Royalty Free Music Sites for Video & Film – where are the best places to find tracks to place with your videos?

I was a professional composer for about 20 years. So as a filmmaker I have some understanding of how music rights work. If you are intending to make films commercially, it will help you to know a bit about the legal side.

The trickiest thing is finding something that is well written and produced and fits the mood of your video.

As a filmmaker who doesn’t have too much time to write music anymore, I find myself looking for low cost options. Hunting the web for affordable music for your film or video takes time. So, here’s some of the best resources out there.

Before you go looking at the YouTube music and sound FX library below, why not search YouTube itself? Just like us film and video makers, there are enthusiastic and talented composers out there, trying to get credits. Put “royalty free music” or a similar search term into YouTube’s search and see what turns up.

You will find a range of composers and songwriters, offering their work (you might want to make sure it IS their work before using it). They are offering you a range of deals, from completely free “just credit and link to me” to those offering tracks for single use purchase.

Some of these composers make it really easy for you, even offering a link to a high quality file, like .wav. Whereas some will offer a lesser quality, such as a .mp3 file.

This is a huge and growing resource. The quality of the music is mixed, as you would expect. Indeed, just like videos on YouTube.

Again, the tracks are offered with varying conditions (they’re all zero cost). Some tracks you can simply download and use. Some require you to credit the author.

The files offered for download are only available in the .mp3 format. But they are free, so we can’t complain.

There are 2 tabs: Music and Sound Effects. With music, you can select tracks by mood and genre and other filters. With sound effects, you can choose from a range of categories, from “alarms” to “weather”.

YouTube Audio Library

When we had Chris Bergoch at MoMo to do a masterclass and Q&A, the co-writer and co-producer of Tangerine and The Florida Project, I asked where they got the music for Tangerine, considering they were on a tight budget. He said they searched SoundCloud, found tracks they liked and offered the artists a couple hundred dollars for the use.

You know, the internet is awash with content. Some of it is good. By people who are not famous. You can just ask to use it, you never know.

SoundCloud

4. Other recommendations

In our mobile filmmaker group, a member has put forward a suggestion:

Bensound.com

Bensound say: “You can use Bensound’s music available under the Creative Commons License (with the black download button) in your multimedia project (online videos, websites, animations, etc.) for free as long as you credit Bensound.com.”

Bensound.com

5. Subscription services

There are companies that provide a library of music for a subscription fee (monthly, yearly). Obviously, this is only going to be a choice for you if you have some money to burn or you are intending to produce content commercially (so the music becomes part of your expenses). If you’re going to be needing a lot of music, then this option might make sense for you.

When I was a composer, I wrote music for a publishing company that provided “off the shelf” music for film and TV production. It was (and probably still is) called “library music” or “muzak”, which was something of a derogatory label. At the time, people looked down on it as inferior “hack work”. And once you made your living as a library music composer, it kind of precluded you from getting the high profile jobs. You’re doing “lift music” so therefore you must be average, was the assumption.

Thing is, we were often required to provide music that sounded a bit like a famous track or artist. So, in a sense it was hack work. We did learn an awful lot about music production, though. Stripping famous tracks down and trying to replicate their sounds.

Sometimes we’d get a request for something similar to an artist we didn’t much like. But then after days of trying to replicate the sound and finding it to be not as easy as it at first seemed, we’d learn a new respect for the artist and their producers.

Soundstripe is TheTechReviewer’s “Editor’s Choice” for subscription music libraries. And, importantly, the rights to use the music you have downloaded during your subscription, do not end if you decide to end your subscription.

“Each time you download a song for final use from the site, it is in perpetuity which means any song you license and use in projects you create while you’re a Soundstripe member, remain legally licensed forever and ever, amen.”

Soundstripe

Recommended by smartphone filmmaker Adrian Jeffs, Artlist offers unlimited access to their library of music for $16.60/month ($199/yr billed annually).

Artlist.io

6. Single use services

If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, you can purchase tracks individually. One of the most well-known platforms is Pond5, who also do stock video, sound effects, after effects templates and more.

The prices vary, but £17 seems to be the cheapest you can purchase a track for. This would buy you a license to use the track which “Includes all Commercial Video, Photos, and Illustrations, plus Music, SFX, After Effects Templates…” If you want to use the track on a documentary TV or feature film, you need to add £82 to the price (total £99).

Audiojungle is another well-known service. They have both a subscription and a single-purchase option. Prices start as low as $5 per track. When you go to purchase a track, you have to select the level of license you want.

The $5 purchase will get you a the basic web-only deal, which essentially means just for your YouTube videos or low-visibility films (which includes film festival screenings). The license goes up to through 5 stages to the full deal, which would include a theatrical release of your work and national broadcast. As an example, the $5 track goes up to $180 for the full license.

So, these are some examples to give you an idea of what is on offer out there, in terms of “royalty free” music. There are several platforms like this, offering stock footage, music, and more. And all for varying prices.

There are even bigger publishing companies like Warner Chappell (who happen to stock all our music).

But if you want something more unique and individual, you could search out composers and, if you like what they do, contact them directly and haggle.

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