26+ Best Royalty-Free Music Websites: Updated 2023!

Last updated on February 13th, 2023 at 02:41 am

I think we all know how important music can be in any video production in order to keep your audience engaged; Ignore the music and the audience ignores you.

However, hiring a commercial music producer to create tracks for your videos can be a bit expensive.

This is where royalty-free stock music sites come into play.

There are dozens of websites out there where you can get your hands on tracks that can be used for videos, to be played in restaurants, remixes, TV shows, and many other things.

In this post, I will list the best Websites where you can get royalty-free music, both for free or by paying for each track, or for a monthly subscription.

What is Royalty-free Music?

Before going any further we need to set the record straight about one thing right from the start since I’ve seen a lot of confusion surrounding this topic.

This confusion seems to lie in what “is” and what “isn’t” royalty-free music.

So, here are the differences;

Royalty-free music is a sort of “stock” music that you can download and then use for videos, publicity, remixes, parody songs, or whatever else you can think of without having to pay anything for every time it gets played, but this doesn’t mean that it’s free to download.

Most of the time you will have to pay a one-time fee to download the song and THEN you will have the rights to use it as many times as you want without having to pay anything to the creator.

This means that if you purchase royalty-free music for $20, it doesn’t matter if you use it once or a million times, you won’t need to pay anything extra ever again even if you make millions off of it.

The reasons for purchasing royalty-free music are vast, but imagine that you are creating a marketing campaign and you just want some quick music to go with it and not have to worry about paying royalties later on.

This is a great way to create better campaigns, videos, etc. without having to spend too much and going through all the copyright hassle.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started with the best 26 websites that offer royalty-free music.

Best Websites for downloading Royalty-Free Stock Music

Here I will be listing all the royalty-free music sites that I think are worth considering where you can find music tracks, as well as effects, loops, and in some cases even videos & images to download.

Some of them are even 100% free, meaning that they use a creative commons license where you don’t need to pay anything to get the music or when it’s reproduced.

So, let’s get into the list!

AudioJungle (From $1)

About 1 Million tracks to choose from.

AudioJungle offers an absolute ton of royalty-free music, 998,470 tracks at the time of writing this article to be precise, that you can get for as little as $1, or even free at times.

The search engine is fantastic and the website itself is super easy to use.

Once you do a search you will be able to see the rating that the users gave each track as well as the number of downloads, and more.

You can purchase individual files or kits; Kits are a collection of pre-edited individual song sections that can be rearranged easily.

Additionally, AudioJungle offers a monthly Freebie collection that you can download and use completely for free that includes music, video effects, stock footage, stock photography, and more.

Plus, they also offer loads of tutorials that might be useful to you.

Lastly, AudioJungle is part of Envato Market, which is a creative ecosystem with over 35,000 professional designers, music makers, and developers creating all the assets you need for your projects.

Try Audio Jungle here.

Artlist (From $9.99 per month)

Best-looking site and it offers something for everyone!

Artlist has got to be the best-looking website of all the ones on this list.

It is super clean, there is no unnecessary information anywhere, finding the right song is easy since you can sort by the exact length that you need and it will list all the songs that fit.

Not only that but you can also select the mood, Video Theme, Genre, and more and it will bring up the best results for you.

As far as the pricing goes, they offer three different tiers: Personal ($9.99 per month if billed annually), Unlimited ($16.60 per month if billed annually), and Enterprise.

With these subscriptions you will get; Unlimited downloads, lifetime usage rights for commercial projects (project type depends on the plan), and all the songs are pre-checked for YouTube monetization.

I have to say, Artlist is by far the most fun- and easiest to use of all the websites I listed, so I definitely recommend you try them out. Lastly, you can get three royalty-free songs completely for free by just signing up with them here.

Try Artlist now here.

EnovoMusic ($29 up to $200)

Loads of Genres to choose from but can be expensive.

EnovoMusic offers a wide variety of royalty-free music tracks of loads of different genres.

The website is super simple to use, however when compared to AudioJungle, they don’t provide any star ratings or download count for you to quickly see how users react to them. However, they all still sound fantastic.

Additionally, they also offer discounts depending on how many tracks you purchase; the higher the number the higher the discount.

Now, as far as the pricing goes, it’s actually quite high depending on what you’re going to use the track for; If you’re planning on using the track for Social Media, YouTube, Vimeo, Podcasts, etc., then it’s only $29 per track.

However, the wider the reach, the more it’s going to cost you: Up to $200 per track.

Premium Beat ($49 up to $199)

Tracks curated by experts. Price per track starts at $49.

Premium Beat is owned by Shutterstock, which is one of the largest and best-known stock image repositories of the web.

The interface of the website is sleek and super easy to use, plus browsing all the tracks is fast and the search engine also works quite well helping you find tracks in no time.

It features a “Curated by Experts” track list where you’ll get access to some of the best tracks out there, as well as a “Trending Tracks” and “New Releases” list.

The genres range from Acoustic, Dance/Techno, Pop, all the way to Games, Film Scores, and more.

As far as the Pricing goes you have two alternatives depending on your project type;

Standard: $49 per track which is for web-based content or non-commercially distributed.

Premium: $199 for a non-web advertisement or revenue-generating content.

Lastly, what I like about this website is that it’s super clean; There’s not any unnecessary information, just the basics that you really need.

Pond5 ($15 up to $940)

Royalty-free music, sound effects, video, images, and more.

Pond5 is one of the largest royalty-free music repositories, but not only that, they also offer Video, Sound effects, After Effects, and Images.

The genres they offer are vast; from Energetic, Corporate, Ambient, etc., to Rock, Hip-Hop, and other traditional music genres.

As far as the pricing goes, it can be pretty expensive. However, they offer many alternatives such as paying for each individual file for as low as $15, or to sign up for a monthly or annual membership.

The monthly and annual memberships cost $190 and $940 respectively and allow you to download 10 files per month, with some other benefits.

Yes, this one is a bit higher priced than the previous ones I listed, but with all that, they have to offer it may be a good choice if you not only need audio tracks.

Hooksounds (Free up to $580)

Can download tracks for free for personal use.

Hooksounds is a royalty-free music website that offers a variety of tracks and genres, ranging from Originals to Cinematic, Corporate, Electronic, Ambient, Rock, and more.

They have a lot of modern-sounding and trendy tracks that were created by artists all around the world, which is exactly what most people are looking for today, especially for YouTube videos.

As far as pricing goes, you have two options; Pay for each track or a monthly subscription.

The subscription costs $29 per month and gives you a valid license for YouTube, Vimeo, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Paying for each track will set you back $24, $49, or $580 depending on the use of that track.

You can also download tracks for free but only for personal use and without any monetization.

Storyblocks ($9 up to $65)

Royalty-Free music, video, Sound Effects, images, loops, and more.

Storyblocks, just like Pond5, isn’t just a royalty-free music repository; they also have Video, Sound effects, loops, and Images.

Now, as far as the search engine goes, it’s not the best: If you search for something like “Rock” or “Rock Guitar”, some hip hop and electronic songs will also show up, which makes browsing the over 100.000 songs a bit harder than on other sites.

 You can, however, search by genre, Vocals, Tempo, and instrument, which is quite helpful.

As far as pricing goes, Storyblocks is subscription-based, and depending on your needs it will cost you $9-, $15-, and $65 per month.

The $9 plan gives you 3 downloads a month of only music, while the $15 plan offers unlimited music downloads, sound effects, and loops.

Lastly, the $65 plan offers the same as the previous plan with the addition of 4k video, After Effects Templates, Photos, and more.

Related: Also make sure to check out my list of the best websites to learn to play the guitar.

YouTube Audio Library (Free)

100% Free stock music (Requires attribution).

The YouTube Audio Library is completely Free, yes FREE, and it offers free music tracks as well as sound effects which you can use in your videos.

You can filter by genre, mood, instrument, duration, and if they require attribution or not.

To be honest, the Free YouTube library is an outstanding resource for anyone who needs music for a video and doesn’t have a huge budget, especially because the amount of music on there is just astounding.

Additionally, all the videos you create with them can be monetized with ads without any issues.

The only thing you will need to look out for with these tracks is the attribution requirements, which are specific to each track.

Soundstripe ($11.25 to $21/mo.)

Subscription-based with unlimited downloads per month.

Soundstripe is a subscription-based website, meaning that you can’t buy the right to just use a single track.

However, this means that you get unlimited downloads per month, and the price is actually damn impressive.

The website itself looks extremely good and is very easy to use; there is no unnecessary information, just the important stuff that you really need.

They also let you get three songs for free, but you need to put in your email address and you can’t choose which songs you get since they will give you three random ones.

Soundstripe has a section where they show the new artists that joined, a “This week’s Featured/Popular Playlists”, as well as a “Recently added Songs” section where you can easily see what’s new.

As far as the pricing goes, they are one of the cheapest ones out there ranging from $11.25 to $21 per month (if billed annually).

Definitely recommended!

AUDIIO ($99/yr. or $199 for lifetime access)

If you’re looking for a SoundStripe alternative where you can pay a one-time fee and be done with it, AUDIIO is a good place to start.

They offer over 5000 professionally curated tracks and consistently add between 50-100 per week, and whatever song you get, be it with the lifetime access plan or yearly membership, you get to keep as well as all of the rights.

They offer multiple genres and you can also browse the music they have by instrument, mood, video theme, bpm, instrumental only, and more.

In addition to this, they offer a wide range of sound effects as well.

As far as the pricing goes, you have 3 options: The Lifetime Music plan for $199, which only covers music, comes with unlimited downloads but doesn’t cover sound effects.

The AUDIIO Pro plan covers both music and sound effects and which you can either pay for monthly ($16.6) or yearly ($99).

Lastly, the Lifetime SFX plan gives you lifetime access and only covers sound effects. Doesn’t include music.

AUDIIO is a great alternative, especially if you use a lot of stock music tracks since you can get the Lifetime plan and never have to pay for royalty-free stock music ever again.

Music Vine ($13.99 to $19.99/mo.)

Multiple Pricing models to suit your needs.

Music vine is pretty new to the scene and doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of tracks like some of the other websites I mentioned.

At the time of writing this article, they have about 4018 tracks from 248 artists.

As far as the website goes and its ease of use, I find it excellent; You can browse by using the search function, but you can also filter by Styles (Music genre, production type, Movie Genre, etc.), Moods, Energy, Vocals, and Duration.

Now, the pricing isn’t as simple as with some of the other websites since you have loads of options to choose from like paying for a subscription or per use (Depending on what you use it for, how many people it reaches, etc., the price will be different).

The simplest way is to pay for a subscription, which will cost you between $13.99 to $19.99.

FoxiMusic ($39 up to $129)

$39 per song with increasing volume discounts.

FoxiMusic doesn’t offer a subscription-based membership, in fact, you pay for each song you download and you then have the rights to use it however you want.

They offer excellent royalty-free background music license terms for YouTube, Podcasts, Instagram Stories, and more.

One thing I don’t really like is the grid style of how the songs are displayed, I find lists to be much easier to navigate.

As far as pricing goes, they range from $39 per song if you’re going to use them for YouTube, Vimeo, Podcasts and Social Media, or $129 if you’re going to use them for TV, Radio, Games, etc.

The good news is that they also offer a discount if you purchase more than one track; from 10% all the way up to 25%.

Musicbed ($24.99 per month to $349.99 per song)

Thousands of songs, great for high-end video projects.

Musicbed, just like all stock music sites on this list, offers a ton of different tracks in various different genres, and you can also filter them by instrumental, Lyrical, instrument type, and more.

What I think sets Musicbed apart is that it also offers specific services tailored toward your project, which is why I think that it’s the best site for high-end projects (of course, this will be quite expensive as well).

Speaking of pricing, you can pay for a monthly subscription or per song/track, and the price depends on what the song is going to be used for, the size of your audience, if it’s for just you or for an enterprise, etc.

For a small content creator, the monthly subscription costs $24.99 and gives you access to unlimited songs, whereas if you’re licensing the song as an enterprise, this may cost you up to $349.99 per song.

If you’re working on a big project and need to get a service specifically tailored to your need, Musicbed is a great site to use.

Bensound (Free up to $580)

Free with attribution (no attribution requires payment).

Bensounds is a huge royalty-free music provider created by Benjamin Tissot, a composer and musician based in France, that offers loads of tracks in a variety of genres.

You can get most of the tracks for free as long as you credit Bensound, and it can be used on YouTube videos, Facebook, etc. but not on podcasts, audiobooks, and remixes.

The first time I actually downloaded a royalty-free song, it was from Bensound, and I found the whole process simple and easy to do.

Now, even though you can get some songs for free, they still offer a subscription or a licensing fee for each track.

The Standard and Extended licenses cost $34 and $65 for one track respectively.

The Standard and Extended subscriptions, on the other hand, cost $139 and $390 per year respectively.

Amazon ($0.99 up to $11.49)

Small collection but affordable.

I don’t think Amazon needs an introduction, but what you may not have known is that you can find all sorts of royalty-free music there.

Even though their collection isn’t particularly huge and the navigation is nowhere near perfect, the prices are extremely affordable.

You are going to need to take your time to scroll through all the tracks since using the search engine won’t give you the best results here.

You can purchase individual files for about $0.99 or an entire album for around $10 which is ideal for anyone on a very tight budget.

Stock Music Site ($4.95 to +$1000)

Close to 1 Million tracks, Loops, Stingers, and more.

Stock Music Site offers over 896.000 pre-cleared royalty-free tracks that can be used on TV Shows, Commercials, YouTube, etc.

They offer a huge variety of music genres such as; Dramatic, Kids, Action, Spiritual, Pop, Rock, and many more, as well as Videos and Sound Effects.

In terms of design and usability, the site leaves a lot to be desired; it’s crowded, not very intuitive to use and there’s just too much information everywhere.

So, even though they offer loads of high-quality tracks, I wouldn’t recommend it to a first-timer since it can be a bit overwhelming. Still, it’s an excellent site.

As far as pricing goes, it really depends; You can get loops for as little as $4.95, or even complete Music Packs for over $1000.

Additionally, you can get pretty big discounts if you buy in bulk.

Machinima Sound ($4 up to $8)

Very cheap but small number of tracks.

Being one of the most simple and easy-to-navigate websites I’ve seen so far, Machinima Sound makes it really easy to find what you’re looking for.

Now, they don’t offer a huge list of tracks or anything, probably about eight tracks per genre, but they are affordable and can be used for anything you’d like; TV, Radio, YouTube, etc.

You can even download them for free IF you are going to just listen to the tracks and not use them for your projects.

Epidemic Sound ($15 to $49)

Royalty-Free tracks, sound effects, stems, and more.

Epidemic Sound offers over 30.000 tracks and 60.000 sound effects, including stems, plus new tracks are added every week.

As far as the genres they offer, the collection is pretty huge; from acoustic, country and other similar music styles to Corporate, Broadcasting, Advertising, and more.

The prices vary quite a lot since you can purchase single tracks from $99 onwards, or you can sign up for a monthly subscription.

The two subscriptions you can choose are Personal at $15 per month, and Commercial at $49 a month.

Both of them offer unlimited downloads, YouTube, Podcast, Instagram, etc. cleared tracks, YouTube monetization, and more.

The commercial plan offers a couple of extras over the Personal one.

Lastly, you can take advantage of a 30-day free trial!

Dig ccMixter (Free up to $222)

Free with attribution.

Dig ccMixter is a music discovery site that offers loads of tracks that you can download both for free or by purchasing them.

If you download the tracks for free you will need to credit the musicians, however, if you pay for it you can monetize according to the license you paid for.

They offer instrumental music for Film and Video, as well as free music for commercial projects where you only need to credit the musicians to be able to use them.

Additionally, over 2500 tracks for video games can also be found on this site.

Now, as far as the ease of use of the website goes, it’s not too bad, but it definitely could use an update on the search department.

In regards to the pricing, you can get a basic personal license for $22 up to a business license that costs $222.

TeknoAXE (Free)

100% Free Music, no attribution required.

Despite not looking as professional as all the other websites I listed, TeknoAXE is definitely worth checking out.

The wonderful thing about TeknoAXE is that their music is covered by the creative commons license (CC BY 4.0) which simply means that you can use all the music they have to offer for free.

Yes, even for commercial purposes.

The only condition is that you give credit to TeknoAXE by linking to their Website, YouTube channel, etc.

At the time of writing this post, they have 1564 tracks, however, they also take requests, meaning that you can ask them for a specific one and, if possible, they will provide it.

Purple Planet (Free up to $40)

Free with attribution. Starts at $8 per track.

Purple Planet, as the name implies, is a website whose color scheme is purple and that also features planets in the main picture, who would have guessed?

This one gives you the option to download MP3 tracks for free with the only requirement being that you give them credit for it, but they can be used for YouTube without running into any copyright issues.

On the other hand, they offer high-quality WAV files which can be bought with a commercial license; $8 for the standard license and $40 for the broadcast one.

As far as the genres are concerned, they haven’t given them the traditional Rock, Pop, etc. names.

However, they use terms to describe how those tracks make you feel; Tense, Dreamy, Creepy, Inspirational, etc.

Lastly, you can browse the “Top Tracks” and “Newest Tracks” sections where you will find the most popular and recent tracks on the site.

AKM Music (£16.95 up to £39)

£16.95 for one track or £39 for an album.

The layout of AKM Music is pretty intuitive and easy to use. It might not look as good as Artlist, but it’s definitely an excellent site despite its dated look.

Searching for tracks is extremely easy since you can either type in what you’re looking for or you can also browse by “Mood” and “Genre” and go from there.

As far as the pricing goes, AKM Music charges £16.95 per track or £39 per album.

You can also purchase royalty-free music for your business at £36 per album.

Incompetech (Free up to $30)

100% Royalty-free (Creative Commons License).

Incompetech is a royalty-free music website that was created by Kevin MacLeod, and apparently, he’s the only one creating all the tracks.

The website is awesome, especially considering that there’s just one guy behind it all, since it features loads of tracks in many genres, the website itself works perfectly, and all tracks have a creative Commons license which means that you can use them for free, if you credit the author.

When scrolling through the tracks you’ll be able to see how many people liked them, the download number, and more, which is quite useful.

As far as pricing goes, if you need a standard license because you don’t want to give attribution, or can’t (Like on Radio, TV, etc.), then one track will cost $30, two tracks $25 each, and three tracks $20 each.

Incompetech is fantastic and it definitely is one of the best websites on this list if you need free tracks for your YouTube videos, etc. that can be monetized, if you credit the author of course.

Filmstro ($29.99 up to $499)

Mostly aimed at film & video music (Starting at $8.25/mo.)

Filmstro offers a wide variety of tracks across a huge selection of genres.

Just like with Purple Planet, Filmstro also lets you browse the music by “Mood” where you’ll be able to choose from Energetic, Aggressive, and Sad, to Carefree, Excited, etc.

But you can also browse by Film & Video genre, the Typical Music genres, and Instrumentals.

You can download Filmstro and use it directly on your PC, and also when you subscribe to a monthly plan, you’ll get access to a couple of plugins to use in your video production.

As far as pricing goes, you have a couple of choices here;

You can pay for a 30-day Pass that ranges from $29.99 up to $149.99, or you could subscribe for $99 a year, $249 a year, or $499 a year.

Each of the subscriptions gives you the right to use the tracks for different things, so choose the best one for you.

Synkio ($20 up to $45/mo.)

Create a project with your need, they suggest the music.

Just like with a couple of the other Sites on this post, Synkio lets you browse music by “mood”, and “Genre”, and you can also browse their featured- and curated playlists.

The site’s layout is pretty intuitive and you won’t have issues finding what you need, once you do you will be able to add the song to the cart and it will tell you how much that single track costs (usually $20).

You can also sign up for the Pro version of Synkio for $45 a month, which comes with some additional perks like Private briefing, Priority support, and more.

You can also create a project where you enter how much you have to spend, what the music is going to be used for, the type of music you want, etc. and they will give you a selection of tracks that fits your budget and needs.

Josh Woodward ($30 up to $300)

Music recorded by the owner of the Website.

If you’re looking for a more personal touch and homemade sound, then the music created by Josh Woodward should fit your needs perfectly.

All the songs on his website were recorded by him and most of them have vocals, plus the energy is just amazing.

The songs can be sorted by genre, theme, and mood, and you can also browse all of his albums.

You can buy a license for $30 for each track which doesn’t require any sort of attribution and you can use the music to monetize your videos, etc.

He also offers a $300 one-time payment which gives you a license for all of the songs currently available on his website.

YouTube channels that offer Royalty-free Music

Important Note: You will need to check the terms and conditions in order to not get into any trouble.

1. ArgoFox
2. Audio Library
3. Bluntedbeatz
4. Dannyebtracks
5. Chuki Beats
6. KingMusicNetwork

Top 3 Royalty-free Music Websites

Artlist: If I had to choose one website, it definitely would be Artlist. It’s great no matter which way you look at it; The design, the quality of the tracks, the ease of use, everything!

Incompetech: Despite not having hundreds of thousands of tracks, Incompetech is one of the few websites that offers high-quality tracks completely for free.

YouTube Audio Library: I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the tracks and the number available, even though finding them can be a bit of a pain.

Conclusion

If you’re starting to build a brand and you need some music for promotional videos, YouTube channels, etc., you better get high-quality audio that you can actually use.

Downloading and using tracks illegally can get you into trouble, while just paying a couple of bucks for a song or two can both help you earn more down the line and also give your brand a much better image.

I hope this information was useful.

Have a wonderful day!