“I want to use royalty-free music that’s not already used 100 times on the internet” – a never-ending dilemma of all content creators.
Creators love royalty-free music because it’s cost-effective. But royalty-free music that’s also unique is rare.
Most often, creators are left between two options: using the same-old royalty-free music or investing in an expensive music generator to generate original music.
However, sourcing original free music for commercial music doesn’t have to be complicated. There are plenty of free sources where you can generate and personalize tracks for your videos, reels, games, and podcasts without worrying about legal trouble.
In this listicle, we’ve curated a list of sources for buying free music for commercial use. Let’s get started.
10 Places to Find Free Music for Commercial Use
Here are the top ten platforms providing creators with free commercial music.
1. Beatoven.ai
Beatoven.ai is a user-friendly AI music generator that creates customized free music for commercial use.
The platform’s Text to Music feature generates personalized background music based on specific prompts. It further allows you to edit the tunes to perfection according to your needs. You can perform mood-based editing and pick from over 10 genres and emotions to ensure that your background music matches the vibe of your content.
Beatoven.ai is certified by FairlyTrained for its ethical AI model and for respecting creator rights. The model is trained on licensed data, meaning several artists contribute their compositions to the platform. Hence, content creators can access fresh, original, royalty-free tracks for their videos, podcasts, ads, games, and short films.
Beatoven.ai allows you to download stems in MP3 or WAV formats. Each piece of music comes with a perpetual royalty-free license to help creators monetize their content.
Other essential features of Beatoven.ai that content creators will find useful are instrument selection and removal options, feedback tracking, and timeline navigation. Find out more about the top features of Beatoven.ai here.
You can get used to Beatoven.ai and its features by starting the free trial. However, to download your royalty-free music, you have to opt for a paid subscription, starting at ₹299 /month with 15 minutes of monthly downloads. Explore all plans here.
2. YouTube Audio Library
Sign in to YouTube Studio and find the YouTube Audio Library in the left panel. The audio library contains over 700 free and copyright-safe sound clips and effects, which you can filter by mood, genre, artist name, or track title. Search by ‘categories’ like cartoons, horror, and sports or by ‘duration’ to find music that best suits your content type and length.
However, the tracks you choose aren’t exclusive, as many creators can use them, and the customization options are limited. That means you cannot edit the music to match your needs. For example, you cannot change the track’s tempo, instrumentation, or rhythm.
Getting into the finer details, though the audio library offers royalty-free music, a few tracks need attribution. Using these tracks requires you to credit the artist in your content description. Additionally, you must contact the artists if you use their audio for standalone projects outside YouTube.
3. Bensound
Bensound offers a vast library of free music for commercial use. Choose among the 12 categories, such as ‘positive’, ‘action’, ‘cinematic’, or ‘calm,’ and filter using genres, moods, themes, and instruments to find music that fits your needs.
Once you choose your music, click ‘free download’ for the track and attribution text. Use the tracks for free in your videos across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc., and don’t forget to include a personal attribution text in your video description, which can easily be created using an AI video description generator.
Besides free music, you can buy music licenses for commercial use at Bensound. Also, you must purchase the platform’s Standard Pay-per-track License or Standard All Access Subscription plan to use their tracks in your audiobook or podcast.
4. Free Music Archive (FMA)
On the FMA website, you can search music by genre—instrumental, rock, classical, folk, jazz, etc. The platform offers a vast library of tracks with different licenses.
While some free music is for commercial use, some is for personal use only. You cannot use these tracks for podcasts, Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram content. Additionally, you must give appropriate credit to the artist and the source regardless of your chosen music.
The good thing is that you can filter music by license to find tracks for commercial and personal use. So, if you want free music for your ads, check the ‘commercial use’ box.
5. Storyblocks Audio (Ex Audioblocks)
Storyblocks Audio offers over 112,000 tracks, including sound effects and loops for commercial and personal projects. Its soundtracks are royalty-free and can be used multiple times for videos or campaigns.
The best part is that Storyblocks keeps updating its library based on searches, so you can find your music type. Browse by moods, like ‘happy’, ‘love’, ‘relax’, ‘inspiring’, or ‘playful’, use filters, and download tracks in MP3 or WAV formats.
The music library works best for podcasts. You can search by ‘podcasts’ to find the best background and intro tracks. Creators can also search by ‘videos’ to find sound effects for their projects.
Along with free music for commercial use, you can get photos, templates, and footage with an all-access subscription to Storyblocks.
6. AShamaluevMusic
AShamaluevMusic is a source of free music for content creators, YouTubers, and filmmakers. You can download free instrumental music from this source in MP3 format along with licensing and use it for multiple streams. Finding the music of your choice is fairly simple. All you have to do is click on your desired genre and mood to discover the background music of your choice.
7. SoundCloud
SoundCloud provides an easy-to-use music library with multiple tracks for your videos and podcasts. Search for your preferred music type, choose ‘tracks’ on the left panel, and filter results by ‘any length’, ‘to use commercially’, ‘to listen to’, etc. to find royalty-free music.
The best part about SoundCloud is that you can search for different types of music that are free to use for commercial uses. Type out ‘inspirational music’, ‘background music’, ‘soulful music’, ‘motivational beats’, etc., to find royalty-free music of your choice.
While there are several options, SoundCloud has tracks by amateur musicians that aren’t perfect for your commercial videos or podcasts.
8. ccMixter
ccMixter is a music community turned free music source for content creators. You can download the huge stock of Indie music from this site and use it for commercial purposes. ccMixter offers three different music license types: free, free for personal use, and free for sliding scale.
9. Free Stock Music
Like several other music libraries, Free Stock Music is another platform for music lovers and creators to find royalty-free music.
Search for the perfect tracks for your videos using categories like ‘acoustic’, ‘corporate’, ‘cinematic’, ‘children’s’, etc. Choose gentle, bright, or dreamy moods, license types, tempos, and lengths. You can also type up to three keywords to find free music for commercial use.
However, the library has limited music you can use with proper artist attribution or by buying a license.
10. Audionautix
Audionautix has completely free music by Jason Shaw. You can download free music for commercial use across channels if you credit the composer.
Choose a free music genre like country, folk, hard rock, ethnic, etc., and download its MP3 versions. You can also choose moods and tempo and type keywords to find the music that best fits your content.
The good thing about this free music library is that Shaw provides all his tracks under Creative Commons. You only need to credit the artist and use his tracks for your videos and podcasts. Plus, if you need something specific, you can contact Shaw and get tailored music at a minimal fee.
Monetize your Passion by Using Royalty-free Music for Commercial Use
The top ten on our list are all trusted sources to find royalty-free music for commercial use. However, most of these sources are not useful when searching for unique music that matches your content like a missing piece. Though you can avoid copyright strikes by using these background tracks, the originality that every creator seeks will still be missing.
Beatoven.ai is the only tool that helps you generate royalty-free, 100% original music and lets you personalize the track however you want it.
Want to use it first-hand?
Sreyashi Chatterjee is a SaaS content marketing consultant. When she is not writing or thinking about writing, she is watching Netflix or reading a thriller novel while sipping coffee.