producers ready to invest upfront and stay committed for at least a year.

This structure works well if you’re confident you’ll stay inside the BeatStars ecosystem and want straightforward, once-a-year billing.

Soundee plan structure

Soundee’s pricing is built around flexibility and low-risk entry:

• A true free plan lets you upload a limited number of beats and start selling without any subscription cost.

• Paid plans are available monthly and yearly, so you can decide between lower commitment or long-term savings.

• As you move up tiers, limits on uploads and catalog scope expand, culminating in unlimited uploads on the highest plan.

• A longer trial on the top plan helps serious sellers fully test growth-focused tools before committing annually.

Producers who want to validate demand, experiment with different funnels, or scale at their own pace typically find Soundee’s pricing model more forgiving and growth-friendly.

Overview of fees and commissions

BeatStars and Soundee take two very different approaches to how your money flows.
BeatStars leans on a traditional platform model with a marketplace commission, while store sales on paid plans are commission‑free. Soundee, by contrast, offers a free plan funded by a percentage fee on sales, with higher‑tier plans moving to 0% commissions so you keep the full sale amount.

This split means you’ll want to think about volume and growth: casual or testing users might accept per‑sale fees, while serious sellers usually aim for a 0% structure as soon as their catalog starts converting consistently.

VAT control and tax handling

BeatStars automatically applies VAT on sales and doesn’t let you decide when or how tax is added. For some producers this is convenient, but it can complicate how your prices appear to buyers and how you reconcile taxes in your own jurisdiction.

Soundee gives you direct control over VAT settings. You decide if VAT is added at checkout, and you can align this with your accountant or local rules. That flexibility is useful if you’re registered for VAT in certain regions or selling globally with different obligations.

Payout flow and take‑home earnings

Both platforms support instant payouts on store and marketplace sales, so funds don’t sit in a platform wallet. With automatic split payments, collaborators on either BeatStars or Soundee are paid in real time, reducing manual accounting.

Where they differ is in how much reaches you after fees. On BeatStars, you factor in marketplace commission plus any payment‑processor costs, but subscription plans can remove platform cuts on direct store sales. On Soundee, free‑plan sellers trade a share of each sale for zero subscription cost, then scale into 0% commission tiers as revenue grows—often improving effective take‑home on larger catalogs while keeping VAT behavior under your own control.

Payments & Checkout Experience

BeatStars and Soundee both support direct card processing and PayPal, plus instant split payments for collaborators. Where they diverge is in how modern and flexible the payment stack is. BeatStars leans on a more traditional setup, which works well if you’re fine with standard checkout flows inside their ecosystem.

Soundee adds Stripe, Apple Pay, Google Pay and even crypto on top of direct card and PayPal. That means faster, one-tap checkouts on mobile and more options for international buyers, which can have a real impact on conversion rates. For producers running serious ads or traffic campaigns, this flexibility makes the checkout feel closer to a modern e‑commerce store than a legacy beat platform.

Domains, Stores & Brand Control

BeatStars gives you one main hosted Pro Page on a custom domain, which is enough for a single brand or catalog. You get a straightforward setup but limited control over running separate concepts.

Soundee is built around multi-store workflows. You can spin up multiple storefronts with different layouts, point unlimited domains or subdomains at them, and route each URL to a specific experience. That’s particularly useful if you want one store for type beats, another for services, and a separate, clean catalog for labels or higher-end clients—all under one backend.

Storefront & Catalog Management

Both platforms offer hosted storefronts, pagebuilders, embed players, auto-voicetags, bulk editing, stems support, and scheduling. BeatStars keeps things more template-based and familiar, which is appealing if you just want to plug into an ecosystem and go.

Soundee layers in advanced voicetag controls (including intro-only tags) and full storefront-as-embed mode, where the entire store—including routing and checkout—can live inside an iframe. You can also reupload audio without losing stats, and build FAQ pages and type-beat filters directly into your store, which helps with both SEO and buyer education.

Licensing & Product Flexibility

On both platforms you can sell beats, sound kits, and services with custom contracts and license templates. BeatStars also offers integrated Content ID monetization, which is convenient if you want that handled in the same place as your sales.

Soundee focuses on flexibility around the actual selling: license upgrades (pay-the-difference), services, bundles, and kit selling are first-class citizens. That’s useful once you’re upselling existing customers or moving higher-value clients from basic leases into larger licenses without rebuilding their cart from scratch.

Marketing & Conversion Tools

BeatStars includes essential tools like coupon codes, exit popups, email captures and bulk deals (e.g., “buy X for Y”). It’s enough to run simple promotions inside a familiar ecosystem.

Soundee treats marketing more like full e‑commerce: advanced coupon logic, countdown timers, abandoned-cart tracking, recovery links, auto-applied discount URLs, “buy X get X free” deals, and rich bulk-deal setups. Combined with custom parameters and referrer tracking, you can run campaigns that feel closer to Shopify-style funnels than a typical beat store.

Analytics, Tracking & Integrations

Both platforms track plays, basic analytics and sales data. BeatStars keeps reporting simple, which is easier if you don’t want to dig too deep.

Soundee adds advanced e‑commerce analytics—conversion rates per store, CLTV, abandonment rate, daily profit trends, and more—plus VAT/tax reporting. For tracking and automation, Soundee supports pixels, API keys, webhooks and Zapier. That lets you route sales events into CRMs, email platforms or custom dashboards, turning your beat store into a connected part of a larger growth stack rather than an isolated island.