TOP 3 Places to Get Music for Your Videos

Kaya
Updated on 2023-06-29
I'm gonna talk about my three favorite platforms that I really like for indie filmmakers, YouTubers. The best licensing platforms to get your music.

Hey guys. how's everybody doing? Today we're gonna talk about music. We all know how important music is to our films. but it's also a really big headache, at least for me.

I think there's a few reasons for it. A is because you can't just use any song you want. You really quickly, when you get in to filmmaking, you realize you can't just use whatever cool song you heard, because it's copyrighted. Then, B, it takes forever sometimes to find a good song because you can't just use whatever song you want. Then, also, the places to find those songs, they're pretty limited. The options aren't too abundant. But, of course, I'm here to help you guys out.

I'm gonna talk about my three favorite platforms that I really like for indie filmmakers, YouTubers. The best licensing platforms to get your music.

There is a reason why I'm doing this video now and it's cause there's kind of a new kid on the block.  They're not new, but they're kind of new. There's a new service and we'll get to that one a little bit later. but that's why I found that this would be really relevant to make right now.

No.1 Artlist - Get Music for Your Videos

Chapter-1

The first option is Artlist. This was the first site that I started using when I started, and it's a really interesting business model.

Chapter-3

Pricing & License of Artlist

It's a little bit different from the other ones that I've seen, and basically you would pay $200 up front for a whole year. And you can use their music as much as you want for any projects, anywhere that you want. It doesn't matter if it's for YouTube or you're doing a big brand thing for Coca-Cola or you're shooting a commercial for Under Armour.

Chapter-5

It doesn't matter where ya use it. $200 flat fee. use the songs as much as you want. It's actually a lifetime license. so any song you download from that site when you do have that license you can use for the rest of your life.

Chapter-7

It's a lifetime license. That's a really interesting way to do this whole music licensing thing. It does say on the site that it's $16. 60, I think per month. But you do have to pay it all up front, so it's $200 a year. That's a bit of a downside for some people, because they don't wanna invest $200 right away, they'd rather pay $15. $20 a month or whatever it is.

Chapter-9

User Experience of Artlist

It is a bit of an investment right off the bat, but depending on the type of projects that you're working on and how much music you use. This is probably one of the best bang-for-buck sites for music, and their music's pretty good. I wouldn't say it's the best. but there's a pretty good amount of music on there.

Chapter-16

I used them for a fairly long time and I found that there was quite a few songs, but it isn't the most extensive library compared to some of the other sites. The website's pretty great. I'd say the searching is fairly easy and painless.

Chapter-18

Searching for music is never painless. but it's fairly easy. There's a lot of options that you can search by and you can add different tags to kind of narrow down your search. but again. the problem is that there isn't a ton of music compared to some of the other sites. so you do still have limited options even though you can narrow it down nice and easily and quickly. Again, depending on the types of projects that you're using this music for. This is the best bang-for-buck, cause nowhere else are you gonna be able to license music for. Let's say, a Coca-Cola commercial for $200 and you could do a hundred Coca-Cola commercials. For the rest of your life. you could do commercials all day long and you're still only gonna pay that $200 per year. That's pretty impressive.

No.2 Epidemic Sound - Get Music for Your Videos

Chapter-20

Next is Epidemic Sound, and up until this point, this has always been my favorite. 

Why Choose Epidemic Sound

There's a couple different reasons for that. One is that the music is really high quality, I think.

Chapter-24

And then it's really affordable. especially with the free. I think it's two-month free trial that you can get right now. There's no risks. you can just try it out and see if you like it. 

Chapter-26

Free two-month trial. I don't think any of the other sites have this, so that's why I really like recommending it to people.

Chapter-28

Because you can try it out and you don't have to pay for it at first. Then, if you do like it, you can continue the subscription and if you don't you can just stop it.

Chapter-29

If you've never used any of these platforms before. I highly recommend checking out Epidemic Sound right now just because of the free trial.

Pricing of Epidemic Sound

Again, high-quality music at an affordable price. Once that free trial is up and you do need to start paying for it. it's only $15 for up to 500,000 views and then its $30 from 500,000 to 5 million views and $150 for unlimited views per month.

Chapter-33

I like this, because when you're a small creator, you don't have as much money. You're not making much money from YouTube so you shouldn't be paying as much. Then, when you are making more money, your channel's bigger. You can afford to pay a little bit more and you're making more money from it. Therefore. you should give a bigger cut to the music licensing companies. Also, I think this kind of pricing structure makes a lot of sense to me.

Chapter-35

You can also just license a single track if you want. Let's say you're doing a commercial for Coca-Cola and you need a song. But it does get a little bit more pricey fairly quickly. But again, usually what I would do is just bill that company for that song license. so it doesn't really matter as much at that point.

Chapter-37

Pros and Cons of Epidemic Sound

Overall, I like the pricing model for Epidemic Sound. Like I said, the music is great and they're always adding new songs to the library. So there's just so much music to choose from, which is probably one of the best things that you could look for in a licensing platform when you're trying to search for music you want. All the options, a ton of options. Listening to those same songs over and over again and trying to sift through the same songs gets really frustrating and annoying and you just want new music. So it's great that they have a massive library and they're always adding more music to it.

Chapter-39

I do find that the search is a little bit less intuitive on Epidemic Sound. I've told them before. I think this is something they could work on is their actually website and the way you find music. But, it's fairly simple once you get used to it. Basically has all the same stuff. It's just a little bit more confusing. I find when you start using it.

Chapter-41

But one of the really great things about Epidemic Sound is that they also have sound effects and I use their sound effects all the time. I don't know how many sound effects are on there, but it's a massive library and pretty much whatever I've tried to search there's always some sort of sound effect for that. I use their sound effects all the time.

Chapter-43

Another great thing is that when you download a song from Epidemic Sound, you can choose to download the whole song or then all the stems from it. You would get the bass track, the drums. I think there's an instruments track and a melody. You can kind of use different parts of the song. So again, that gives you a lot more flexibility.

Chapter-46

I really like that they include this option of just downloading the song or all the stems if you wanna manipulate the song a little bit more. Go check out Epidemic Sound. I've been really enjoying their music and their platform. Free trial down below. Then, for the new kid on the block.

No.3 Musicbed - Get Music for Your Videos

Chapter-48

It's been a licensing platform for a long time, already, but they just launched this week.

Chapter-51

Pricing of Musicbed

I think on Monday, a new membership service. Before, on Musicbed, you would just have to license per song, and when I started doing YouTube and I tried to license a few different songs for a little bit more epic travel videos, the pricing just did not make sense. They didn't understand how YouTube worked. They quoted way too much per song and I just. It didn't make sense. I couldn't use their music anymore. Thankfully. I think they kind of listened to my feedback and I'm sure a lot of other people are giving the same feedback and they started this new membership service.

Chapter-56

Now. you can use as many songs as you want for just $10 a month if your channel is below 5. 000 subscribers. I think it goes all the way up to $60 if you have more than 500. 000 subs. Not only that. they have another membership for nonprofits at $50 a month.

Chapter-58

Then, they have one for wedding videographers, which is $80 a month. Then they have, also, one for companies, and that kind of goes by the size of the company, but it starts at $99.

Then, also, for internal videos, again $99. This is way better than the system they had before. This just makes so much more sense for, especially, people who are using a lot of music every single week. Or, if you're an indie shooter or a wedding photographer, videographer, you need music really often. You need to use a lot of music, and this is way more affordable, makes way more sense to me. Again, I like that they priced it kind of by the size of your channel, by the size of the company. It makes sense. If you're smaller, you pay a little bit less because you're not making as much money from that music. Then, if you're bigger or your company's bigger, you're gonna have to pay a little bit more because you're making more money off that music.

Chapter-60

High-Quality Music Service of Musicbed

Music that is probably one of the best. If not the best, just in terms of the platform, the website, the way it works, the searching, all of that stuff. It's really intuitive. There's a lot of different options.

Chapter-61

I really like searching on Musicbed, and on top of the easy searching. I think they have the best music, the highest quality music out of all the websites.

Chapter-66

That's probably why they've kind of stuck to their higher pricing model, because they do have such high-quality music on there.

It's really interesting to see, now, that they're making this cheaper membership model where we don't have to pay as much. We get to use a lot more music, and we get that same high-quality music.

Chapter-69

Downside of Musicbed

But there's a bit of a catch. It's not actually the whole Musicbed library, right now at least. They're saying their adding more, but I think it's about 50-60% of their catalog, right now, is available in this membership service. You're not getting all of their music, but they did tell me that a lot of their kind of top-performing artists are already part of this membership service and they're trying to get everybody on board.

But because of their business model's a little bit different, they actually have to. I think, sign each artist kind of separately. Get different contracts and all that stuff made for these artists to be a part of this new membership service.

Another downside is that there's no free trial. So you are gonna have to kind of commit a little bit. It's not that expensive. So you're not spending a ton of money to commit to this. But, there's no free trial and then there's no sound effects. That's another downside, another really good thing about Epidemic Sound that it has those sound effects. Musicbed doesn't have sound effects. It's just music. But it is really, really high-quality music.

Summary

Those are my top three favorite sites, platforms to get music for your videos. Whether you're a freelancer, indie filmmaker, YouTuber, whatever. These are my favorite places to get music. Let's talk a little bit about which platform is the best for what kind of filmmaker?

Artlist

Chapter-71

I'd say Artlist is kind of an interesting one. It's kind of nice to just have it, especially if you're running a business.

Chapter-77

If you're freelancing. and you're making a lot of videos. it just makes sense to pay $200 and you always have this nice catalog of songs that you can use for any project. If a company doesn't have a budget for a license and you still want a pretty good song, you don't want just some audio jungle song or something like that.

It's fairly affordable to have this $200 license. I think Artlist is the best for freelancers that are doing commercial gigs and that kind of stuff and they need music for those, because those licenses can get pricey really fast.

Musicbed

Chapter-81

For wedding videographers, I'd say the fairly clear winner right now is Musicbed, with this new membership service.

Chapter-86

Now, unless the songs that you would wanna use for your wedding videos aren't part of the catalog right now, that would be the only downside, but I would say it's the best way to get high-quality music for your wedding films.

Epidemic Sound

Then, for YouTube, this kind of weekly content creation. I think it's a tossup between Epidemic Sound and Musicbed. Both are really great platforms. Both have their positives and negatives.

Chapter-88

I love that Epidemic Sound has that free trial, has those sound effects, has great music.

Chapter-91

I love that Musicbed has super high-quality music and it's kind of a new platform for us because we haven't been able to use it for YouTube.

It's kind of a fresh library of music. It's really a tossup. It's totally up to you which you think is better for you. I think they're both great. Never has it been so easy to get high-quality music for your films affordably. Some of the prices, the fees that I've heard for song licenses on bigger commercials. it's just mind boggling. This is super affordable for high-quality music. I'm pretty excited that there's more and more of these platforms that we can use for our films. and that we're not having to recycle the same songs over and over again. You hear the same songs on everybody's channel. If you're planning on using any of these services. I think that's it for this one. Why don't you go make some films? Learn, make, repeat. I guess I'll see you guys in the next one.