I was wondering about using beat tags to "watermark" your music. How do you balance sharing your music and protecting it?

Man I've heard so many mixtapes where the producer's tag is going on in the background and the thieving rapper is just rapping louder over the top of it...point being, if people want to steal your beats that you post publicly online, they will do it and you can't stop them, even if it sounds like shit later because they simply don't care. Because of this, I post beats online that I'm not trying to sell and even ones that I am I will still post occasionally for feedback, for a beat battle, etc with the thought being that people who need to steal low quality mp3's off of the internet probably aren't the type of people that will get popular enough to ruin your opportunity to sell a particular beat.
I like to try to sell beats in person as much as possible for a number of reasons: you can control the listening environment better, you can discuss creating a "song" together instead of simply selling a "beat," and you can watch his reaction and hear his lyrical ideas to see if you even want to sell it to him.
Back to the original question, I don't use beat tags on my own beats because it sounds annoying and I know that it won't deter the desperate out there. I like to have my beat sound great and undistracting because it will improve my chances of actually selling it. This is all just my opinion, of course.

I can't stand em, it's unnecessary...
Coming from a sample based background it would be entirely hypocritical to prevent others from making use of your music in one way or another. I wouldn't be happy if my samples were littered with the original artist repeating their name over the music.
Tagging beats is for guys who make bangers on myspace simply for the purpose of selling said beat...Just set out to make beautiful music and release it as such.

word up

That nailed it for me. Thanks.

It's corny.

I agree with johnny,

anybody that knows how to cut and paste audio can easily just patch that shit together between airhorns... If you're afraid of people stealing your beats, just send them a recording of the beat playing out the speaker, sampled with your internal mic it's just enough to understand what it sounds like, and too 'bedroom' to be a final cut... they'll buy the HQ version if they like it.

dilla tagged his beat tapes

Dilla did a lot of things. That's not exactly great way to make decisions though..

If people are going to steal your music, what are you going to do about it? Nothing. Big corporations throw millions of dollars at politicians and computer programmers to keep it from happening. If they can't prevent it, how the fuck will you?

Just be flattered someone thought your shit was dope enough to redistribute and maybe even use to spit on.