Our Top Music Licensing Sites for Video Projects of All Sizes

In an ideal world, we would all work with a musician to create a custom track that perfectly embodies the feel of each video, builds at the right moments and falls off when needed. But most projects don’t have time or budget for that. With this in mind, we have compiled our three favorite places to get stock music tracks based on the quality of the tracks and the price point. 

We know that different projects have different budgets. A 15-second social media video that will be seen for a week at best and then forgotten for eternity has a different budget than a YouTube ad that will be playing for 1,000,000 people over the course of 3 months. Because of this we selected a premium price point, a low price point and a subscription based price point that we have been particularly fond of recently. 

Keep in mind that you generally do get what you pay for. If you pay more, you are going to get a better track. But we have found that these two particular affordable options have many diamonds in the rough buried in their library. What we generally try to avoid is the stereotypical corporate whistle-clap type of tracks and while these two options have those in abundance, they also have gold.

Our Favorite High Quality Tracks: Marmoset & The Music Bed

Starting at $200/track/project, these are the priciest of the options but these have the absolute best quality tracks out there, short of working with a musician directly. The types of tracks in their library are the types that you would be happy to listen to on the radio. They are that good.

They also have phenomenal search functionality with a visual representation of when the tracks climax which is very unique and helpful. When we are making a video, we regularly sift through hundreds of songs to find the right vibe and both of these services make it much more efficient.

Although these are much more pricey, don’t just skip past them right away. If you are a small company or have special project needs, the staff at both of these are extremely helpful and willing to be very flexible. Reach out to them to see if there is any way you can work with them. Audio is one of the most overlooked aspects of filmmaking and can also make the biggest difference in the quality of your film.

The Affordable Winner: Premium Beat

Rife with whistle-clap songs, PremiumBeat.com is extremely affordable. A little pricier than some place like AudioJungle but the quality is a big step up. We have found many good tracks in there that will work perfectly for quick social videos or even some lower budget video ads or ecommerce product videos.

The key here is to make sure you sift through *a lot* of songs. I generally stick with a fairly broad search and go through as many songs as I can in order to find the good ones buried in the library. If you start to get dismayed at the quality, just persevere and listen to another 50 songs. You will eventually find the good stuff.

Unlimited Subscription: Sound Stripe

This has been one of our favorite places to license music recently because they have a monthly subscription for unlimited licenses. This is absolutely fantastic when you are putting out a lot of social videos or producing a bunch of product videos that you want to all have the same track. The quality is on par with Premium Beat in our experience and if you are going to consistently need multiple tracks a month, it just makes sense. 

Another nice aspect about this service is that, if you just want to test out a track, you can download it without a watermark in the audio to send to clients. It is a minor thing but one that we appreciate.

All the others

Stock music sites are cropping up like weeds these days and whenever we see a new one, we will quickly search through their library to evaluate them. Most of them are either too expensive or the quality is just too low. We are always looking for places with that perfect balance. These are the ones that we have loved using recently, but it may change by next year so send us any that you love and keep an eye out for an updated post!