If you are a regular YouTube creator, you would understand the pain to find royalty-free music for your YouTube channel as YouTube doesn’t let you use copyrighted music in the background. If you use copyrighted music, YouTube will give you a strike and mute your video. If you get three strikes, your channel will be suspended. That’s why you should always opt to use royalty-free music. The right music can set the tone for your video and also helps to keep the audience engaged to your video.
But what music to use and from where? Before going into the sources of royalty-free music, let us first understand what exactly royalty-free means. Royalty-free music is an important part of music licensing- it allows buyers to use the music for a variety of purposes. Creators can use the music in film, television, radio, or other media after paying a small fee upfront, without having to pay royalties to the owner of the music. Some musicians and music producers will let you use their content for free. They do, however, maintain the song’s copyright.
Let’s look at some of the options where you can pick up royalty-free music from-
Bensound
Bensound is a safe and secure website that allows you to download and use different types of royalty-free music ranging from cinematic and electronica to jazz and rock. Not only is this site helpful for YouTubers, it also helps in creation of other content like films or podcasts.
There are two ways to use music from Bensound in your videos. One, you can download any title for free and then credit the site. If you don’t want to credit the site, you can buy the Bensound Pro License for 34€ For One Track or 139€ For Subscription (All Tracks). For more details, click on the following link- https://www.bensound.com/licensing
Filmstro
Filmstro is a music library that has been around since 2016. It provides royalty-free music for a variety of purposes. The library is filtered according to different genres and includes a special gaming and video genre, apart from an instrumental palette. New tracks are released every week and one special section specifies tracks endorsed by the staff. Additionally, Filmstro also has an app available exclusively for iPhone.
Filmstro is 100% YouTube cleared and allows free limited downloads if you sign in to the website. However, for a better experience and unlimited access to the entire library, there exists a variety of plans (including one specially catering to YouTubers). For more details click on the following link- https://filmstro.com/pricing
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YouTube Audio Library
The best source of royalty-free music you can find on the internet is probably on YouTube itself. YouTube Studio has a feature that allows you to use royalty-free music without paying any fee whatsoever.
You can filter the entire library according to track title, genre, duration, mood or artist name. Some of the titles require attribution, but most don’t. The music library is quite extensive with about 1,404 titles ranging from something as simple as Car passing (sound effect) to the complex Piano Trap Beethoven (Hip-Hop and Rap title with dark mood).
You can access the library through the YouTube Studio (which can be accessed when you choose to upload videos from YouTube’s official website- https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCQnlAV-0oKspZUT-jmtp5_Q/music
free-stock-music.com
The site is pretty simple and provides an extensive library (3103 titles, more than twice the size of YouTube’s audio library). You can filter the library according to categories, lengths, license type, moods, and even tempos.
The site is completely free, but you will have to give credits to the site in your video. Here’s a link to the site- https://www.free-stock-music.com/
