The best tools to find royalty free music for your videos
Getting royalty-free music is an essential element for any marketing strategy requiring video content. Otherwise, you’ll be in many legal troubles, wasting precious work hours in a couple of seconds. If your main goal is getting a steady income from Youtube, knowing where to get royalty-free music should be priority. If it isn’t, well there isn’t much else to do.
As you may know, currently there are tons of content formats. From there, it depends on context, the platform used and the message, some are better than others. Why? Because the brain processes every format differently.
However, if there is one thing that’s very clear is that the video has become the king of content. And will be for many years to come.
To begin with, the video is becoming the booming trend this year. But considering its importance for content marketing, it isn’t surprising. As shown by many statistics about the subject:
- 72% of companies sharing videos in their content marketing campaigns get more conversions. But also 76% of this number shows that video format offers one of the highest ROI.
- Unbouce data show that videos increase conversion rate by 80%.
But, why is this format so popular?
It’s easier to transmit emotion through video
And it’s all thanks to the combination of image and sound.
You see, a study from the McGill University states that the human brain deciphers sound associated with emotions faster than any other type of content. Here’s why.
For example, picture this, you are staring at an ad that is trying to convey humor and happiness. In this case, you’ll receive that sensation much faster if the content includes sound, such as laughter and a happy tune. The addition of music gives context to the whole video and what it’s trying to convey. This way, emotion is directly transmitted without raising doubts or misunderstandings.
On the other hand, the same study showed that the brain only needs a tenth of a second to recognize what are the emotions associated with the sounds. Whether they were happy or sad emotions.
Definitely, you’ll need to start adding the sound element if you want your videos to have the power they need for your strategies. And for that, from now on you should be taking notes.
Where to find royalty-free music?
First, you need to understand that finding free music for your videos isn’t the same as finding royalty-free music. Free music is easily accessible through many free platforms. But this doesn’t mean they are royalty-free. However, royalty-free music means that anyone can use it without any legal repercussions, so you’ll just have to buy it. Does this mean all royalty-free music platforms require a paid subscription?
The answer is no. But not all of them are free.
1.- Youtube audio library
In the “Create” tab on YouTube, you’ll find an audio library with royalty-free music. What’s great about this, is that it compiles a huge list of songs in different genres, from Dance & Electronic to Country & Folk.
You can access the library and use any song for your videos without the need to pay for them, as the music is a mix of Creative Common and Public Domain tracks.
It’s a very intuitive library. You just need to use the search bar to find the tune that fits the content of your video. As a matter of fact, you can use a custom search using the mood you want to convey. Meaning, you can use “calm”, “dramatic” or “joyful”. But also, you can make a search using the duration of your video. That way you’ll make sure it will fit your video.
2.- Incompetech
Incompetech has a great selection of royalty-free music. In total, it has more than 2.000 tracks created by the composer, Kevin MacLeod, available for free, forever, as long as you give credit to the composer and his website.
Also, the platform organizes songs in playlists ordered by genre, such as “Disco and Lounge” or “Classic Rock”. But it also has a “Movie tracks fragments” where you’ll get tracks that fits “Horror”, “Mistery” or “Noire” themes, just to give you some examples. Also, there’s music from around the world, inspired by African and Brazilian tunes for example.
3.- Jamendo
Jamendo is the ideal platform to download free royalty-free music for commercial videos.
It’s a community where artists share their royalty-free music. Allowing the user to download the songs for free.
The platform has more than 350.000 songs available for you. But if you want to use their songs for commercial purposes, you’ll have to pay for the license.
4.- Audionity
Audionity is defined as “the first independent community of Spanish composers providing royalty-free music. It’s a community created as a direct competitor to SGAE, where you’ll be able to get royalty-free music for a price.
5.- Free Music Archive
The WFMU radio channel from the U.S.A, shares royalty-free music for free. Their Music for video section offers tracks from many genres, there you’ll find music using Creative Commons licenses.
Some of the tracks are only to be used for noncommercial purposes, others require a fee, etc. However, you can use Licenses as a filter. So, if you need a royalty-free song for your video marketing strategy, just deactivate the “noncommercial purposes” box.
6.- SoundCloud
You are probably familiar with SoundCloud. Music composers and DJs use it to upload and share their music. So there’s a wide selection of tracks available, but it isn’t always easy to find the right one.
However, SoundCloud could become your most used platform for your video campaigns. As a matter of fact, you can filter if you want to search for tracks with or without licenses.
One more thing, it comes with a social element. Meaning, when you play a song you’ll be able to see the number of “likes” it has.
7.- Musopen
Musopen is slightly different than the other previous options because all the royalty-free music you’ll find here is classical music.
You can search by instrument, composer or author.
8.- Envato Market
Also known as AudioJungle, Envato Market put at your disposition a wide selection of royalty-free music, but for a price.
The platform has a global community of people who upload their own songs. So you’ll be able to search for songs by category, popular, new songs, etc.
The website also comes with a very important element, the music kits. These kits provide modular songs, so you’ll be able to customize them yourself. This is an amazing category if you want to add your touch to the music for your videos.
9.- Dig.ccMixter
You’ll find on this platform many tracks for commercial purposes, even for video games. As a matter of fact, if you plan to add a gamification element, this could be the best solution.
So the authors upload their tracks and you’ll be able to download and use their royalty-free songs for a fee.
10.- Partners in Rhyme
This is a very popular site among video editors, not only for the ones who need royalty-free songs but also for the ones who edit them. In their music catalog, you’ll find royalty-free songs as well as public domain songs. And as with the other platforms, you’ll be able to choose between free and paid tracks, obviously, the latter offers greater possibilities of customization to create a unique video.
11.- Free Sound Track Music
This is one of the most well-known platforms by people who are looking for background music for their videos. Especially for YouTube. And this one is ideal because they offer a wide selection of free royalty-free mp3 songs, they also offer sound effects.
The recordings that come with a “free” tag can be used without the need to pay for a license fee, as long as you give credit to the composer and include their URL in the credits of your video. And the songs with a “1 credit” tags can be purchased and downloaded by using credits.
As you can see, there are many options when you are looking for free royalty-free music for your videos. But if you think you don’t have enough time or this isn’t the thing for you, you can always use a little help from influencers.
When it comes to this, Antevenio offers the ideal solution when you are trying to reach your target audience, with the help of Branded & Content Marketing.
