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Download Free Sound Effects for YouTubers

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Whether you’re making a short film and need sounds to go with your action sequences, or just want some fun noises for your vlog or challenge video, it’s easy to find great sound effects you can use for free online.

Here are 7 places to download free sound effects! Or, if you’re interested in making your own, click here to jump to ‘Make Your Own Sound Effects’.

Part 1: YouTube Free Sound Effects Download

1. Filmora Sound Effects

Filmora Video Editor provides you with a huge library of free sound effects without download from anywhere else. There are 25 pieces of sound effect available in Filmora, such as transition swoosh, cinematic horn, beep sound and phone ring.

If you do not see the sound effect you want in Filmora, you can also go to the online effect store to find out more sound effects. The sounds are in.wav or mp3 files, so you do not have to use them inside Filmora only. They’re free to use for everyone after downloading, no matter what video editor you use.

The Filmstock audio effect library covers sound effects in different categories: nature sounds, animal sounds, movie sounds, gun sounds, fireworks, bird sounds, cricket sounds, wet sounds, dog barking, water sounds, guitar sounds, city sounds, monster sounds, laughing sounds, dinosaur sounds, fart sounds, pet sounds, dog sounds, car sounds, video game, and thunderstorm.

2. Freesound

Sounds on Freesound are uploaded by users under various Creative Commons licenses (some may require attribution, some may not allow commercial use).

The easiest way to browse the sounds on Freesound is probably to click into Sounds in the top menu, and then ‘Browse tags’ in the menu on the right of your screen. All of the tags on the site will be displayed, and the most commonly used ones will be biggest. The tags include what the sounds are meant to be (i.e. percussion or thunder) and what type of sounds they are (i.e. field-recording or synth).

3. PacDV

PacDV has been producing sound effects since 2001. You can browse and download sounds individually from their site, or download all at once in a huge bundle. You can use all the sounds for free (you just can’t sell them or provide direct download links to other people).

On the left of the website there’s a menu where you can choose what kinds of sound effects you’re interested in. The categories are:

Ambience: this is where you’ll find general background sounds, like ‘car interior’ or ‘grocery store’. Even when nothing in particular is happening, locations have sounds. This is also where you’ll find things like crowd noises.

Domestic: these are sounds you hear around the home, like sounds related to doors and appliances.

Interfaces: a lot of tech sounds live here, like beeps and clicks. Beeps are all titled ‘Beep’, but nothing else is really labeled beyond being called ‘Interface Sound’. You just have to listen and find out.

Machines: a variety of different machine sounds can be found here, from power tools like chainsaws and drills to things like typewriters or paper shredders.

Mechanical: this is where you’ll find sounds associated with cameras, coin slots, zippers, and more.

People: laughing, clapping, footsteps and even farts – this is where you’ll find human sounds.

Transportation: these sounds are all related to vehicles, be they cars or airplanes.

Voices: here you’ll find voices saying common things like ‘hi’, ‘aaah’, or ‘come on’.

Music: PacDV also has a selection of royalty free music. If you use it in your video, you need to give them credit by including Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/> in your video description.

Miscellaneous: sounds that don’t quite fit into other categories.

4. Sound Bible

The sounds on Sound Bible are either in the public domain, which means anyone can use them for anything without restriction, or licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, which means you just need to provide a credit for the person who created the effect you use. When you click on sound effects on Sound Bible you’ll be able to see whether the effect is Public Domain or Attribution 3.0, and it will tell you who the sound was recorded by. Both public domain and Attribution 3.0 sounds are available for commercial use.

This site has a search function, so if you want dog sounds you can search for ‘dog’. This might be easier than trying to pick the category closest to what you’re looking for and just scrolling through, like you do on some sites.

Sound Bible is updated about 3 times a week, so you can always check back for fresh sounds.

5. Sound Gator

Sound Gator has a huge number of sound effects divided into too many categories to list (24). The categories tend to be very specific, like ‘drink sound effects’ or ‘phone sound effects. If you don’t see a category that sounds like what you’re looking for, make sure to check under Misc Sound Effects because there are 68 Mp3#s in there for everything from tools to static.

You can sort the sound effects on Sound Gator by date added, popularity, top rated, runtime, top favorites, or most discussed.

6. Sounds Crate

Sounds Crate is part of the larger Production Crate which provides all kinds of resources to creators for free (you can upgrade to a paid account to access exclusive content, but there’s a lot of great content available for free). The categories available on Sounds Crate are:

Ambient: room tones and general background noises from nature or cities.

Animal: includes things like puppy barks and angry cats.

Blades and Metal: you’ll find sounds from swords, chains, and other metal implements here.

Crashes and Debris: perfect for action, this is where you’ll find sounds associated with destruction.

Electricity: things like electrical blasts and charges can be found here.

Electronics: any sound made by anything electrical, like beeps and appliance sounds.

Explosions and Bangs: if you have a visual explosion effect, you’ll probably need to combine it with something from here.

Fight: find sounds associated with action sequences, like whooshes and punches.

Gun Related: everything from reloads to gunshots.

Impact: any kind of thud or shattering sound.

Lock n’ Load: although there are some ‘gun checking’ sounds in here, it’s mostly clothing related sounds like zippers and Velcro.

Movement: wind sounds and whooshes.

People: sounds humans make, from voices to footsteps.

Sci-Fi SFX: zaps, beeps, and sci-fi ambience.

Vehicle: includes both common vehicles like cars and less-common vehicles like tanks.

Weapons: both modern weapons like missiles and old-timey things like arrows.

7. Zapsplat

Zapsplat claims to be the fastest growing free sound effects library on the internet. With more than 23,999 professional sounds, and more being added every week, they might just be right. The owner of the site, Alan McKinney, adds 500 sound effects every week by himself and the site also accepts sounds from contributors. All of their sounds were recorded using professional equipment and then edited to make them perfect.

You can even send Alan a message and request specific sound effects if you can’t already find what you want on the site.

On Zapsplat you can browse 26 categories including fantasy, warfare, and animals for individual sounds. Or, you can visit the Free SFX Packs section and download a set of related sounds together. Packs include ‘Magic Wand’, ‘Science Fiction Alarms’, and ‘Cartoon Boings’.

Part 2: Make Your Own Sound Effects for YouTube Videos

Here are some easy ways you can make your own sound effects at home.

1. Making Natural Sounds

Fire using cellophane. Just crinkle the cellophane wrap to create a sound like a crackling fire. Chip bags work too.

Rain using rice. Sprinkle rice (or birdseed) onto a thin metal sheet.

Alternatively for rain, you could record the sound of bacon frying.

Wind using a Ziploc. Fill a large ziplock with air and then open the bag a bit and force the air out.

Thunder with aluminum. Just shake a sheet of aluminum to make a thunder sound.

2. Making Action or Sci-Fi Sounds

Ticking Bomb with a clock. Any clock that ticks will do.

Hits/Blows with a pillow. Hit a pillow to make a sound like a body blow. For really hard hits, you might want to whack a sofa cushion with a broomstick.

Bones breaking with celery. Just snap the celery stalks in half.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Whether you’re making a short film and need sounds to go with your action sequences, or just want some fun noises for your vlog or challenge video, it’s easy to find great sound effects you can use for free online.

Here are 7 places to download free sound effects! Or, if you’re interested in making your own, click here to jump to ‘Make Your Own Sound Effects’.

Part 1: YouTube Free Sound Effects Download

1. Filmora Sound Effects

Filmora Video Editor provides you with a huge library of free sound effects without download from anywhere else. There are 25 pieces of sound effect available in Filmora, such as transition swoosh, cinematic horn, beep sound and phone ring.

If you do not see the sound effect you want in Filmora, you can also go to the online effect store to find out more sound effects. The sounds are in.wav or mp3 files, so you do not have to use them inside Filmora only. They’re free to use for everyone after downloading, no matter what video editor you use.

The Filmstock audio effect library covers sound effects in different categories: nature sounds, animal sounds, movie sounds, gun sounds, fireworks, bird sounds, cricket sounds, wet sounds, dog barking, water sounds, guitar sounds, city sounds, monster sounds, laughing sounds, dinosaur sounds, fart sounds, pet sounds, dog sounds, car sounds, video game, and thunderstorm.

2. Freesound

Sounds on Freesound are uploaded by users under various Creative Commons licenses (some may require attribution, some may not allow commercial use).

The easiest way to browse the sounds on Freesound is probably to click into Sounds in the top menu, and then ‘Browse tags’ in the menu on the right of your screen. All of the tags on the site will be displayed, and the most commonly used ones will be biggest. The tags include what the sounds are meant to be (i.e. percussion or thunder) and what type of sounds they are (i.e. field-recording or synth).

3. PacDV

PacDV has been producing sound effects since 2001. You can browse and download sounds individually from their site, or download all at once in a huge bundle. You can use all the sounds for free (you just can’t sell them or provide direct download links to other people).

On the left of the website there’s a menu where you can choose what kinds of sound effects you’re interested in. The categories are:

Ambience: this is where you’ll find general background sounds, like ‘car interior’ or ‘grocery store’. Even when nothing in particular is happening, locations have sounds. This is also where you’ll find things like crowd noises.

Domestic: these are sounds you hear around the home, like sounds related to doors and appliances.

Interfaces: a lot of tech sounds live here, like beeps and clicks. Beeps are all titled ‘Beep’, but nothing else is really labeled beyond being called ‘Interface Sound’. You just have to listen and find out.

Machines: a variety of different machine sounds can be found here, from power tools like chainsaws and drills to things like typewriters or paper shredders.

Mechanical: this is where you’ll find sounds associated with cameras, coin slots, zippers, and more.

People: laughing, clapping, footsteps and even farts – this is where you’ll find human sounds.

Transportation: these sounds are all related to vehicles, be they cars or airplanes.

Voices: here you’ll find voices saying common things like ‘hi’, ‘aaah’, or ‘come on’.

Music: PacDV also has a selection of royalty free music. If you use it in your video, you need to give them credit by including Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/> in your video description.

Miscellaneous: sounds that don’t quite fit into other categories.

4. Sound Bible

The sounds on Sound Bible are either in the public domain, which means anyone can use them for anything without restriction, or licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, which means you just need to provide a credit for the person who created the effect you use. When you click on sound effects on Sound Bible you’ll be able to see whether the effect is Public Domain or Attribution 3.0, and it will tell you who the sound was recorded by. Both public domain and Attribution 3.0 sounds are available for commercial use.

This site has a search function, so if you want dog sounds you can search for ‘dog’. This might be easier than trying to pick the category closest to what you’re looking for and just scrolling through, like you do on some sites.

Sound Bible is updated about 3 times a week, so you can always check back for fresh sounds.

5. Sound Gator

Sound Gator has a huge number of sound effects divided into too many categories to list (24). The categories tend to be very specific, like ‘drink sound effects’ or ‘phone sound effects. If you don’t see a category that sounds like what you’re looking for, make sure to check under Misc Sound Effects because there are 68 Mp3#s in there for everything from tools to static.

You can sort the sound effects on Sound Gator by date added, popularity, top rated, runtime, top favorites, or most discussed.

6. Sounds Crate

Sounds Crate is part of the larger Production Crate which provides all kinds of resources to creators for free (you can upgrade to a paid account to access exclusive content, but there’s a lot of great content available for free). The categories available on Sounds Crate are:

Ambient: room tones and general background noises from nature or cities.

Animal: includes things like puppy barks and angry cats.

Blades and Metal: you’ll find sounds from swords, chains, and other metal implements here.

Crashes and Debris: perfect for action, this is where you’ll find sounds associated with destruction.

Electricity: things like electrical blasts and charges can be found here.

Electronics: any sound made by anything electrical, like beeps and appliance sounds.

Explosions and Bangs: if you have a visual explosion effect, you’ll probably need to combine it with something from here.

Fight: find sounds associated with action sequences, like whooshes and punches.

Gun Related: everything from reloads to gunshots.

Impact: any kind of thud or shattering sound.

Lock n’ Load: although there are some ‘gun checking’ sounds in here, it’s mostly clothing related sounds like zippers and Velcro.

Movement: wind sounds and whooshes.

People: sounds humans make, from voices to footsteps.

Sci-Fi SFX: zaps, beeps, and sci-fi ambience.

Vehicle: includes both common vehicles like cars and less-common vehicles like tanks.

Weapons: both modern weapons like missiles and old-timey things like arrows.

7. Zapsplat

Zapsplat claims to be the fastest growing free sound effects library on the internet. With more than 23,999 professional sounds, and more being added every week, they might just be right. The owner of the site, Alan McKinney, adds 500 sound effects every week by himself and the site also accepts sounds from contributors. All of their sounds were recorded using professional equipment and then edited to make them perfect.

You can even send Alan a message and request specific sound effects if you can’t already find what you want on the site.

On Zapsplat you can browse 26 categories including fantasy, warfare, and animals for individual sounds. Or, you can visit the Free SFX Packs section and download a set of related sounds together. Packs include ‘Magic Wand’, ‘Science Fiction Alarms’, and ‘Cartoon Boings’.

Part 2: Make Your Own Sound Effects for YouTube Videos

Here are some easy ways you can make your own sound effects at home.

1. Making Natural Sounds

Fire using cellophane. Just crinkle the cellophane wrap to create a sound like a crackling fire. Chip bags work too.

Rain using rice. Sprinkle rice (or birdseed) onto a thin metal sheet.

Alternatively for rain, you could record the sound of bacon frying.

Wind using a Ziploc. Fill a large ziplock with air and then open the bag a bit and force the air out.

Thunder with aluminum. Just shake a sheet of aluminum to make a thunder sound.

2. Making Action or Sci-Fi Sounds

Ticking Bomb with a clock. Any clock that ticks will do.

Hits/Blows with a pillow. Hit a pillow to make a sound like a body blow. For really hard hits, you might want to whack a sofa cushion with a broomstick.

Bones breaking with celery. Just snap the celery stalks in half.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Whether you’re making a short film and need sounds to go with your action sequences, or just want some fun noises for your vlog or challenge video, it’s easy to find great sound effects you can use for free online.

Here are 7 places to download free sound effects! Or, if you’re interested in making your own, click here to jump to ‘Make Your Own Sound Effects’.

Part 1: YouTube Free Sound Effects Download

1. Filmora Sound Effects

Filmora Video Editor provides you with a huge library of free sound effects without download from anywhere else. There are 25 pieces of sound effect available in Filmora, such as transition swoosh, cinematic horn, beep sound and phone ring.

If you do not see the sound effect you want in Filmora, you can also go to the online effect store to find out more sound effects. The sounds are in.wav or mp3 files, so you do not have to use them inside Filmora only. They’re free to use for everyone after downloading, no matter what video editor you use.

The Filmstock audio effect library covers sound effects in different categories: nature sounds, animal sounds, movie sounds, gun sounds, fireworks, bird sounds, cricket sounds, wet sounds, dog barking, water sounds, guitar sounds, city sounds, monster sounds, laughing sounds, dinosaur sounds, fart sounds, pet sounds, dog sounds, car sounds, video game, and thunderstorm.

2. Freesound

Sounds on Freesound are uploaded by users under various Creative Commons licenses (some may require attribution, some may not allow commercial use).

The easiest way to browse the sounds on Freesound is probably to click into Sounds in the top menu, and then ‘Browse tags’ in the menu on the right of your screen. All of the tags on the site will be displayed, and the most commonly used ones will be biggest. The tags include what the sounds are meant to be (i.e. percussion or thunder) and what type of sounds they are (i.e. field-recording or synth).

3. PacDV

PacDV has been producing sound effects since 2001. You can browse and download sounds individually from their site, or download all at once in a huge bundle. You can use all the sounds for free (you just can’t sell them or provide direct download links to other people).

On the left of the website there’s a menu where you can choose what kinds of sound effects you’re interested in. The categories are:

Ambience: this is where you’ll find general background sounds, like ‘car interior’ or ‘grocery store’. Even when nothing in particular is happening, locations have sounds. This is also where you’ll find things like crowd noises.

Domestic: these are sounds you hear around the home, like sounds related to doors and appliances.

Interfaces: a lot of tech sounds live here, like beeps and clicks. Beeps are all titled ‘Beep’, but nothing else is really labeled beyond being called ‘Interface Sound’. You just have to listen and find out.

Machines: a variety of different machine sounds can be found here, from power tools like chainsaws and drills to things like typewriters or paper shredders.

Mechanical: this is where you’ll find sounds associated with cameras, coin slots, zippers, and more.

People: laughing, clapping, footsteps and even farts – this is where you’ll find human sounds.

Transportation: these sounds are all related to vehicles, be they cars or airplanes.

Voices: here you’ll find voices saying common things like ‘hi’, ‘aaah’, or ‘come on’.

Music: PacDV also has a selection of royalty free music. If you use it in your video, you need to give them credit by including Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/> in your video description.

Miscellaneous: sounds that don’t quite fit into other categories.

4. Sound Bible

The sounds on Sound Bible are either in the public domain, which means anyone can use them for anything without restriction, or licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, which means you just need to provide a credit for the person who created the effect you use. When you click on sound effects on Sound Bible you’ll be able to see whether the effect is Public Domain or Attribution 3.0, and it will tell you who the sound was recorded by. Both public domain and Attribution 3.0 sounds are available for commercial use.

This site has a search function, so if you want dog sounds you can search for ‘dog’. This might be easier than trying to pick the category closest to what you’re looking for and just scrolling through, like you do on some sites.

Sound Bible is updated about 3 times a week, so you can always check back for fresh sounds.

5. Sound Gator

Sound Gator has a huge number of sound effects divided into too many categories to list (24). The categories tend to be very specific, like ‘drink sound effects’ or ‘phone sound effects. If you don’t see a category that sounds like what you’re looking for, make sure to check under Misc Sound Effects because there are 68 Mp3#s in there for everything from tools to static.

You can sort the sound effects on Sound Gator by date added, popularity, top rated, runtime, top favorites, or most discussed.

6. Sounds Crate

Sounds Crate is part of the larger Production Crate which provides all kinds of resources to creators for free (you can upgrade to a paid account to access exclusive content, but there’s a lot of great content available for free). The categories available on Sounds Crate are:

Ambient: room tones and general background noises from nature or cities.

Animal: includes things like puppy barks and angry cats.

Blades and Metal: you’ll find sounds from swords, chains, and other metal implements here.

Crashes and Debris: perfect for action, this is where you’ll find sounds associated with destruction.

Electricity: things like electrical blasts and charges can be found here.

Electronics: any sound made by anything electrical, like beeps and appliance sounds.

Explosions and Bangs: if you have a visual explosion effect, you’ll probably need to combine it with something from here.

Fight: find sounds associated with action sequences, like whooshes and punches.

Gun Related: everything from reloads to gunshots.

Impact: any kind of thud or shattering sound.

Lock n’ Load: although there are some ‘gun checking’ sounds in here, it’s mostly clothing related sounds like zippers and Velcro.

Movement: wind sounds and whooshes.

People: sounds humans make, from voices to footsteps.

Sci-Fi SFX: zaps, beeps, and sci-fi ambience.

Vehicle: includes both common vehicles like cars and less-common vehicles like tanks.

Weapons: both modern weapons like missiles and old-timey things like arrows.

7. Zapsplat

Zapsplat claims to be the fastest growing free sound effects library on the internet. With more than 23,999 professional sounds, and more being added every week, they might just be right. The owner of the site, Alan McKinney, adds 500 sound effects every week by himself and the site also accepts sounds from contributors. All of their sounds were recorded using professional equipment and then edited to make them perfect.

You can even send Alan a message and request specific sound effects if you can’t already find what you want on the site.

On Zapsplat you can browse 26 categories including fantasy, warfare, and animals for individual sounds. Or, you can visit the Free SFX Packs section and download a set of related sounds together. Packs include ‘Magic Wand’, ‘Science Fiction Alarms’, and ‘Cartoon Boings’.

Part 2: Make Your Own Sound Effects for YouTube Videos

Here are some easy ways you can make your own sound effects at home.

1. Making Natural Sounds

Fire using cellophane. Just crinkle the cellophane wrap to create a sound like a crackling fire. Chip bags work too.

Rain using rice. Sprinkle rice (or birdseed) onto a thin metal sheet.

Alternatively for rain, you could record the sound of bacon frying.

Wind using a Ziploc. Fill a large ziplock with air and then open the bag a bit and force the air out.

Thunder with aluminum. Just shake a sheet of aluminum to make a thunder sound.

2. Making Action or Sci-Fi Sounds

Ticking Bomb with a clock. Any clock that ticks will do.

Hits/Blows with a pillow. Hit a pillow to make a sound like a body blow. For really hard hits, you might want to whack a sofa cushion with a broomstick.

Bones breaking with celery. Just snap the celery stalks in half.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Whether you’re making a short film and need sounds to go with your action sequences, or just want some fun noises for your vlog or challenge video, it’s easy to find great sound effects you can use for free online.

Here are 7 places to download free sound effects! Or, if you’re interested in making your own, click here to jump to ‘Make Your Own Sound Effects’.

Part 1: YouTube Free Sound Effects Download

1. Filmora Sound Effects

Filmora Video Editor provides you with a huge library of free sound effects without download from anywhere else. There are 25 pieces of sound effect available in Filmora, such as transition swoosh, cinematic horn, beep sound and phone ring.

If you do not see the sound effect you want in Filmora, you can also go to the online effect store to find out more sound effects. The sounds are in.wav or mp3 files, so you do not have to use them inside Filmora only. They’re free to use for everyone after downloading, no matter what video editor you use.

The Filmstock audio effect library covers sound effects in different categories: nature sounds, animal sounds, movie sounds, gun sounds, fireworks, bird sounds, cricket sounds, wet sounds, dog barking, water sounds, guitar sounds, city sounds, monster sounds, laughing sounds, dinosaur sounds, fart sounds, pet sounds, dog sounds, car sounds, video game, and thunderstorm.

2. Freesound

Sounds on Freesound are uploaded by users under various Creative Commons licenses (some may require attribution, some may not allow commercial use).

The easiest way to browse the sounds on Freesound is probably to click into Sounds in the top menu, and then ‘Browse tags’ in the menu on the right of your screen. All of the tags on the site will be displayed, and the most commonly used ones will be biggest. The tags include what the sounds are meant to be (i.e. percussion or thunder) and what type of sounds they are (i.e. field-recording or synth).

3. PacDV

PacDV has been producing sound effects since 2001. You can browse and download sounds individually from their site, or download all at once in a huge bundle. You can use all the sounds for free (you just can’t sell them or provide direct download links to other people).

On the left of the website there’s a menu where you can choose what kinds of sound effects you’re interested in. The categories are:

Ambience: this is where you’ll find general background sounds, like ‘car interior’ or ‘grocery store’. Even when nothing in particular is happening, locations have sounds. This is also where you’ll find things like crowd noises.

Domestic: these are sounds you hear around the home, like sounds related to doors and appliances.

Interfaces: a lot of tech sounds live here, like beeps and clicks. Beeps are all titled ‘Beep’, but nothing else is really labeled beyond being called ‘Interface Sound’. You just have to listen and find out.

Machines: a variety of different machine sounds can be found here, from power tools like chainsaws and drills to things like typewriters or paper shredders.

Mechanical: this is where you’ll find sounds associated with cameras, coin slots, zippers, and more.

People: laughing, clapping, footsteps and even farts – this is where you’ll find human sounds.

Transportation: these sounds are all related to vehicles, be they cars or airplanes.

Voices: here you’ll find voices saying common things like ‘hi’, ‘aaah’, or ‘come on’.

Music: PacDV also has a selection of royalty free music. If you use it in your video, you need to give them credit by including Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/> in your video description.

Miscellaneous: sounds that don’t quite fit into other categories.

4. Sound Bible

The sounds on Sound Bible are either in the public domain, which means anyone can use them for anything without restriction, or licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, which means you just need to provide a credit for the person who created the effect you use. When you click on sound effects on Sound Bible you’ll be able to see whether the effect is Public Domain or Attribution 3.0, and it will tell you who the sound was recorded by. Both public domain and Attribution 3.0 sounds are available for commercial use.

This site has a search function, so if you want dog sounds you can search for ‘dog’. This might be easier than trying to pick the category closest to what you’re looking for and just scrolling through, like you do on some sites.

Sound Bible is updated about 3 times a week, so you can always check back for fresh sounds.

5. Sound Gator

Sound Gator has a huge number of sound effects divided into too many categories to list (24). The categories tend to be very specific, like ‘drink sound effects’ or ‘phone sound effects. If you don’t see a category that sounds like what you’re looking for, make sure to check under Misc Sound Effects because there are 68 Mp3#s in there for everything from tools to static.

You can sort the sound effects on Sound Gator by date added, popularity, top rated, runtime, top favorites, or most discussed.

6. Sounds Crate

Sounds Crate is part of the larger Production Crate which provides all kinds of resources to creators for free (you can upgrade to a paid account to access exclusive content, but there’s a lot of great content available for free). The categories available on Sounds Crate are:

Ambient: room tones and general background noises from nature or cities.

Animal: includes things like puppy barks and angry cats.

Blades and Metal: you’ll find sounds from swords, chains, and other metal implements here.

Crashes and Debris: perfect for action, this is where you’ll find sounds associated with destruction.

Electricity: things like electrical blasts and charges can be found here.

Electronics: any sound made by anything electrical, like beeps and appliance sounds.

Explosions and Bangs: if you have a visual explosion effect, you’ll probably need to combine it with something from here.

Fight: find sounds associated with action sequences, like whooshes and punches.

Gun Related: everything from reloads to gunshots.

Impact: any kind of thud or shattering sound.

Lock n’ Load: although there are some ‘gun checking’ sounds in here, it’s mostly clothing related sounds like zippers and Velcro.

Movement: wind sounds and whooshes.

People: sounds humans make, from voices to footsteps.

Sci-Fi SFX: zaps, beeps, and sci-fi ambience.

Vehicle: includes both common vehicles like cars and less-common vehicles like tanks.

Weapons: both modern weapons like missiles and old-timey things like arrows.

7. Zapsplat

Zapsplat claims to be the fastest growing free sound effects library on the internet. With more than 23,999 professional sounds, and more being added every week, they might just be right. The owner of the site, Alan McKinney, adds 500 sound effects every week by himself and the site also accepts sounds from contributors. All of their sounds were recorded using professional equipment and then edited to make them perfect.

You can even send Alan a message and request specific sound effects if you can’t already find what you want on the site.

On Zapsplat you can browse 26 categories including fantasy, warfare, and animals for individual sounds. Or, you can visit the Free SFX Packs section and download a set of related sounds together. Packs include ‘Magic Wand’, ‘Science Fiction Alarms’, and ‘Cartoon Boings’.

Part 2: Make Your Own Sound Effects for YouTube Videos

Here are some easy ways you can make your own sound effects at home.

1. Making Natural Sounds

Fire using cellophane. Just crinkle the cellophane wrap to create a sound like a crackling fire. Chip bags work too.

Rain using rice. Sprinkle rice (or birdseed) onto a thin metal sheet.

Alternatively for rain, you could record the sound of bacon frying.

Wind using a Ziploc. Fill a large ziplock with air and then open the bag a bit and force the air out.

Thunder with aluminum. Just shake a sheet of aluminum to make a thunder sound.

2. Making Action or Sci-Fi Sounds

Ticking Bomb with a clock. Any clock that ticks will do.

Hits/Blows with a pillow. Hit a pillow to make a sound like a body blow. For really hard hits, you might want to whack a sofa cushion with a broomstick.

Bones breaking with celery. Just snap the celery stalks in half.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

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15 Best Sites to Find & Download Royalty-Free Music for YouTube

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Choosing great royalty-free music for your YouTube videos will help put your audience in the right frame of mind, cover up flaws in your background audio, and help viewers feel more engaged with your content.

YouTube provides a free audio library, but since a lot of creators use it everyone’s videos can start to sound the same. Here are 15 alternative places where you can get royalty-free music for free! It’ll say at the beginning of every section whether they require attribution or allow commercial use.

Best Sites for Royalty-Free Music for YouTube Creators [Free Download]

If you are using Wondershare Filmora video editor , you will find there are some royalty-free music tracks and sound effects already pre-programmed in the Audio library. You will find different styles of music tacks, varying from Young & Bright to Electronic. Download Filmora, and you will get the royalty-free audio library and powerful video editing tools.

1. Audionautix

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the site with ‘music by audionautix.com’ if you want to use this music (if you have a website, they ask that you include a link back to them).

Paid Options? No. All of the music on this site is free.

One of the first things you’ll see when you arrive on Audiionautix is a ‘YouTube Friendly’ button. They know that most people browsing their music library are looking for songs for YouTube videos, and that want you to know their music is safe from copyright claims.

All of the music in the Audionautix collection was created by one man, Jason Shaw, but there’s still a huge variety of tracks.

On the front page of Audionautix, there are three selections you can make to start your music search – genre, mood, and tempo. Genres range from hard rock to bluegrass to techno (there are 28 genres in total), and the moods include things like ‘uplifting’, ‘evil’, and ‘bouncy’ (there are 37 of those). The tempos are fast, medium, and slow. So, if you want a medium-tempo acoustic song with a calming mood, you can easily find all of the songs that meet those qualifications.

Not every combination will deliver results, so it can be easier to just choose two of the three search parameters.

2. Bensound

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must include one of the following in your video description: “Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music” or “Music: Song title - Bensound.com”

Paid Options? Yes. If you don’t want to credit Bensound (or can’t for some reason) then you need to purchase a license. Licensing starts at about $28 USD (price listed as €24) per track.

The most popular music from Bensound is displayed on the first page. Beyond the titles of the tracks, each has a short description that will give you a good idea of what to expect from the song before you listen. You’ll need to listen to a song to know if you want it, but the descriptions are a fast way to figure out if you don’t want something. For example, ‘A New Beginning’ could be anything based on that title, but the description lets you know it’s ‘punk rock’ with an ‘epic/achievement’ feeling.

You can narrow down the music you are shown by choosing a genre from the menu near the top of your page (there are 8 genres including cinematic, electronica, and corporate/pop). There’s also a search bar, and you can choose whether to display popular or new songs first.

All of the music on Bensound was created by Benjamin TISSOT, a composer based in France. He has been creating music for over 10 years.

3. dig.ccMixter

Commercial Use? Depends. Some songs are available for commercial use, some are not. It is easy to search only for songs which are.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the musicians.

Paid Options? Yes. You can purchase licenses to get around commercial use or attribution restrictions. Personal licenses are $22 USD.

Musicians upload their work to ccMixter and make it available to creators like you at dig.ccMixter. Over 45,000 musicians have participated and this has resulted in a huge variety of music for you to discover.

Clicking ‘tag search’ at the top of the page is probably the best way to start your search. The ‘tags’ are displayed in three categories – genre, instrument, and style. You can click as many tags as you want from each category (i.e. you can check off ‘classical’ for the genre and then both bass and cello for instruments).

By default, your search will return results that have even just one of the tags you selected, but you can click ‘match all’ to see results that include all of your selected tags.

To the right of the screen, there’s a button called ‘filters’ and if you click it it’ll let you narrow your results by license (you can choose to only browse music that is free for commercial use). You can also specify if you only want instrumental songs.

If you do not use the ‘free for commercial use’ filter then you will need to click on songs to see whether their creative commons licenses allow commercial use.

If you’re an indie game developer, they have a Music for Video Games section for you too.

4. Free Music Archive

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

There is a huge selection on Free Music Archive (they include songs curated by other sites, including other sites on this list), but using this site can be a bit trickier than using other sites because there are so many different licenses at play. There are even several licenses that do not allow songs to be used in YouTube videos (any Creative Commons license with ‘ND / No Derivatives’ will not allow for use in a video). You should read this page before downloading anything from the Free Music Archive to use on YouTube.

To start browsing Free Music Archive for music you can use for your videos, go to ‘Curators’ in the top menu, and select ‘Music for Video’. There’s no point in browsing music you might not be allowed to use for YouTube, and so the site has made it easy to find the music you can.

By default this screen will not include music you can use commercially, so you need to check ‘allows for commercial use’ in the side menu if that’s important to you. You can also select a genre and specify if you only want instrumental songs.

5. Free Stock Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

Simply choose a genre from the ‘Free Music’ drop-down menu to start browsing Free Stock Music’s collection. There are 10 genres including Pop, Hip Hop, and Corporate.

There are not a lot of ways to customize your search results on this site. You just can search for a keyword, like ‘happy’, but you can’t narrow your results down by things like instrument or mood like you can on some other sites. You just have to scroll through either your search results or the chosen genre until you find something.

To make it a bit easier, Free Stock Music has included detailed descriptions of each song you can read while your browsing and these descriptions do tend to include details about instruments and the moods of the songs.

You need to create a free account on Free Stock Music to access their songs.

6. Incompetech

Commercial Use? YouTube monetization allowed. Other kinds of commercial use may be restricted.

Attribution Required? Yes. You can put the attribution in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot (or do not want to) credit Incompetech then you can purchase a license instead. Licensing 1 piece of music costs $30.

Incompetech allows you to browse one of three ways. The ‘Full Search’ will be best for most people, but if you want to see every song in alphabetical order you can click on ‘Full List’, or you can browse collections like ‘Comedic’ in ‘View Collections’ (but not every piece of music on the site can be found in a collection).

If you go into ‘Full Search’ you’ll see a list of all the music and be able to filter it by feel, tempo, genre, and length. For example, you could set ‘Feels’ to ‘Grooving’ or ‘Length’ to ‘3:00-3:29’.

You can also use the search bar to look for an instrument or song title.

Clicking Expand All will reveal descriptions of all the songs and a ‘listen now’ button, but it will stretch the page a lot. You can see more details about individual songs, and listen to them, by clicking on the title. You won’t be taken to a new page, which is convenient.

You can also download all the music at once (by clicking ‘download all the music on this site at once’).

7. Josh Woodward

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Attribution goes in your description box and it should look like this: Music - “SONG TITLE HERE” by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot give Josh credit for some reason you can buy a single-song license for $30.

Josh Woodward is a singer-songwriter who has chosen to allow the free use of all his music (although he does appreciate donations).

You’ll immediately see a list of music on Josh’s site (not everything, there are over 200 songs on this site), and you can change what is displayed by using the filters on the right of the page. The filters available are Playlist, Genre, Album, Tags, Tempo, and Length.

The playlists are songs that have been bundled together around a theme like ‘fun and fast’ or ‘popular in videos’.

There are nine genres to choose from including ‘dark acoustic’ and ‘Americana’.

The albums are albums that Josh has released.

You can also search the song titles and lyrics by typing keywords into the search bar.

At the top of the page, there’s a player you can use to preview the songs, and you can choose whether to browse vocal songs or songs with lyrics (the results below may not appear to change, but if you use the player you’ll hear the instrumental version instead of the version with vocals).

8. Looperman

Commercial Use? Allowed for loops, but they make no guarantees.

Attribution Required? Unclear. The site doesn’t address attribution so it may be up to whoever has uploaded the loop you want to use.

Paid Options? No.

Looperman is a community for musicians. The goal is to provide instrumental loops and acapella vocals to other musicians for their own projects. In theory, all of the music loops and sounds are completely free to use in your projects, but since it’s a community they cannot guarantee that a user hasn’t uploaded something they don’t own (they aren’t allowed to, so in theory you should be safe, but the site doesn’t make any guarantees).

If you want to use vocals it seems like you have to talk to the person who owns the vocals about whether you can use them commercially or whether you need to include attribution.

9. Moby Gratis

Commercial Use? Never allowed. You cannot make money from the project you use this music in any way, including YouTube monetization or through a service like Patreon.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put this in your video description: Music: [Track Name] by Moby courtesy of Mobygratis.com

Paid Options? No.

Moby is a Grammy-nominated, VMA-winning, artist whose work you have probably heard on the radio. Even if you aren’t familiar with Moby himself, he has co-written, produced, and remixed music for other major artists like David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, and Daft Punk.

Moby has chosen to make a catalog of his work available to independent filmmakers for non-commercial projects. Not all of the music provided on the site is available for YouTube, only the music marked Unreleased (if it has been released, then it will be flagged by YouTube’s copyright system). There is a lot of music under the ‘Unreleased’ category, though.

In order to download songs, you will need to make an account, and it takes about 24 hours for your account to be approved.

10. Musopen

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song

Paid Options? No.

Musopen provides music that is either in the ‘public domain’, or protected by Creative Commons licenses. If it’s in the public domain that means that nobody owns the copyright and anyone can use it for anything (however, Musopen does warn that they do not review uploads from their users so it is possible that someone could upload something they claim is public domain and be lying or wrong).

Creative Commons licenses all have their own conditions. Some may block commercial use, some may require attribution. The ones you need to watch out for as a video creator are the ones marked ‘No Derivatives’, because you can’t use songs licensed this way in videos.

You can start using Musopen by typing a keyword into the search bar on the main page, or scrolling down to select ‘Browse royalty free music recordings’. Besides music recordings, Musopen provides sheet music. If you have some musical talent and want to record your own music for your videos then this might be useful. If not, you probably want to stick to the recordings.

If you click on the Music Discovery Tool you’ll be able to search the recordings not only by instrument, but by license (so you can make sure you’re only looking at music that is in the public domain, or make sure you’re not looking at anything with that ‘No Derivatives’ condition.

11. TeknoAXE

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes.

Paid Options? No.

All of the music on TeknoAXE is covered under a CC4.0 license, which means you can share and adapt the music for any purpose so long as you provide attribution.

TeknoAXE’s music is divided into four categories: electronic dance music, rock and metal music, orchestra and soundtrack, and miscellaneous. There are several sub-categories under every category.

Once you’ve clicked into subcategory you’ll see thumbnails for every song in the category. Click on one to be taken to the song’s page, where you can listen to it before you decide if you want to download.

There are tons of places where you can find great royalty-free music you can use on YouTube, so start hunting! Finding the perfect song for that cool montage you’ve got planned, your intro sequence, or the background of your vlog will take your content to a new level of quality.

12. PacDV

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/>

Paid Options? No.

PacDV is primarily a sound effects site, but they have a music section as well (just click Music in the menu to the left under Sound Effects. ‘Free Music’ under resources is a completely different site). There is no way to filter down the music, and there is no search function.

There is a column in the list of music for ‘moods/emotions’, so you can get an idea of which songs you might want to listen to before you click to their pages.

13. Partners In Rhyme

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Credit them in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. You can’t buy a license for free songs to get around attribution, but they do offer paid music. At $100 or more per song, their paid music is outside the budget of most YouTubers.

Partners In Rhyme is mostly a paid site, and they’re at the pricier end of the spectrum for paid sites. The reason they’re included on this list is that they have kindly curated a selection of free music for use on YouTube or in projects like podcasts (the link above will take you to the free page, not the site in general).

There isn’t a search function for the free music, or a way to narrow down what’s displayed, but you can click the play button next to any title to hear what the song sounds like. To download, just right click and choose ‘save file’ or ‘save target as’.

14. Purple Planet Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put ‘Music: http://www.purple-planet.com’ in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you want to use the music for anything besides YouTube, or if you don’t want to give them credit, then you can buy a license for $5.

Purple Planet Music is a team of three people, two of whom compose, perform, record, and produce all of the music you’ll find on this site (the third is the studio manager).

From the home page of Purple Planet choose one of the categories listed under ‘Royalty Free Music’. The categories are more related to moods than genres and include things like ‘cute’, ‘sneaky’, and ‘reflective’. Because they know you may want to use this music in film projects, you can even find categories like ‘dark backgrounds’.

Once you click into a category everything is listed, you can’t narrow your results. There’s not an overwhelming number of songs in each category, though, so it’s easy to choose something just by reading descriptions and listening to what’s there.

15. Sounds Crate

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? Yes. You can upgrade to a Pro account for $49 per year to access more content.

Sounds Crate has music and sound effects. After you click into music, you’ll see thumbnails for sections related to a number of themes such as action music, corporate music, and hip hop. You’ll be able to preview and download all the songs in the category once you’re on the category page.

You are only allowed 5 downloads per day while you’re using Sounds Crate for free. They also request a $10 annual donation from free users, but it’s optional.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Choosing great royalty-free music for your YouTube videos will help put your audience in the right frame of mind, cover up flaws in your background audio, and help viewers feel more engaged with your content.

YouTube provides a free audio library, but since a lot of creators use it everyone’s videos can start to sound the same. Here are 15 alternative places where you can get royalty-free music for free! It’ll say at the beginning of every section whether they require attribution or allow commercial use.

Best Sites for Royalty-Free Music for YouTube Creators [Free Download]

If you are using Wondershare Filmora video editor , you will find there are some royalty-free music tracks and sound effects already pre-programmed in the Audio library. You will find different styles of music tacks, varying from Young & Bright to Electronic. Download Filmora, and you will get the royalty-free audio library and powerful video editing tools.

1. Audionautix

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the site with ‘music by audionautix.com’ if you want to use this music (if you have a website, they ask that you include a link back to them).

Paid Options? No. All of the music on this site is free.

One of the first things you’ll see when you arrive on Audiionautix is a ‘YouTube Friendly’ button. They know that most people browsing their music library are looking for songs for YouTube videos, and that want you to know their music is safe from copyright claims.

All of the music in the Audionautix collection was created by one man, Jason Shaw, but there’s still a huge variety of tracks.

On the front page of Audionautix, there are three selections you can make to start your music search – genre, mood, and tempo. Genres range from hard rock to bluegrass to techno (there are 28 genres in total), and the moods include things like ‘uplifting’, ‘evil’, and ‘bouncy’ (there are 37 of those). The tempos are fast, medium, and slow. So, if you want a medium-tempo acoustic song with a calming mood, you can easily find all of the songs that meet those qualifications.

Not every combination will deliver results, so it can be easier to just choose two of the three search parameters.

2. Bensound

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must include one of the following in your video description: “Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music” or “Music: Song title - Bensound.com”

Paid Options? Yes. If you don’t want to credit Bensound (or can’t for some reason) then you need to purchase a license. Licensing starts at about $28 USD (price listed as €24) per track.

The most popular music from Bensound is displayed on the first page. Beyond the titles of the tracks, each has a short description that will give you a good idea of what to expect from the song before you listen. You’ll need to listen to a song to know if you want it, but the descriptions are a fast way to figure out if you don’t want something. For example, ‘A New Beginning’ could be anything based on that title, but the description lets you know it’s ‘punk rock’ with an ‘epic/achievement’ feeling.

You can narrow down the music you are shown by choosing a genre from the menu near the top of your page (there are 8 genres including cinematic, electronica, and corporate/pop). There’s also a search bar, and you can choose whether to display popular or new songs first.

All of the music on Bensound was created by Benjamin TISSOT, a composer based in France. He has been creating music for over 10 years.

3. dig.ccMixter

Commercial Use? Depends. Some songs are available for commercial use, some are not. It is easy to search only for songs which are.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the musicians.

Paid Options? Yes. You can purchase licenses to get around commercial use or attribution restrictions. Personal licenses are $22 USD.

Musicians upload their work to ccMixter and make it available to creators like you at dig.ccMixter. Over 45,000 musicians have participated and this has resulted in a huge variety of music for you to discover.

Clicking ‘tag search’ at the top of the page is probably the best way to start your search. The ‘tags’ are displayed in three categories – genre, instrument, and style. You can click as many tags as you want from each category (i.e. you can check off ‘classical’ for the genre and then both bass and cello for instruments).

By default, your search will return results that have even just one of the tags you selected, but you can click ‘match all’ to see results that include all of your selected tags.

To the right of the screen, there’s a button called ‘filters’ and if you click it it’ll let you narrow your results by license (you can choose to only browse music that is free for commercial use). You can also specify if you only want instrumental songs.

If you do not use the ‘free for commercial use’ filter then you will need to click on songs to see whether their creative commons licenses allow commercial use.

If you’re an indie game developer, they have a Music for Video Games section for you too.

4. Free Music Archive

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

There is a huge selection on Free Music Archive (they include songs curated by other sites, including other sites on this list), but using this site can be a bit trickier than using other sites because there are so many different licenses at play. There are even several licenses that do not allow songs to be used in YouTube videos (any Creative Commons license with ‘ND / No Derivatives’ will not allow for use in a video). You should read this page before downloading anything from the Free Music Archive to use on YouTube.

To start browsing Free Music Archive for music you can use for your videos, go to ‘Curators’ in the top menu, and select ‘Music for Video’. There’s no point in browsing music you might not be allowed to use for YouTube, and so the site has made it easy to find the music you can.

By default this screen will not include music you can use commercially, so you need to check ‘allows for commercial use’ in the side menu if that’s important to you. You can also select a genre and specify if you only want instrumental songs.

5. Free Stock Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

Simply choose a genre from the ‘Free Music’ drop-down menu to start browsing Free Stock Music’s collection. There are 10 genres including Pop, Hip Hop, and Corporate.

There are not a lot of ways to customize your search results on this site. You just can search for a keyword, like ‘happy’, but you can’t narrow your results down by things like instrument or mood like you can on some other sites. You just have to scroll through either your search results or the chosen genre until you find something.

To make it a bit easier, Free Stock Music has included detailed descriptions of each song you can read while your browsing and these descriptions do tend to include details about instruments and the moods of the songs.

You need to create a free account on Free Stock Music to access their songs.

6. Incompetech

Commercial Use? YouTube monetization allowed. Other kinds of commercial use may be restricted.

Attribution Required? Yes. You can put the attribution in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot (or do not want to) credit Incompetech then you can purchase a license instead. Licensing 1 piece of music costs $30.

Incompetech allows you to browse one of three ways. The ‘Full Search’ will be best for most people, but if you want to see every song in alphabetical order you can click on ‘Full List’, or you can browse collections like ‘Comedic’ in ‘View Collections’ (but not every piece of music on the site can be found in a collection).

If you go into ‘Full Search’ you’ll see a list of all the music and be able to filter it by feel, tempo, genre, and length. For example, you could set ‘Feels’ to ‘Grooving’ or ‘Length’ to ‘3:00-3:29’.

You can also use the search bar to look for an instrument or song title.

Clicking Expand All will reveal descriptions of all the songs and a ‘listen now’ button, but it will stretch the page a lot. You can see more details about individual songs, and listen to them, by clicking on the title. You won’t be taken to a new page, which is convenient.

You can also download all the music at once (by clicking ‘download all the music on this site at once’).

7. Josh Woodward

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Attribution goes in your description box and it should look like this: Music - “SONG TITLE HERE” by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot give Josh credit for some reason you can buy a single-song license for $30.

Josh Woodward is a singer-songwriter who has chosen to allow the free use of all his music (although he does appreciate donations).

You’ll immediately see a list of music on Josh’s site (not everything, there are over 200 songs on this site), and you can change what is displayed by using the filters on the right of the page. The filters available are Playlist, Genre, Album, Tags, Tempo, and Length.

The playlists are songs that have been bundled together around a theme like ‘fun and fast’ or ‘popular in videos’.

There are nine genres to choose from including ‘dark acoustic’ and ‘Americana’.

The albums are albums that Josh has released.

You can also search the song titles and lyrics by typing keywords into the search bar.

At the top of the page, there’s a player you can use to preview the songs, and you can choose whether to browse vocal songs or songs with lyrics (the results below may not appear to change, but if you use the player you’ll hear the instrumental version instead of the version with vocals).

8. Looperman

Commercial Use? Allowed for loops, but they make no guarantees.

Attribution Required? Unclear. The site doesn’t address attribution so it may be up to whoever has uploaded the loop you want to use.

Paid Options? No.

Looperman is a community for musicians. The goal is to provide instrumental loops and acapella vocals to other musicians for their own projects. In theory, all of the music loops and sounds are completely free to use in your projects, but since it’s a community they cannot guarantee that a user hasn’t uploaded something they don’t own (they aren’t allowed to, so in theory you should be safe, but the site doesn’t make any guarantees).

If you want to use vocals it seems like you have to talk to the person who owns the vocals about whether you can use them commercially or whether you need to include attribution.

9. Moby Gratis

Commercial Use? Never allowed. You cannot make money from the project you use this music in any way, including YouTube monetization or through a service like Patreon.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put this in your video description: Music: [Track Name] by Moby courtesy of Mobygratis.com

Paid Options? No.

Moby is a Grammy-nominated, VMA-winning, artist whose work you have probably heard on the radio. Even if you aren’t familiar with Moby himself, he has co-written, produced, and remixed music for other major artists like David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, and Daft Punk.

Moby has chosen to make a catalog of his work available to independent filmmakers for non-commercial projects. Not all of the music provided on the site is available for YouTube, only the music marked Unreleased (if it has been released, then it will be flagged by YouTube’s copyright system). There is a lot of music under the ‘Unreleased’ category, though.

In order to download songs, you will need to make an account, and it takes about 24 hours for your account to be approved.

10. Musopen

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song

Paid Options? No.

Musopen provides music that is either in the ‘public domain’, or protected by Creative Commons licenses. If it’s in the public domain that means that nobody owns the copyright and anyone can use it for anything (however, Musopen does warn that they do not review uploads from their users so it is possible that someone could upload something they claim is public domain and be lying or wrong).

Creative Commons licenses all have their own conditions. Some may block commercial use, some may require attribution. The ones you need to watch out for as a video creator are the ones marked ‘No Derivatives’, because you can’t use songs licensed this way in videos.

You can start using Musopen by typing a keyword into the search bar on the main page, or scrolling down to select ‘Browse royalty free music recordings’. Besides music recordings, Musopen provides sheet music. If you have some musical talent and want to record your own music for your videos then this might be useful. If not, you probably want to stick to the recordings.

If you click on the Music Discovery Tool you’ll be able to search the recordings not only by instrument, but by license (so you can make sure you’re only looking at music that is in the public domain, or make sure you’re not looking at anything with that ‘No Derivatives’ condition.

11. TeknoAXE

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes.

Paid Options? No.

All of the music on TeknoAXE is covered under a CC4.0 license, which means you can share and adapt the music for any purpose so long as you provide attribution.

TeknoAXE’s music is divided into four categories: electronic dance music, rock and metal music, orchestra and soundtrack, and miscellaneous. There are several sub-categories under every category.

Once you’ve clicked into subcategory you’ll see thumbnails for every song in the category. Click on one to be taken to the song’s page, where you can listen to it before you decide if you want to download.

There are tons of places where you can find great royalty-free music you can use on YouTube, so start hunting! Finding the perfect song for that cool montage you’ve got planned, your intro sequence, or the background of your vlog will take your content to a new level of quality.

12. PacDV

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/>

Paid Options? No.

PacDV is primarily a sound effects site, but they have a music section as well (just click Music in the menu to the left under Sound Effects. ‘Free Music’ under resources is a completely different site). There is no way to filter down the music, and there is no search function.

There is a column in the list of music for ‘moods/emotions’, so you can get an idea of which songs you might want to listen to before you click to their pages.

13. Partners In Rhyme

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Credit them in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. You can’t buy a license for free songs to get around attribution, but they do offer paid music. At $100 or more per song, their paid music is outside the budget of most YouTubers.

Partners In Rhyme is mostly a paid site, and they’re at the pricier end of the spectrum for paid sites. The reason they’re included on this list is that they have kindly curated a selection of free music for use on YouTube or in projects like podcasts (the link above will take you to the free page, not the site in general).

There isn’t a search function for the free music, or a way to narrow down what’s displayed, but you can click the play button next to any title to hear what the song sounds like. To download, just right click and choose ‘save file’ or ‘save target as’.

14. Purple Planet Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put ‘Music: http://www.purple-planet.com’ in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you want to use the music for anything besides YouTube, or if you don’t want to give them credit, then you can buy a license for $5.

Purple Planet Music is a team of three people, two of whom compose, perform, record, and produce all of the music you’ll find on this site (the third is the studio manager).

From the home page of Purple Planet choose one of the categories listed under ‘Royalty Free Music’. The categories are more related to moods than genres and include things like ‘cute’, ‘sneaky’, and ‘reflective’. Because they know you may want to use this music in film projects, you can even find categories like ‘dark backgrounds’.

Once you click into a category everything is listed, you can’t narrow your results. There’s not an overwhelming number of songs in each category, though, so it’s easy to choose something just by reading descriptions and listening to what’s there.

15. Sounds Crate

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? Yes. You can upgrade to a Pro account for $49 per year to access more content.

Sounds Crate has music and sound effects. After you click into music, you’ll see thumbnails for sections related to a number of themes such as action music, corporate music, and hip hop. You’ll be able to preview and download all the songs in the category once you’re on the category page.

You are only allowed 5 downloads per day while you’re using Sounds Crate for free. They also request a $10 annual donation from free users, but it’s optional.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Choosing great royalty-free music for your YouTube videos will help put your audience in the right frame of mind, cover up flaws in your background audio, and help viewers feel more engaged with your content.

YouTube provides a free audio library, but since a lot of creators use it everyone’s videos can start to sound the same. Here are 15 alternative places where you can get royalty-free music for free! It’ll say at the beginning of every section whether they require attribution or allow commercial use.

Best Sites for Royalty-Free Music for YouTube Creators [Free Download]

If you are using Wondershare Filmora video editor , you will find there are some royalty-free music tracks and sound effects already pre-programmed in the Audio library. You will find different styles of music tacks, varying from Young & Bright to Electronic. Download Filmora, and you will get the royalty-free audio library and powerful video editing tools.

1. Audionautix

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the site with ‘music by audionautix.com’ if you want to use this music (if you have a website, they ask that you include a link back to them).

Paid Options? No. All of the music on this site is free.

One of the first things you’ll see when you arrive on Audiionautix is a ‘YouTube Friendly’ button. They know that most people browsing their music library are looking for songs for YouTube videos, and that want you to know their music is safe from copyright claims.

All of the music in the Audionautix collection was created by one man, Jason Shaw, but there’s still a huge variety of tracks.

On the front page of Audionautix, there are three selections you can make to start your music search – genre, mood, and tempo. Genres range from hard rock to bluegrass to techno (there are 28 genres in total), and the moods include things like ‘uplifting’, ‘evil’, and ‘bouncy’ (there are 37 of those). The tempos are fast, medium, and slow. So, if you want a medium-tempo acoustic song with a calming mood, you can easily find all of the songs that meet those qualifications.

Not every combination will deliver results, so it can be easier to just choose two of the three search parameters.

2. Bensound

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must include one of the following in your video description: “Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music” or “Music: Song title - Bensound.com”

Paid Options? Yes. If you don’t want to credit Bensound (or can’t for some reason) then you need to purchase a license. Licensing starts at about $28 USD (price listed as €24) per track.

The most popular music from Bensound is displayed on the first page. Beyond the titles of the tracks, each has a short description that will give you a good idea of what to expect from the song before you listen. You’ll need to listen to a song to know if you want it, but the descriptions are a fast way to figure out if you don’t want something. For example, ‘A New Beginning’ could be anything based on that title, but the description lets you know it’s ‘punk rock’ with an ‘epic/achievement’ feeling.

You can narrow down the music you are shown by choosing a genre from the menu near the top of your page (there are 8 genres including cinematic, electronica, and corporate/pop). There’s also a search bar, and you can choose whether to display popular or new songs first.

All of the music on Bensound was created by Benjamin TISSOT, a composer based in France. He has been creating music for over 10 years.

3. dig.ccMixter

Commercial Use? Depends. Some songs are available for commercial use, some are not. It is easy to search only for songs which are.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the musicians.

Paid Options? Yes. You can purchase licenses to get around commercial use or attribution restrictions. Personal licenses are $22 USD.

Musicians upload their work to ccMixter and make it available to creators like you at dig.ccMixter. Over 45,000 musicians have participated and this has resulted in a huge variety of music for you to discover.

Clicking ‘tag search’ at the top of the page is probably the best way to start your search. The ‘tags’ are displayed in three categories – genre, instrument, and style. You can click as many tags as you want from each category (i.e. you can check off ‘classical’ for the genre and then both bass and cello for instruments).

By default, your search will return results that have even just one of the tags you selected, but you can click ‘match all’ to see results that include all of your selected tags.

To the right of the screen, there’s a button called ‘filters’ and if you click it it’ll let you narrow your results by license (you can choose to only browse music that is free for commercial use). You can also specify if you only want instrumental songs.

If you do not use the ‘free for commercial use’ filter then you will need to click on songs to see whether their creative commons licenses allow commercial use.

If you’re an indie game developer, they have a Music for Video Games section for you too.

4. Free Music Archive

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

There is a huge selection on Free Music Archive (they include songs curated by other sites, including other sites on this list), but using this site can be a bit trickier than using other sites because there are so many different licenses at play. There are even several licenses that do not allow songs to be used in YouTube videos (any Creative Commons license with ‘ND / No Derivatives’ will not allow for use in a video). You should read this page before downloading anything from the Free Music Archive to use on YouTube.

To start browsing Free Music Archive for music you can use for your videos, go to ‘Curators’ in the top menu, and select ‘Music for Video’. There’s no point in browsing music you might not be allowed to use for YouTube, and so the site has made it easy to find the music you can.

By default this screen will not include music you can use commercially, so you need to check ‘allows for commercial use’ in the side menu if that’s important to you. You can also select a genre and specify if you only want instrumental songs.

5. Free Stock Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

Simply choose a genre from the ‘Free Music’ drop-down menu to start browsing Free Stock Music’s collection. There are 10 genres including Pop, Hip Hop, and Corporate.

There are not a lot of ways to customize your search results on this site. You just can search for a keyword, like ‘happy’, but you can’t narrow your results down by things like instrument or mood like you can on some other sites. You just have to scroll through either your search results or the chosen genre until you find something.

To make it a bit easier, Free Stock Music has included detailed descriptions of each song you can read while your browsing and these descriptions do tend to include details about instruments and the moods of the songs.

You need to create a free account on Free Stock Music to access their songs.

6. Incompetech

Commercial Use? YouTube monetization allowed. Other kinds of commercial use may be restricted.

Attribution Required? Yes. You can put the attribution in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot (or do not want to) credit Incompetech then you can purchase a license instead. Licensing 1 piece of music costs $30.

Incompetech allows you to browse one of three ways. The ‘Full Search’ will be best for most people, but if you want to see every song in alphabetical order you can click on ‘Full List’, or you can browse collections like ‘Comedic’ in ‘View Collections’ (but not every piece of music on the site can be found in a collection).

If you go into ‘Full Search’ you’ll see a list of all the music and be able to filter it by feel, tempo, genre, and length. For example, you could set ‘Feels’ to ‘Grooving’ or ‘Length’ to ‘3:00-3:29’.

You can also use the search bar to look for an instrument or song title.

Clicking Expand All will reveal descriptions of all the songs and a ‘listen now’ button, but it will stretch the page a lot. You can see more details about individual songs, and listen to them, by clicking on the title. You won’t be taken to a new page, which is convenient.

You can also download all the music at once (by clicking ‘download all the music on this site at once’).

7. Josh Woodward

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Attribution goes in your description box and it should look like this: Music - “SONG TITLE HERE” by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot give Josh credit for some reason you can buy a single-song license for $30.

Josh Woodward is a singer-songwriter who has chosen to allow the free use of all his music (although he does appreciate donations).

You’ll immediately see a list of music on Josh’s site (not everything, there are over 200 songs on this site), and you can change what is displayed by using the filters on the right of the page. The filters available are Playlist, Genre, Album, Tags, Tempo, and Length.

The playlists are songs that have been bundled together around a theme like ‘fun and fast’ or ‘popular in videos’.

There are nine genres to choose from including ‘dark acoustic’ and ‘Americana’.

The albums are albums that Josh has released.

You can also search the song titles and lyrics by typing keywords into the search bar.

At the top of the page, there’s a player you can use to preview the songs, and you can choose whether to browse vocal songs or songs with lyrics (the results below may not appear to change, but if you use the player you’ll hear the instrumental version instead of the version with vocals).

8. Looperman

Commercial Use? Allowed for loops, but they make no guarantees.

Attribution Required? Unclear. The site doesn’t address attribution so it may be up to whoever has uploaded the loop you want to use.

Paid Options? No.

Looperman is a community for musicians. The goal is to provide instrumental loops and acapella vocals to other musicians for their own projects. In theory, all of the music loops and sounds are completely free to use in your projects, but since it’s a community they cannot guarantee that a user hasn’t uploaded something they don’t own (they aren’t allowed to, so in theory you should be safe, but the site doesn’t make any guarantees).

If you want to use vocals it seems like you have to talk to the person who owns the vocals about whether you can use them commercially or whether you need to include attribution.

9. Moby Gratis

Commercial Use? Never allowed. You cannot make money from the project you use this music in any way, including YouTube monetization or through a service like Patreon.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put this in your video description: Music: [Track Name] by Moby courtesy of Mobygratis.com

Paid Options? No.

Moby is a Grammy-nominated, VMA-winning, artist whose work you have probably heard on the radio. Even if you aren’t familiar with Moby himself, he has co-written, produced, and remixed music for other major artists like David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, and Daft Punk.

Moby has chosen to make a catalog of his work available to independent filmmakers for non-commercial projects. Not all of the music provided on the site is available for YouTube, only the music marked Unreleased (if it has been released, then it will be flagged by YouTube’s copyright system). There is a lot of music under the ‘Unreleased’ category, though.

In order to download songs, you will need to make an account, and it takes about 24 hours for your account to be approved.

10. Musopen

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song

Paid Options? No.

Musopen provides music that is either in the ‘public domain’, or protected by Creative Commons licenses. If it’s in the public domain that means that nobody owns the copyright and anyone can use it for anything (however, Musopen does warn that they do not review uploads from their users so it is possible that someone could upload something they claim is public domain and be lying or wrong).

Creative Commons licenses all have their own conditions. Some may block commercial use, some may require attribution. The ones you need to watch out for as a video creator are the ones marked ‘No Derivatives’, because you can’t use songs licensed this way in videos.

You can start using Musopen by typing a keyword into the search bar on the main page, or scrolling down to select ‘Browse royalty free music recordings’. Besides music recordings, Musopen provides sheet music. If you have some musical talent and want to record your own music for your videos then this might be useful. If not, you probably want to stick to the recordings.

If you click on the Music Discovery Tool you’ll be able to search the recordings not only by instrument, but by license (so you can make sure you’re only looking at music that is in the public domain, or make sure you’re not looking at anything with that ‘No Derivatives’ condition.

11. TeknoAXE

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes.

Paid Options? No.

All of the music on TeknoAXE is covered under a CC4.0 license, which means you can share and adapt the music for any purpose so long as you provide attribution.

TeknoAXE’s music is divided into four categories: electronic dance music, rock and metal music, orchestra and soundtrack, and miscellaneous. There are several sub-categories under every category.

Once you’ve clicked into subcategory you’ll see thumbnails for every song in the category. Click on one to be taken to the song’s page, where you can listen to it before you decide if you want to download.

There are tons of places where you can find great royalty-free music you can use on YouTube, so start hunting! Finding the perfect song for that cool montage you’ve got planned, your intro sequence, or the background of your vlog will take your content to a new level of quality.

12. PacDV

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/>

Paid Options? No.

PacDV is primarily a sound effects site, but they have a music section as well (just click Music in the menu to the left under Sound Effects. ‘Free Music’ under resources is a completely different site). There is no way to filter down the music, and there is no search function.

There is a column in the list of music for ‘moods/emotions’, so you can get an idea of which songs you might want to listen to before you click to their pages.

13. Partners In Rhyme

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Credit them in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. You can’t buy a license for free songs to get around attribution, but they do offer paid music. At $100 or more per song, their paid music is outside the budget of most YouTubers.

Partners In Rhyme is mostly a paid site, and they’re at the pricier end of the spectrum for paid sites. The reason they’re included on this list is that they have kindly curated a selection of free music for use on YouTube or in projects like podcasts (the link above will take you to the free page, not the site in general).

There isn’t a search function for the free music, or a way to narrow down what’s displayed, but you can click the play button next to any title to hear what the song sounds like. To download, just right click and choose ‘save file’ or ‘save target as’.

14. Purple Planet Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put ‘Music: http://www.purple-planet.com’ in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you want to use the music for anything besides YouTube, or if you don’t want to give them credit, then you can buy a license for $5.

Purple Planet Music is a team of three people, two of whom compose, perform, record, and produce all of the music you’ll find on this site (the third is the studio manager).

From the home page of Purple Planet choose one of the categories listed under ‘Royalty Free Music’. The categories are more related to moods than genres and include things like ‘cute’, ‘sneaky’, and ‘reflective’. Because they know you may want to use this music in film projects, you can even find categories like ‘dark backgrounds’.

Once you click into a category everything is listed, you can’t narrow your results. There’s not an overwhelming number of songs in each category, though, so it’s easy to choose something just by reading descriptions and listening to what’s there.

15. Sounds Crate

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? Yes. You can upgrade to a Pro account for $49 per year to access more content.

Sounds Crate has music and sound effects. After you click into music, you’ll see thumbnails for sections related to a number of themes such as action music, corporate music, and hip hop. You’ll be able to preview and download all the songs in the category once you’re on the category page.

You are only allowed 5 downloads per day while you’re using Sounds Crate for free. They also request a $10 annual donation from free users, but it’s optional.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

Choosing great royalty-free music for your YouTube videos will help put your audience in the right frame of mind, cover up flaws in your background audio, and help viewers feel more engaged with your content.

YouTube provides a free audio library, but since a lot of creators use it everyone’s videos can start to sound the same. Here are 15 alternative places where you can get royalty-free music for free! It’ll say at the beginning of every section whether they require attribution or allow commercial use.

Best Sites for Royalty-Free Music for YouTube Creators [Free Download]

If you are using Wondershare Filmora video editor , you will find there are some royalty-free music tracks and sound effects already pre-programmed in the Audio library. You will find different styles of music tacks, varying from Young & Bright to Electronic. Download Filmora, and you will get the royalty-free audio library and powerful video editing tools.

1. Audionautix

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the site with ‘music by audionautix.com’ if you want to use this music (if you have a website, they ask that you include a link back to them).

Paid Options? No. All of the music on this site is free.

One of the first things you’ll see when you arrive on Audiionautix is a ‘YouTube Friendly’ button. They know that most people browsing their music library are looking for songs for YouTube videos, and that want you to know their music is safe from copyright claims.

All of the music in the Audionautix collection was created by one man, Jason Shaw, but there’s still a huge variety of tracks.

On the front page of Audionautix, there are three selections you can make to start your music search – genre, mood, and tempo. Genres range from hard rock to bluegrass to techno (there are 28 genres in total), and the moods include things like ‘uplifting’, ‘evil’, and ‘bouncy’ (there are 37 of those). The tempos are fast, medium, and slow. So, if you want a medium-tempo acoustic song with a calming mood, you can easily find all of the songs that meet those qualifications.

Not every combination will deliver results, so it can be easier to just choose two of the three search parameters.

2. Bensound

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must include one of the following in your video description: “Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music” or “Music: Song title - Bensound.com”

Paid Options? Yes. If you don’t want to credit Bensound (or can’t for some reason) then you need to purchase a license. Licensing starts at about $28 USD (price listed as €24) per track.

The most popular music from Bensound is displayed on the first page. Beyond the titles of the tracks, each has a short description that will give you a good idea of what to expect from the song before you listen. You’ll need to listen to a song to know if you want it, but the descriptions are a fast way to figure out if you don’t want something. For example, ‘A New Beginning’ could be anything based on that title, but the description lets you know it’s ‘punk rock’ with an ‘epic/achievement’ feeling.

You can narrow down the music you are shown by choosing a genre from the menu near the top of your page (there are 8 genres including cinematic, electronica, and corporate/pop). There’s also a search bar, and you can choose whether to display popular or new songs first.

All of the music on Bensound was created by Benjamin TISSOT, a composer based in France. He has been creating music for over 10 years.

3. dig.ccMixter

Commercial Use? Depends. Some songs are available for commercial use, some are not. It is easy to search only for songs which are.

Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the musicians.

Paid Options? Yes. You can purchase licenses to get around commercial use or attribution restrictions. Personal licenses are $22 USD.

Musicians upload their work to ccMixter and make it available to creators like you at dig.ccMixter. Over 45,000 musicians have participated and this has resulted in a huge variety of music for you to discover.

Clicking ‘tag search’ at the top of the page is probably the best way to start your search. The ‘tags’ are displayed in three categories – genre, instrument, and style. You can click as many tags as you want from each category (i.e. you can check off ‘classical’ for the genre and then both bass and cello for instruments).

By default, your search will return results that have even just one of the tags you selected, but you can click ‘match all’ to see results that include all of your selected tags.

To the right of the screen, there’s a button called ‘filters’ and if you click it it’ll let you narrow your results by license (you can choose to only browse music that is free for commercial use). You can also specify if you only want instrumental songs.

If you do not use the ‘free for commercial use’ filter then you will need to click on songs to see whether their creative commons licenses allow commercial use.

If you’re an indie game developer, they have a Music for Video Games section for you too.

4. Free Music Archive

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

There is a huge selection on Free Music Archive (they include songs curated by other sites, including other sites on this list), but using this site can be a bit trickier than using other sites because there are so many different licenses at play. There are even several licenses that do not allow songs to be used in YouTube videos (any Creative Commons license with ‘ND / No Derivatives’ will not allow for use in a video). You should read this page before downloading anything from the Free Music Archive to use on YouTube.

To start browsing Free Music Archive for music you can use for your videos, go to ‘Curators’ in the top menu, and select ‘Music for Video’. There’s no point in browsing music you might not be allowed to use for YouTube, and so the site has made it easy to find the music you can.

By default this screen will not include music you can use commercially, so you need to check ‘allows for commercial use’ in the side menu if that’s important to you. You can also select a genre and specify if you only want instrumental songs.

5. Free Stock Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? No. Everything is free.

Simply choose a genre from the ‘Free Music’ drop-down menu to start browsing Free Stock Music’s collection. There are 10 genres including Pop, Hip Hop, and Corporate.

There are not a lot of ways to customize your search results on this site. You just can search for a keyword, like ‘happy’, but you can’t narrow your results down by things like instrument or mood like you can on some other sites. You just have to scroll through either your search results or the chosen genre until you find something.

To make it a bit easier, Free Stock Music has included detailed descriptions of each song you can read while your browsing and these descriptions do tend to include details about instruments and the moods of the songs.

You need to create a free account on Free Stock Music to access their songs.

6. Incompetech

Commercial Use? YouTube monetization allowed. Other kinds of commercial use may be restricted.

Attribution Required? Yes. You can put the attribution in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot (or do not want to) credit Incompetech then you can purchase a license instead. Licensing 1 piece of music costs $30.

Incompetech allows you to browse one of three ways. The ‘Full Search’ will be best for most people, but if you want to see every song in alphabetical order you can click on ‘Full List’, or you can browse collections like ‘Comedic’ in ‘View Collections’ (but not every piece of music on the site can be found in a collection).

If you go into ‘Full Search’ you’ll see a list of all the music and be able to filter it by feel, tempo, genre, and length. For example, you could set ‘Feels’ to ‘Grooving’ or ‘Length’ to ‘3:00-3:29’.

You can also use the search bar to look for an instrument or song title.

Clicking Expand All will reveal descriptions of all the songs and a ‘listen now’ button, but it will stretch the page a lot. You can see more details about individual songs, and listen to them, by clicking on the title. You won’t be taken to a new page, which is convenient.

You can also download all the music at once (by clicking ‘download all the music on this site at once’).

7. Josh Woodward

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Attribution goes in your description box and it should look like this: Music - “SONG TITLE HERE” by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/

Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot give Josh credit for some reason you can buy a single-song license for $30.

Josh Woodward is a singer-songwriter who has chosen to allow the free use of all his music (although he does appreciate donations).

You’ll immediately see a list of music on Josh’s site (not everything, there are over 200 songs on this site), and you can change what is displayed by using the filters on the right of the page. The filters available are Playlist, Genre, Album, Tags, Tempo, and Length.

The playlists are songs that have been bundled together around a theme like ‘fun and fast’ or ‘popular in videos’.

There are nine genres to choose from including ‘dark acoustic’ and ‘Americana’.

The albums are albums that Josh has released.

You can also search the song titles and lyrics by typing keywords into the search bar.

At the top of the page, there’s a player you can use to preview the songs, and you can choose whether to browse vocal songs or songs with lyrics (the results below may not appear to change, but if you use the player you’ll hear the instrumental version instead of the version with vocals).

8. Looperman

Commercial Use? Allowed for loops, but they make no guarantees.

Attribution Required? Unclear. The site doesn’t address attribution so it may be up to whoever has uploaded the loop you want to use.

Paid Options? No.

Looperman is a community for musicians. The goal is to provide instrumental loops and acapella vocals to other musicians for their own projects. In theory, all of the music loops and sounds are completely free to use in your projects, but since it’s a community they cannot guarantee that a user hasn’t uploaded something they don’t own (they aren’t allowed to, so in theory you should be safe, but the site doesn’t make any guarantees).

If you want to use vocals it seems like you have to talk to the person who owns the vocals about whether you can use them commercially or whether you need to include attribution.

9. Moby Gratis

Commercial Use? Never allowed. You cannot make money from the project you use this music in any way, including YouTube monetization or through a service like Patreon.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put this in your video description: Music: [Track Name] by Moby courtesy of Mobygratis.com

Paid Options? No.

Moby is a Grammy-nominated, VMA-winning, artist whose work you have probably heard on the radio. Even if you aren’t familiar with Moby himself, he has co-written, produced, and remixed music for other major artists like David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, and Daft Punk.

Moby has chosen to make a catalog of his work available to independent filmmakers for non-commercial projects. Not all of the music provided on the site is available for YouTube, only the music marked Unreleased (if it has been released, then it will be flagged by YouTube’s copyright system). There is a lot of music under the ‘Unreleased’ category, though.

In order to download songs, you will need to make an account, and it takes about 24 hours for your account to be approved.

10. Musopen

Commercial Use? Depends on the song.

Attribution Required? Depends on the song

Paid Options? No.

Musopen provides music that is either in the ‘public domain’, or protected by Creative Commons licenses. If it’s in the public domain that means that nobody owns the copyright and anyone can use it for anything (however, Musopen does warn that they do not review uploads from their users so it is possible that someone could upload something they claim is public domain and be lying or wrong).

Creative Commons licenses all have their own conditions. Some may block commercial use, some may require attribution. The ones you need to watch out for as a video creator are the ones marked ‘No Derivatives’, because you can’t use songs licensed this way in videos.

You can start using Musopen by typing a keyword into the search bar on the main page, or scrolling down to select ‘Browse royalty free music recordings’. Besides music recordings, Musopen provides sheet music. If you have some musical talent and want to record your own music for your videos then this might be useful. If not, you probably want to stick to the recordings.

If you click on the Music Discovery Tool you’ll be able to search the recordings not only by instrument, but by license (so you can make sure you’re only looking at music that is in the public domain, or make sure you’re not looking at anything with that ‘No Derivatives’ condition.

11. TeknoAXE

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes.

Paid Options? No.

All of the music on TeknoAXE is covered under a CC4.0 license, which means you can share and adapt the music for any purpose so long as you provide attribution.

TeknoAXE’s music is divided into four categories: electronic dance music, rock and metal music, orchestra and soundtrack, and miscellaneous. There are several sub-categories under every category.

Once you’ve clicked into subcategory you’ll see thumbnails for every song in the category. Click on one to be taken to the song’s page, where you can listen to it before you decide if you want to download.

There are tons of places where you can find great royalty-free music you can use on YouTube, so start hunting! Finding the perfect song for that cool montage you’ve got planned, your intro sequence, or the background of your vlog will take your content to a new level of quality.

12. PacDV

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/>

Paid Options? No.

PacDV is primarily a sound effects site, but they have a music section as well (just click Music in the menu to the left under Sound Effects. ‘Free Music’ under resources is a completely different site). There is no way to filter down the music, and there is no search function.

There is a column in the list of music for ‘moods/emotions’, so you can get an idea of which songs you might want to listen to before you click to their pages.

13. Partners In Rhyme

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Credit them in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. You can’t buy a license for free songs to get around attribution, but they do offer paid music. At $100 or more per song, their paid music is outside the budget of most YouTubers.

Partners In Rhyme is mostly a paid site, and they’re at the pricier end of the spectrum for paid sites. The reason they’re included on this list is that they have kindly curated a selection of free music for use on YouTube or in projects like podcasts (the link above will take you to the free page, not the site in general).

There isn’t a search function for the free music, or a way to narrow down what’s displayed, but you can click the play button next to any title to hear what the song sounds like. To download, just right click and choose ‘save file’ or ‘save target as’.

14. Purple Planet Music

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? Yes. Put ‘Music: http://www.purple-planet.com’ in your video description.

Paid Options? Yes. If you want to use the music for anything besides YouTube, or if you don’t want to give them credit, then you can buy a license for $5.

Purple Planet Music is a team of three people, two of whom compose, perform, record, and produce all of the music you’ll find on this site (the third is the studio manager).

From the home page of Purple Planet choose one of the categories listed under ‘Royalty Free Music’. The categories are more related to moods than genres and include things like ‘cute’, ‘sneaky’, and ‘reflective’. Because they know you may want to use this music in film projects, you can even find categories like ‘dark backgrounds’.

Once you click into a category everything is listed, you can’t narrow your results. There’s not an overwhelming number of songs in each category, though, so it’s easy to choose something just by reading descriptions and listening to what’s there.

15. Sounds Crate

Commercial Use? Allowed.

Attribution Required? No.

Paid Options? Yes. You can upgrade to a Pro account for $49 per year to access more content.

Sounds Crate has music and sound effects. After you click into music, you’ll see thumbnails for sections related to a number of themes such as action music, corporate music, and hip hop. You’ll be able to preview and download all the songs in the category once you’re on the category page.

You are only allowed 5 downloads per day while you’re using Sounds Crate for free. They also request a $10 annual donation from free users, but it’s optional.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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