Top 5 Royalty Free Music Sites
Can I use whatever music I want in my YouTube videos? How about on my Facebook business page, or how about for this commercial that is going to be on a client’s website?
Yep, those are the typical questions video editors, videographers, content creators, or whatever you like calling it are asking. That is the question you ask yourself time and time again. What music can I put into my video projects without the fear of getting sued or fined or having my video demonetized on Youtube. The answer is Royalty Free music or Copyright Free music(same thing). For music to be Royalty free doesn’t necessarily mean it will be free to use, although sometime it is. What it means is that you can use the music for your video project because you are being giving a license to use it.
We are going to take a look at some of the best websites that offer you this kind of music and will keep you out of trouble.
I have personally used soundstripe.com for a number of years for Youtube content and also for numerous wedding videos, and I have always been impressed by the large amounts of music on their platform and also how inexpensive the monthly subscription costs.
Pricing/Licensing It’s $12.50/month for Music Only |20.50/month for Music & SFX | 31.00/month for Music & SFX Teams – I guess this one would be good if you have a team of editors working for you. If you’re at that level, you’re a boss! Congrats!
Anyway, one of the most impressive things about their music is the licensing structure. You can use the music for whatever project you like. It can be a commercial for a small client, larger corporation, wedding, church, school…you name it. It doesn’t matter. Your monthly membership will cover it.
Song Selection and Search – I really like the way the website is laid out. There are a variety of playlists on the site that make it easier to find music for your particular project. For instance, if you are a wedding filmmaker like me they actually have a play list for wedding music. They even have playlists for Yoga, Corporate Interviews, and Energetic Intros just to name a few. It really helps to find the right piece of music for whatever subject you are creating content for.
Bonus Features: Like I mentioned already you not only have a huge library of Royalty free music, but you also have access to over 50,000 sound effects if you select one of the mid to high level memberships. Additionally Soundstripe.com also offers Stock Video Footage as well, so if you need a professional clip to add to your project and you don’t have the budget or time to shoot it, Soundstripe has you covered.
Also when it comes to songs with vocals Soundstripe also has the lyrics to the songs. Who cares right? But I care because sometimes when I am looking for a song for a wedding couple the lyrics matter. At a glance I can get an idea of what the song is about by skimming through the song lyrics. Also whenever I license a song, I get multiple versions of the song to use. I can download the vocal version, instrumentals, or even instrumentals with background vocals only. It really helps to have access to other versions because sometimes I like the instrumentals but I don’t want the lyrics.
If you are interested in trying out Soundstripe, please use my affiliate link Soundstripe Membership and use the code MIKETURNER to receive a 10% discount on your subscription.
FyrFly formely known as Song Freedon is another platform that I like. There are quite a few similarities between FyrFly and Soundstripe, but you will notice a few differences, so keep reading.
Pricing/Licensing – Cost is 199/yr that’s roughly 16.50 per month. That’s not bad. The licensing is pretty good too. All of the songs except for premium(more on Premium music in a moment) can be used for social media, weddings, independent films, real estate videos and corporate projects. Definitely cool. The Premium songs can be used with wedding and life events and are limited to use by companies in the United States. Please visit fyrfly.com/pricing for more info on the specifics, but I definitely feel all of this is acceptable.
Song Selection and Search – There is a good selection of music on there. It does not have instrumental for most vocal songs, but one of the coolest features is that you can find popular music on this site from your favorite artists. It will cost $35 extra, but perhaps if you are like me and shoot wedding videos and your couple wants a song from Bruno Mars, it might be on there. I also saw songs from Dan + Shay, Ed Sheeran, Christina Perri, Andy Grammar, and Jason Derulo, to name a few.
Bonus Features – Now here’s the deal – not only will have access to sound effects on Fyrfly, but you also get to use their video player too. It’s similar to using Vimeo or YouTube, but this video player is being hosted by Amazon. There is 4k video playback and the videos are less compressed when uploaded, so the image is clean and less altered. As wedding videographer, I like the sounds of that. Also you can embed the videos on a website, set them to public, unlisted or password protected. You can even set them to Private, so only you can see them.
Conclusion – Fyrfly is priced right, it has really good music, the licensing is flexible and simple. and it gives you a really good video player. It could be something that you should look into for your projects.
Click here and use coupon code – mediahammock to get 25% off of your membership.
Envato Elements is really interesting because it not only has Copyright free music, it also had stock pictures, video and a whole lot more. We will dive a little deeper into that later, but for now, let’s start with the price.
Pricing/Licensing – It is certainly a really good value at $16.50/month. The licensing is just as simple as Soundstripe and FyrFly because you can pretty much use any of the various items on Envato for any kind of project you got going – that includes personal and professional.
Song Selection and Search – I find the music is decent and there is a huge selection – over 60,000 songs to choose from. That’s pretty impressive, however there are no curated lists for weddings, workouts, corporate, church, etc.. I find these to be extremely helpful on some of the other sites because they can save you a lot of time. In terms of the music for weddings, I’m not a fan but if you are simply looking for b-roll music for your YouTube videos, a generic instrumental for a commercial, interview, or testimonial, this could be a very good option for you.
Bonus Features – And now we get into one of the strongest parts to Envato Elements Platform – it isn’t only music, it is graphic templates, video templates, stock photos, stock video, web templates, fonts and even more. It’s absolutely crazy how much they give you for the money. I was blown away by it. I was also very impressed with the selection of the stock video too.
Conclusion – I’m not sure there is a better deal out there if you need some of the items I just mentioned in addition to your copyright free music. It’s a one stop shop for a content creator of any kind.
If you’re interested in Envato Elements click here.
Music Bed is certainly up there when it comes to music selection, quality, and ease of use, but they are going to make you pay for it. Come and take a walk with me. I’ll show you around.
Pricing/Licensing – I mean at 19/mo, it’s not terrible if you are Social media content creator, but if you are making commercials for smaller businesses you will have to shell out 99/month. You can save a little if you pay for the full year in advance though. It certainly is worth it if you are a content creator going for the invidual plan. But if you do other client work that requires music, you’ll still have to pay $1079 for the year (Ouchie). I hope you get enough commercial gigs per year to justify the cost. For wedding professionals the price is 79.99/month or 59.99 month if decide to pay in full at $719.88.
Song Selection and Search – When you go to this site and listen to the quality of the music, you will like it. It’s really good on here. If you go to their placements page to see samples of where the music has been used you will see places like McDonalds, Audi, New Balance, Powerade, L.L. Bean…it’s pretty amazing. However for me, this one has to be my least favorite due to the pricing. Also you will like the search features and the curated play list. You can filter songs in a number of ways, genre, artist, mood and instruments to name a few. I love when these platforms have this feature. It makes it so much easier to find that special track.
Bonus Features – You can get the song with vocals or the instrumentals. I love this for reasons that I already mentioned about soundstripe.com
Conclusion – I like music bed because it makes finding you music easy due to their easy to use search features and curated playlist. I also love the fact that you can get the instrumentals for certain music tracks. I think that is extremely important, but I really don’t love the price. Keep in mind that I am extremely frugal and my business is extremely small. All-in-all there is great music here and if you are dealing with higher ticket projects, then this is really just a drop in the bucket, and is more than worth it.
Check out Music bed here.
Epidemic Sound came onto my radar because of Peter McKinnon. I subscribe to his YouTube Channel and I’ve heard him promote it in the past. Peter’s content is really good, so I figured if Peter uses it, then it can’t be bad, and I think I was right.
Pricing/Licensing – To start of there is 15/month personal plan for Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch and Podcasts. It is 49/month for a freelancer or business creating commercial productions. You would need this if you are posting videos directly to a websites, digital ads, and any other Social Media Platforms that were not mentioned in the Personal membership. And then there is the Enterprise use which would be for things such as movies or tv. For that you would need to request a quote. Code word for expensive.
Song Selection and Search – 30,000 music tracks and 60,000 sound effects. From the songs that I selected the music sounds pretty good. There is a good selection and it would be highly unlikely to not find a music track that could breathe life into your video. From the music page you can select from multiple options, you can choose your genre, mood, featured or Albums along the top of the page or you can scroll to the middle and find even more categories to navigate you to your type of song such as Electronic, Hip Hop, Small Emotions, Pop, Acoustic, etc. I like this feature personally. Once you choose they give you even more attributes to help you drill down even further, things like happy, quirky, floating, sexy(behave yourself), and peaceful.
Bonus Features – The only one that I see is the sound effects.
Conclusion – I think if you are content creator, Epidemic Sound will give you access to some good music and sound effects for a pretty good price, but if you are making web commercials short films, documentaries, this one may start to add up a little.
Check out Epidemic Sound here.
And if you interested in checking out a couple of free sources of music and more paid options check out this video:
about Custom Made Evening Dress for Wedding
Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the video to make your point.
You clearly know what youre talking about, why throw away your
intelligence on just posting videos to your weblog when you could be
giving us something enlightening to read?
I¡¦m not positive where you are getting your information, however good topic. I needs to spend some time learning much more or working out more. Thanks for excellent info I used to be searching for this information for my mission.