15 Great Places to Find background Music for Videos in 2024
By now you most likely know or have caught on to the fact that video content has been growing in popularity and proving to be the most engaging content type.
This means the next step is to find great audio to accompany your amazing video content.
Audio brings the viewer into the video to engage them and it can subconsciously influence the viewers mood, just like how background music and Soundtracks for Movies and TV influence the viewer to make them feel more in tune with the story.
The music always matches the mood, exciting moments just aren’t as exciting without upbeat music pumping in the background, and sad scenes won’t get you as teary eyed if they didn’t have some soft strings and piano playing in the distance.
To help you find this music, I’ve put together a list of quality places to find background music for you to download & use in your vlogs, marketing, promotional videos and more.
Below you’ll learn the 15 great place to find background music for videos.
Licensing Terms
Before I get into the list, let me briefly explain the type of licensing rights that you may come across in your search for background music.
Creative Commons: There are various type of creative common (CC) licenses but they allow you to use copyrighted audio for free, as long as the licensor gets proper credit for their work.
Royalty-Free: Is not necessarily free or charge. You don’t have to pay royalties for each use, but, you may pay a one-time license fee to use the audio as much as you’d like.
Public Domain: Refers to music that is not protected by copyrights or any intellectual property rights. Anyone can use public domain audio without permission or credit.
15 Places to Download Background Music for YouTube Videos
Pricing: FREE
YouTube conveniently has it’s own library of music available for you to download and use as background music in your videos.
Updated quite frequently, the YouTube Audio Library features both music and sound effects in .mp3 format that you can download instantly and use free of charge in your YouTube videos. Additionally, this library has easy to use search functionality letting sort music by - mood, genre, duration, instrument & more.
2. Epidemic Sound
Pricing: Starting at a $15/monthly subscription; or $0.99 per second
Now this music library gives you access to a huge selection of over 30,000 songs and quickly growing as it’s updated weekly.
Epidemic sound has a nice modern looking site and features some quality artists and music producers. You can browse using the common - mood, tempo, genre, instrument options as well as search for instrumentals, full songs and instrumental stems.
Epidemic Sound was founded in 2009 and is trusted by some major brands such as Spotify, Netflix, GoPro & more to provide them with quality background audio to use in marketing videos, social media content, and website content.
4. Bensound
Pricing: FREE (Creative Commons) or 1 year unlimited downloads for $129
Bensound is created by composer Benjamin Tissot and features hundreds of his royalty free instrumental music.
This catalogue of music has various genres of music such as corporate, cinematic, pop, jazz and acoustic instrumentals. Bensound allows you to download all music for free under their Creative Commons license which has some restrictions on usage or the option to purchase a license which will give you higher quality music and more freedom with how you can use the music.
5. Free Music Archive
Pricing: FREE
Launched in 2009, the Free Music Archive has over 1500 curated instrumentals across a variety of popular genres licensed under Creative Commons. You can conveniently download these compositions for free and use them for background music in your videos or other type of content.
6. Pond5
Pricing: Free (Public Domain) or individual licenses starting at $28
Pond5 is another very sleek music library with a solid selection royalty-free music from their select artists & composers.
They currently have around 1 million music tracks and sound FX to choose from with many options to search and sort through music. Some of the popular royalty free music categories on Pond5 are it’s Inspirational, Uplifting and Motivational compositions.
This music library has a selection of audio for free as public domain tracks, to higher quality or longer length instrumentals. Each track has their own individual pricing for a license to it as background music in a video on your site or social media.
7. Storyblocks Audio (formerly AudioBlocks)
Pricing: Starting at $9/monthly
This music library has 125,000+ royalty free audio tracks, music loops & sound FX. A continually updated and curated site full of stock audio to use as background audio in your content for personal or commercial use. Storyblocks Audio works as a subscription site, starting at $9 a month to get access to their entire library of music.
8. Audio Jungle
Pricing: Starting at $9 per track
Audio jungle has a huge selection of over 800k audio tracks, sound effects, loops and more. I must admit, this platform is a bit weird getting used to, but it does have some quality music content available for you to license and download starting at just $1. Definitely worth checking out.
9. Pooksomnia
Pricing: Options for FREE or license from $29.99 per track
Here’s a shameless plug! A beat library full of atmospheric & melodic instrumental beats, perfect for background music in Vlogs, YouTube video tutorials and promotional videos. I mainly compose instrumentals for artists looking for beats to use in their songs, but video creators also use the audio on Pooksomnia in their video’s as well.
I’ve recently released the Background Music Essentials for YouTube pack which includes 14 royalty-free loopable tracks across 3 moods - Happy, Chill/Relaxed and Motivational music. You can download it for free, all I ask for is credit if you use it for commercial use.
10. ccMixter
Pricing: FREE (Creative Commons)
ccMixter is a music library of composed by a large community of producers and composers. All music on ccMixter is free for commercial use under Creative Commons. Browse thousands of remixes, samples, and audio tracks to use in non-commercial & commercial projects, but don’t forget, you must give credit to the musicians for the audio.
11. Jamendo
Pricing: Starting at $9.99/ monthly
With 200,000+ music tracks to choose from, Jamendo’s library of music is quality and trusted by some leading brands. Jamendo has a user friendly website with easy to find music sorted by theme, genre, featured instrument and even project type.
They’re another subscription library with a few different pricing tiers starting at $9.99 a month for full access and a license to use the audio as background music in YouTube videos. The Standard license is $49 monthly giving you full access and a license to use the audio for corporate commercial use.
12. Incompetech
Incompetech has a modest selection of royalty free music to choose from, composed by musician Kevin Macleod. Starting for free while giving full credit to the composer/producer with a Creative Commons license or a standard license for commercial/ TV use at $49 per track.
13. Soundcloud
Pricing: FREE
SoundCloud is an often overlooked place to find music for your Vlogs or marketing videos, but it’s full of talented artists, composers and producers who are easily accessible and uploading music daily.
If you’re looking for a specific sound that you can’t find in these music libraries, SoundCloud serves as a great spot to look for new music. It might be a new band or an obscure genre you’re looking to use for your content and SoundCloud is most likely to have it.
It’s full of independent artists and composers. Many of them have their email available for you to contact them, so if you find something you like you can send them an email and see if you can use their music with proper credit or if they have their own music library you can listen to.
14. Airbit
Pricing: Free Demos; Average starting license at $30 per track
With the Airbit platform you can browse instrumental beats of various genres but if you’re looking for modern Hip Hop, R&B or Pop beats for you video content, this platform is where it’s at.
It hosts 1000s of online music producers uploading new music daily allows you to search the top song in a specific genre or even top producer/ composer. It’s great for up to date music production and if you want to find a specific producer to work with one on one.
15. Beatstars
Pricing: Free Demos; Average starting license at $30 per track
Similar to Airbit, the Beatstars platform houses production from online music producer/ composers across the globe and a place to check out if your looking for Hip Hop, Rap and Pop beats for your videos. You can license tracks individually and at a price that’s set by the producer, but usually ranges from $15-$300 per instrumental, depending on the license type.
Conclusion
So we’ve just gone through 15 of the best places to find background music for videos.
You have the options of searching for totally FREE, royalty-free music under creative commons or public domain. As well, music libraries with higher quality more produced or longer compositions for your project at various prices across the board.
Now you can step up your video content with quality background music to fit your desired mood or theme.
Bookmark or come back to this article if you ever forget where to download royalty free music, I’ll try my best to keep it updated with correct prices and up to date libraries.
Do you have any other good recommendations for finding background music for YouTube videos?
If so, share them in the comment section below.
Thanks for reading & I hope this has helped out.
Take Care!