Music is an essential element in video production. Music adds feeling, atmosphere, and excitement to videos and most good videos use good music to help improve their overall quality. If you’re new to video production or are curious how music restrictions work this post will give you a simple breakdown of music and websites available to you to get royalty free music with a focus on posting videos on YouTube.
YouTube has an algorithm that reads music attached to videos uploaded. If the song is registered YouTube flags your video. You video will still be able to be played and viewed by others but you will not be able to monetize your videos that contain music you do not have the rights to. Getting the rights to music means that you receive permission from the owner of the song to use that song in your video. This is extremely challenging and expensive to do with mainstream music.
A way to get around this issue is to use Royalty Free Music Libraries. These sites contain lists of songs available for creators to download and use in their videos with no copyright constraints. Some of these sites are free to use and others require users to pay a fee for each song they download. Below is a list of 10 Royalty Free music libraries that can be used for your videos on YouTube allowing you to monetize all your videos posted with the songs attached.
10 Royalty Free Music Libraries
- YouTube Audio Library (Free) – YouTube’s own royalty-free music selection. It’s the most convenient option for YouTube videos.
- NoCopyrightSounds (Free) – A YouTube channel that has a lot of hip-hop/electronic/dubstep beats available as free downloads to use in your videos.
- AudioPad (Free) – Another YouTube channel that hosts their music on YouTube and provides links to free MP3 downloads.
- Incompetech (Free) – One of the most popular royalty-free music sites ran by Kevin MacLeod. Tons of YouTubers use this site for their music.
- AudioNautix (Free) – With a very similar layout to Incompetech, AudioNautix has a vast amount of tracks available to use in your projects.
- Josh Woodward (Free) – Josh Woodward is a musician who offers a lot of guitar-centric songs. Good resource for acoustic and pop rock music.
- BenSound (Free) – Another good resource that is run by a single artist. Clean layout that has core categories to choose from.
- Purple Planet (Free/Paid) – This site has royalty free music that can be downloaded for free or paid for. Definitely has some cool tracks.
- Audio Jungle (Paid) – Popular site that has a huge selection of professional music tracks. Premium songs for a low price.
- Music Bed (Paid) – A freaking beautiful site that has some fantastic audio tracks from talented artists. Recommended for cinematic videos.