Written beat licences and UPI checkout for Indian hip-hop producers and rappers
TL;DR Chordshare is a beat store for Indian producers. A rapper picks a beat, pays by UPI, and gets a written licence that says exactly what they may do with it - how many streams, whether they can sell the song, and who keeps publishing. Producers keep most of the price and Chordshare takes a cut.
India's independent music scene makes a lot of songs. A Big Four consulting report estimated 20,000 to 25,000 original songs a year[1]. Much of the hip-hop among them starts with a producer selling a beat to a rapper over a direct message, paid by bank transfer, with nothing in writing. When the track gets traction, nobody can show whether the rapper bought the beat outright or only a limited lease, who owns the master, or what the producer's share of the composition is.
Is it a big deal? The money involved isn't small any more. IPRS, the society that pays composers and lyricists, distributed over ₹600 crore in FY2024-25[2]. Disputes over a song that suddenly earns are expensive to settle when the original deal lived in a chat.
Producers upload beats with tags, preview audio and three standard licence tiers - a basic lease with a stream cap, a wider lease, and an exclusive sale. Each tier comes with a plain-language contract in English and Hindi, drafted once by a music lawyer. A rapper pays by UPI, signs with an OTP, and downloads the files with the licence attached. If two producers made the beat, the payment is split between them automatically.
The licence records who owns the master of the new song and each side's share of the writing, which is what the collecting societies later need[3]. Chordshare does not collect royalties itself.
The seed pitched blockchain-secured co-creation, which I don't buy. A ledger adds nothing that a signed, timestamped contract and a payment record don't already give you. What Indian producers lack is the contract and an easy rupee checkout, so that's the product.
Rappers and singers pay for beats, and producers pay a commission per sale, perhaps 10–15% (our estimate). Beat prices in India are informal and unpublished. The US market leader works on non-exclusive leases with producer-set prices and terms[4], in dollars and aimed at a global buyer. Small labels signing new rappers are a later buyer for exclusive beats.
Streaming is lifting royalty income - IPRS income rose 42% to about ₹700 crore in FY2024-25, mostly from streaming[5]. Paid music subscriptions in India rose 37% to 14.4 million in 2025[6]. More independent tracks earn, so the terms behind them start to matter.
No public figure exists for India's beat-licensing market. The closest signal is volume, at 20,000 to 25,000 original songs a year[1]. Adjacent - music publishing in India was INR 845 crore in FY2022-23[1]. Size the opportunity from active producers and their monthly sales during your pilot.
The biggest global marketplace handles for beat leases, with collaborator splits and licence templates[4]. It is priced in dollars and its templates are written around US practice. Indian producers mostly sell through social media and chat apps. I found no Indian marketplace with rupee pricing, UPI checkout and Indian-language contracts, though I couldn't run a full search.
| Difficulty | Moderate (32/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹30–60 L |
| Time to launch | 4–6 months |
The store is straightforward to build. The hard part is the two-sided start, because producers won't list without buyers and rappers won't browse without good beats. You also need contracts that hold up yet read simply, and a way to deal with stolen beats uploaded by the wrong person.
No sector licence is needed to run a beat store. Copyright paperwork and payments are where you need care.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't trust AI to decide who owns a beat in a dispute. A match is a flag for a person to review, not proof.
Want to work out the AI layer for Chordshare? Talk to Yash →
This is a fit for a founder inside the Indian hip-hop scene who knows producers by name. If you're an outsider then it is a poor fit, plain and simple. First prove that 50 producers will list and that their buyers actually prefer a written licence to a DM deal.
Plan for roughly ₹30–60 L, mostly the platform, contract drafting and recruiting producers.
No sector licence. You need written licences under the Copyright Act, a licensed payment aggregator for UPI and DPDP compliance.
Yes, but a US marketplace already leads globally in dollars. Your edge is local currency, local payments and contracts in local languages, so build where those are missing and check local copyright rules first.
The free Chordshare validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the copyright and contract checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for producers and rappers, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Chordshare or something close to it? The make-or-break work is getting enough good producers listed before buyers arrive, and that's the kind of thing I help founders with. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.