According to TikTok, brand awareness was lifted to 120% among users who used TikTok’s music-driven sound-on ad solution.
This proves that sound is an integral part of online content.
Whether it’s a heart-pounding intro for an Instagram reel or an emotional background sound for a YouTube video, it is how creators tap into viewers’ minds.
And because it can skyrocket engagement on your content, and producing sound is a technical job not everyone can do, you need good music tools.
In our last article, we reviewed Suno.ai. Today, we will review Epidemic Sound for you, covering everything you must know before subscribing to it.
What is Epidemic Sound, and Who is it For?
Epidemic Sound is a royalty-free music library offering exclusive soundtracking tools. It offers platform and domain-specific music and sound effects created by artists worldwide. The library boasts a collection of 40,000 soundtracks, over 200,000 sound effects and variations, and over 700 sound effects categories.
Epidemic Sound also offers monetization of the music with a 50/50 split on streaming royalties. Besides, this platform gives you all rights, including an ag license for the music.
Whether you need music for ads, promos, trailers, or your corporate presentation, they have a diverse music collection in different styles and genres.
It is used by content creators, artists, freelancers, and enterprises that need music and background sound for branding and other purposes.
It is also a good platform for artists to upload their music and share it for anyone to use. The advantage of this is that they will not have to worry about managing copyrights and can focus on creating more original music.
How does Epidemic Sound Work?
Epidemic Sound offers subscription-based plans that allow you to choose from their vast collection of royalty-free music. It also allows you to monetize on global platforms like YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, and others, with T&Cs applied according to the subscription plan chosen.
You can explore the library of Epidemic Sound by following these easy steps:
Choose your subscription: Do you need music for your projects or for a client you work with? Based on your requirements, choose a subscription plan. It is important to select a plan wisely and use the music only for that purpose; otherwise, you or your client can get copyright claims from the platform. Epidemic Sound owns all the music rights on the platform and only allows it to be used for the use cases under the subscription model.
For example, the content may get flagged if you have a personal plan and use music for your company’s branding.
Use free trial: Epidemic Sound offers a 7-day free trial. You can try music and use it according to the subscription plan during this period.
Top Epidemic Sound Features
We like features that are highly useful and generate good track search results. We liked these features of Epidemic Sound:
Adobe Premier plugin: Epidemic Sound offers the Adobe Premier Pro plugin, which allows you to access the entire library on your Adobe platform. The integration of the soundtracking tool makes finding and adding music seamlessly in Adobe.
Track suggestion based on video: Epidemic Sound offers a soundmatch feature based on your video. It gives you track suggestions based on the frames in your content to help you find a perfect match.
Track search based on audio reference: This search feature allows you to find music with a similar tone and sound using the hook, riff, drop, or bridge of your favorite songs.
What do existing users say about Epidemic Sound?
In addition to our analysis of Epidemic Sound, we collected user reviews from platforms like Trustpilot, G2, and Reddit.
They like Epidemic Sound for:
Cons of Epidemic Sound
Epidemic Sound Pricing
Here are the affordable subscription plans offered by Epidemic Sound:
Personal Plan: $6 per month
Commercial Plan: $12 per month
Enterprise Plan: Contact sales for pricing
Final verdict
Epidemic Sound offers a compelling solution for content creators who need high-quality music and background sound. However, these issues are our major concern with the platform:
These are some basic features that content creators need in a music tool. Epidemic Sound fails to offer a seamless and worry-free experience for these basic music library requirements.
So, how do you get royalty-free music without worrying about copyright claims?
3 Epidemic Sound alternatives
You should try three platforms for an ethical, original, and royalty-free music experience.
Beatoven.ai
Beatoven.ai is an AI music generator that allows you to generate royalty-free music. It collaborates with artists to train its AI model and uses advanced music theories to generate
original music.
Certified by Fairly Trained, Beatoven.ai strictly emphasizes using licensed data for AI model training to ethically generate music free from potential copyright claims. It offers a perpetual license that allows you to use the music generated unlimited times in your projects. The license also provides monetization under specified terms and conditions.
It offers you:
Price
Artlist
Artlist is another good alternative to Epidemic Sound. It offers a complete suite of music, footage, SFX, and plugins. It integrates with popular editing software, allowing you to work on your project end-to-end from the same platform.
Premium Beat
Premium Beat is a royalty-free music library owned by Shutterstock. It offers a pay-once-and-use-forever license option for single tracks and monthly and yearly subscriptions.
Conclusion
Epidemic Sound offers high-quality music and a vast collection, but it also comes with issues like potential copyright strikes. Content creators need an easy-to-use solution that protects them from copyright issues for their music requirements, where Epidemic Sound might fail.
These alternatives to Epidemic Sound, like Beatoven.ai, offer ethical music generation free from copyright issues. They also provide beneficial editing features that make editing music to your preference easier.
Want to experience AI music generation for free?
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.