Music Backgrounds: Where to Find Background Music for Your Videos

There are 1,300,000,000 people using YouTube, 300 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute, and 5 billion videos being watched on YouTube every single day. YouTube is the place to be when sharing video content.

Whether you are creating a film for personal use or posting videos on YouTube, music brings your creation to life. It can set a mood and make the viewing time without dialog pass faster. Finding quality music backgrounds at an affordable price and without royalties can be a challenge.

Where to Find Quality Music Backgrounds

There are a lot of sources that offer quality music backgrounds for your videos with a wide range of licensing options including the favored royalty-free and creative commons licenses. If you aren’t sure what these terms mean, check below for further explanation. Here are some places you can find good video background music: 

AudioBlocks

AudioBlocks provides unlimited royalty-free music by subscription. Your subscription provides you with the ability to download sound effects, music, and loops. You can even search for the exact length of track you need. 

Subscriptions start at $99 per year for 3 downloads of music per month. For unlimited audio content and no download limit, it is only $149 per year. If you also need image content, an all-inclusive full access unlimited subscription will run you $349 per year.

Epidemic Sound

Offering a royalty-free license, Epidemic Sound offers high-quality background music for video. Their website is easy to search so you can find the perfect music for your video. One license has all the legal rights needed so you can use the music across all platforms.

Licensing begins at $99 dollars for a single-track license and subscriptions begin at $15 per month or $144 per year.   All plans provide full access to their library of 30,000 tracks and 60,000 sound effects, with new tracks being added every week.

Audio Jungle

Audio Jungle offers more than 1,095,166 tracks of royalty-free background music and sounds in all genres. Pricing for tracks begins at $1.

They also run monthly royalty-free music freebies, including video effects, stock footage, 3D assets, and stock photography.  Another bonus is the free audio production tutorials if you are looking for some instruction in good video production.

Freeplay Music

Freeplay Music provides creative commons licensing. You can browse by scene, genre, or mood. If you will be using the music for personal use and only on YouTube the majority of tracks are free.  

Pricing is based on how it will be used, such as advertising, business, education, film, personal, tv, and radio or YouTube. You are allowed to use one track in one video that appears in a non-revenue generating personal video the download is free. You need to be careful because the video cannot in any way promote a business. 

Personal social media and home listening tracks are $0.99 each.  Additional pricing is available for other use.

Jamendo

This source offers royalty-free music for commercial use. You are able to select music based on what you are using it for. With more than 220,000 royalty-free music tracks you are sure to find something to fit your needs.

Your subscription provides you with synchronization and broadcast rights for every online platform, including Facebook, Instagram, Paid Media, Online Advertising, YouTube, Vimeo, and website background music. Monthly subscriptions are available at $39 per month or $399 per year.

YouTube Audio Library

YouTube offers a massive library of background music for free.  It began in 2013 with only 100 songs but now has several thousand.  You can search according to genre, length, and instrument, or select those most popular with users.  

YouTube and video creators receive high-quality music for free. Because YouTube pays the composer you do not have to provide credits for the music.

It is suggested that you put the artist and track’s name in the description. The exception is if the track has a symbol of a man inside a circle, which means attribution is required.

Accessing the YouTube library is easy. From your YouTube account simply go to Creator Studio > Create > Audio Library.

BeatPick

This website offers a Creative Commons license. Users can search by genre, vocal, instrument, keywords, mood, and more.

Once you find a track you like you can add it to your “beatlist” for later or click on “license song” to find the price of the license. Pricing varies by track.

Amazon Music

Amazon has more than 56,000 music and soundtracks available royalty-free. You are limited to using music only for personal, non-commercial purposes.  Pricing starts at $0.99 per track.

Free Music Archive

This website offers royalty-free music with creative commons and public domain licenses.  They offer a wide range of background music and sounds, including a “spoken word” genre, all for free.

Two Common Terms in Free Music

Music licenses are the way artists obtain royalties for their music. It is legal authorization to use their work. When obtaining free background music there are two terms commonly used and explained here.

Royalty-Free Music

This is music you do not pay royalties on to the artist. You need to purchase the music, or sometimes artists will allow free use of their music if you provide credit for it in your video. Royalty-free music covers all genres and is a high-quality sound.

When you purchase royalty-free music for filmmakers you pay a one-time fee to get legal rights to use the music in any project you are working on.  You are provided with a legal contract so that if the artist changes their song licenses, your use is not affected.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons public copyright license enables free distribution of copyrighted work. The license allows the music to be used provided the artists are given credit for their work.

Build a Video, Download a Song

Now that you have a selection of free and inexpensive sources for music backgrounds, it is easy to put videos and music together. Join the fun in making your online presence known. Search a few background music websites and start producing today!