Sourcing unique royalty free music is essential to elevate your content and captivate your audience.
Whether you're a creator, filmmaker, YouTuber, podcaster, or game developer, the right soundtrack can make all the difference in your creative project.
Below, we’ll dive into the best royalty-free music sites that offer an extensive library of high-quality soundtracks tailored to fit any mood, genre, or theme.
10 Best Royalty-Free Music Sites
Before we proceed, it’s important to note that royalty-free background music doesn’t necessarily mean that the music is entirely free.
Most of the time, you’ll need to pay a one-time licensing fee for the music track so you can continue using it anytime and anywhere.
Now, let’s get into the best sites to find soundtracks and add life to your creations!
SOUNDRAW
SOUNDRAW is an AI-powered music generator suited for creators and artists who want to create music for different purposes.
Unlike regular stock music sites where you choose a fitting song from a large audio library, SOUNDRAW works differently.
You simply instruct the AI music tool by choosing a specific genre, mood, theme, tempo, and track length.
In a few seconds, SOUNDRAW will generate dozens of audio variations with a similar sound you can use in your creative work.
Then, choose the best option and edit it to better suit your taste. Use the built-in editor to customize your song and ensure it perfectly fits your content. When you’re ready, just hit download and add it to your content!
With SOUNDRAW, there’s no need to spend hours scouring a large audio collection to find the best royalty free music. Use any tracks you download forever even if you unsubscribe!
When talking about using AI to get the best royalty free music an important factor to consider is how it’s trained. Other AI music generators are facing heavy legal scrutiny for training their AI on copyrighted works. SOUNDRAW is only trained on music produced in-house so you never have to worry about who really owns the music you’re creating.
Pricing
SOUNDRAW offers monthly subscriptions for both Creators and Artists. Here are the different plans:
Free: Sign up and get started
Creator Plan: $19.99/month
Artist Plan: $39.99/month
Artist Pro: $59.99/month
Artist Unlimited: $99.99/month
Epidemic Sound
Epidemic Sound offers an extensive, curated collection of royalty-free music and sound effects to bring your story to life.
The library contains songs in different genres, including action, adventure, and corporate. Depending on your goals, you can download high-quality soundtracks that fit the style and mood of your content.
Epidemic Sound is a great fit for creators who need access to diverse, thematic soundtracks for their video content.
Pricing
Epidemic Sound offers monthly pricing
- Personal: $17.99/month
- Commercial: $59.99/month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
- 30-day free trial available
Note: In addition to the monthly subscription cost, you pay a license fee to acquire all legal rights if you want to use it after canceling your subscription.
Pond5
Whether you’re a filmmaker, YouTuber, or Instagram creator, Pond5’s library of 500,000 high-quality, royalty-free tracks will save you time and solve your music needs.
The site offers royalty-free stock music grouped according to genres, themes, and moods for every creative project, starting at just $5 per track.
When you visit the site, you can search with keywords and find an ideal song for your content. You can also select any desired theme, mood, or genre from the list and see tracks in that category.
Pond5 offers other forms of multimedia, such as royalty-free stock images, video footage, aftereffects, and sound effects.
Pricing
You can pay for the license of an individual track starting at $5 per track. Pond5 also offers subscription tiers to enjoy lower prices and flexibility.
- Individual tracks: Starting at $5 per track
- Music: $25/month ($2.50 per item)
- Music & SFX: $30/month ($3 per item)
- Footage Plus: $199/month ($19.90 per item)
-> Try Pond5
Artlist
Artlist provides creators with a collection of creative assets, including royalty-free music, SFX, stock footage, plugins, and video editing software.
Their database contains thousands of royalty-free songs from different indie artists. It is updated daily and is used by top companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Toyota.
You can browse the audio tracks and search by mood, video theme, genre, and instrument. Furthermore, sort through the collections by BPM and duration to quickly find what you need for your next project.
Artlist also has a Spotlight page to view trending content and curated playlists based on a particular theme. Generally, I found the site easy to navigate, and I love the advanced filtering option to sort through music tracks according to the instrument used.
Pricing
Based on your creative needs, Artlist offers various subscription plans. All plans are billed annually.
- Music & SFX Social: $14.99/month
- Music & SFX Pro: $16.58/month
- Footage & Templates: $29.99/month
- Artlist Max: $39.99/month
-> Try Artlist
PremiumBeat
Owned and backed by global stock image site Shutterstock, PremiumBeat provides a library of studio-quality royalty-free music tracks and sound effects for your video, podcast, game, or app.
The tracks are categorized by genre, mood, artists, instruments, beats per minute, and duration. Music industry experts from high-quality, reputable brands and production houses curated and cleared all tracks for copyright.
You can search for your desired background music using a keyword. You can also browse the collection of songs arranged by genre, mood, or instrument type.
In addition, PremiumBeat has a curated Editor’s Pick playlist that features the best soundtracks from various artists and genres, so you can quickly choose. The filtering options also make searching pretty easy.
Pricing
PremiumBeat offers flexible single-track license options for unlimited use within your project. These options include:
- Creator: $39
- Standard: $59
- Premium: $199
- Business: $999
Bensound
Bensound is a royalty-free music site that offers hundreds of tracks for use as background music for video content.
Benjamin Tissot, a composer and musician based in France, owns the site. The music tracks come in different genres, including pop, folk, urban, jazz, rock, cinematic, corporate, and electronica.
On Bensound, you can search with keywords or sort the collection by genre, mood, theme, instrument, energy level, and duration.
What I love best is the free licensing option. To use certain free soundtracks under the Creative Commons License, you must credit Bensound.com in your video description to avoid copyright claims. If you don’t want to give any credits or need fewer restrictions, you must purchase a license starting from €34 per track.
Pricing
You can credit Bensound.com and use the music track for free!. If you want to be locked in and have full site access, there are three subscription plans:
- Single track license: €34 per track
- Standard: €9.99/month
- Extended: €19.99/month
- Premium: €39.99/month
-> Try Bensound
Soundstrip
Soundstripe is trusted by thousands of video creators to find stock music, sound effects, and videos for their creative projects.
The royalty-free music site has over 40,000 sound effects, over 50 well-curated playlists, and partnerships with 80+ artists worldwide to produce songs in different genres. Some of their big customers include tech giants Microsoft and Amazon.
You can filter tracks by genre, mood, pace, instruments, key, vocals, duration, and beats per minute to see what fits. In addition, Soundstripe lets you create your playlists, follow other artists you love, and save your favorite songs.
Pricing:
Soundstripe offers three affordable subscription plans:
- Creator: $19.99/month
- Pro: $39.99/month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
YouTube Audio Library
You’ve likely heard and used the YouTube Audio Library if you're a YouTuber.
Inside YouTube's official sound library, you’ll find thousands of royalty-free music and sound effects. The tracks are listed in different genres, such as hip-hop, dance, country, folk, and electronic.
YouTube Audio Library lets you filter the tracks by genre, mood, duration, artist name, and license type to quickly find what fits. You can also search with keywords such as corporate, calm, dramatic, or any other mood.
All music tracks use a combination of public domain works and a Creative Commons license. So, you can use any track for free in your YouTube video or Shorts, but sometimes you have to attribute the creator.
Pricing
Free. You only need a YouTube account to access the YouTube Audio Library.
AudioJungle (Envato Elements)
AudioJungle provides a library with millions of royalty-free background music tracks for you to choose from.
Also known as Envato Elements, the platform has a global community of musicians and sound engineers who produce stock audio in different genres. Whether rock, pop, cinematic, or heavy metal, you can find any royalty-free music you desire.
Simply browse the audio tracks by category, most popular, or recent items. Once you find what you like, you can preview and download it. AudioJungle also bundles single tracks into a media kit or music pack, making it easy for creators to find varied but related sounds for their projects.
Apart from music, Envato Elements provides access to other creative assets such as graphic templates, videos, sound effects, stock images, and website templates.
Pricing
You pay per music track, starting from $1.
Storyblocks
Storyblocks offers a library of over 100,000 royalty-free music for creators to add life to their video content.
The site partners with some of the best musicians and composers to curate original soundtracks in various genres and moods.
To find an audio track, you can browse by mood, genre, or instrument. Otherwise, search with keywords to get relevant track suggestions.
One good thing is that there are no download limits. With an active subscription plan, you can download all the stock audio you want.
In addition to music, Storyblocks provides images, sound effects, and 4K footage that can be useful for your personal or commercial creative projects.
Pricing
To use Storyblocks and enjoy unlimited access to their ever-growing media library, subscribe to any pricing plan:
- Starter: $15/month
- Unlimited All Access: $30/month
- Pro: $35/month
Note: No free downloads available.
Our Top Pick: SOUNDRAW
Surprise, surprise – Our top pick for best royalty free music is SOUNDRAW. While all these platforms offer excellent options for royalty free music, SOUNDRAW stands out as the top pick for creators looking for unique, tailored tracks.
Here's why:
- AI-powered music generation: Create custom tracks instead of searching through pre-made libraries
- Time-saving: Generate music that fits your project's mood, genre, and length in seconds
- Truly unique: Each track is created on-demand, ensuring originality for your content
- Copyright safe: Trained only on in-house produced music, eliminating concerns about copyright issues
- Customization: Easy-to-use interface allows for fine-tuning of generated tracks
- Versatility: Suitable for various content types including videos, games, and podcasts
- Cost-effective: Unlimited use of downloaded tracks, even after unsubscribing
While SOUNDRAW is our top recommendation, each royalty free music site listed offers unique benefits. Explore these options to find the perfect soundtrack that resonates with your audience and levels up your content.
