8 Best Music Licensing Companies for Creators and Artists in 2023

Today’s music licensing companies negotiate with artists for the rights to license their music to video creators at an affordable cost. If you’re a video creator, this means you get instant unlimited access to a tremendous catalog of high-quality music and sound effects while avoiding copyright issues.

In other words, you can focus on creating content instead of negotiating with record labels and performing rights organizations like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC in the US, PRS for Music in the UK, and SOCAN in Canada.

If you’re an independent artist, music licensing sites offer a multitude of opportunities to get your music placed while generating a stream of passive income that keeps growing as you create more music. Most or all of the music licensing companies below are accepting submissions from independent artists.

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Whether you’re a video creator sourcing music and SFX for your latest project, or an independent music artist looking to partner with stock music libraries and sync licensing companies, here’s a list of today’s best music licensing companies.

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What are the best music licensing companies?

AudioJungle

AudioJungle, an Envato company, provides royalty-free music covering musical genres across the board, from classical and jazz to electronica and cinematic. They offer single music clips, sound effects, and audio logos, as well as packs of music in the same genre. If you happen to use Logic Pro, FL Studio, or Cubase, you can also get source files.

Music library size: AudioJungle has a whopping 1,890,324 audio and music tracks.

Licenses: Five music licenses are available. The standard license covers most web-based uses as well as up to 10,000 copies of downloaded or physical products and permission to use the asset in indie films and film festivals. For SFX assets, they offer a single-use and a multi-use license.

Pricing: The cost for a track starts from $1, with many tracks in the $1-$25 price range.

BeatStars

BeatStars is the Internet’s top online marketplace for buying and selling beats, instrumentals, and samples in the hip hop, rap, pop, R&B, rock, trap, reggae, and electronic genres. You can easily filter tracks by music artists they resemble, like Drake, Mac Miller, or Jack Harlow.

Licenses: Producers on BeatStars create and manage their own licenses and terms. Exclusive and non-exclusive licenses are available.

Pricing: Most beats cost $30 or less. Non-exclusive licenses range from $15-$100. Exclusive licenses range from $100-$1000. Free beats are available for non-profit use.

Pond5

Pond5 licenses a wide variety of royalty-free media, including stock music and sound effects. Their catalog is easy to filter by genre, mood, and purpose – for instance, you can sort by background, dramatic, epic, trailer, orchestral, production, corporate, ambient, classical, video game, and documentary music.

Music library size: Although it’s unclear how large their music library is, Pond5 has the world’s largest collection of stock video footage, with over 30 million clips, so it’s safe to say their music and SFX libraries are very large.

Licenses: All Pond5 media comes with the Individual License, which is royalty-free and can be used in perpetuity and distributed worldwide for an unlimited number of business or personal projects.

Pricing: Pond5 offers several affordable pricing models, including pay-as-you-go and membership options. You can also purchase discounted credit packs. Stock music tracks start at $5 apiece. Currently you can save up to 50% on your initial order.

PremiumBeat

PremiumBeat, a Shutterstock company, is a royalty-free music licensing site covering many different genres, including acoustic, ambient, vocals, Christmas, electro pop, chillout, dubstep, indie pop, New Age, piano, trailer, world, and more. In addition to sorting by genre, you can also filter tracks by mood, BPM, duration, artist, and instrument.

With each track download, you get the full song, short clips, loops, and stems (where applicable).

Music library size: PremiumBeat has over 20,000 exclusive tracks in their catalog.

Licenses: PremiumBeat offers two license options, Standard and Premium. The Standard license gives you worldwide distribution for most projects, including web-based and podcast projects. The Premium license includes expanded distribution across films, apps, games, TV, radio, and more.

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Pricing: PremiumBeat’s membership plan gives you five tracks per month at $12.99 per track for a three-month commitment. This works out to $64.95 per month and saves you 70%. (Note that Premium license and certain tracks are not included in the subscription.) You also have the option of licensing tracks separately.

Epidemic Sound

Epidemic Sound is a royalty-free music and SFX marketplace where you can download or stream music for YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, Facebook, and podcasts. You can filter music by mood, theme, album, and a wide range of very specific genres, even drilling your selection down by decade.

Music library size: Epidemic Sound has over 35,000 tracks and 90,000 sound effects.

Licenses: Epidemic Sound licenses are royalty free. You don’t need to worry about sync rights, mechanical rights, or public performance rights. Visit the site for more info about usage restrictions – for instance, you can’t use the music on a standalone basis.

Pricing: Epidemic Sound offers a Personal and a Commercial subscription. Both subscriptions give you access to the entire catalog of tracks and sound effects, with unlimited downloads.

The Personal plan costs $9 a month billed annually ($108 per year), or else $15 a month. The Commercial plan costs $19 a month billed annually ($228 per year), or else $49 a month. This plan covers online platforms, social media, and podcasts. (You can clear one channel per social platform, and you can change the channel for a different one if necessary.)

Enterprise plans and single-track licenses are also available.

The 30-day free trial lets you download and use as many tracks as you want in videos or podcasts.

Artlist

Artlist is another one of the best music licensing companies for video creators, with its regularly updated library of royalty-free music and SFX for film, YouTube, and social media. You can sort the catalog by instrument, genre, theme, and mood.

Licenses: The Unlimited license covers all platforms worldwide and never expires.

The Personal license can only be used on social media (one channel per social platform). Note that once your Personal subscription expires, you can’t use your downloaded assets in new projects.

Pricing: The Personal plan costs $9.99 per month billed annually (otherwise, $14.99 per month) and covers all of your own social channels and podcasts.

The Unlimited plan costs $16.60 per month billed annually and covers personal and commercial projects on unlimited social platforms, as well as all online platforms, client and commercial work, paid ads, and broadcast and TV.

Custom enterprise plans are also available.

Musicbed

Musicbed is a music licensing company designed especially for filmmakers. They have a label-quality library of film, video, and advertising music and scores. They offer 100 ways to filter the catalog, including criteria like Song Build, Lyrics, Song Length, BPM, and more. You can license multiple versions of a song – for example, with or without lyrics.

At your request, the Musicbed team will give you music suggestions for your film at no extra cost.

Pricing: Musicbed offers Individual and Business pricing plans. They’ll advise you on the right plan based on whether you’re a production company, agency, non-profit, brand, or individual, as well as the size of your company and your distribution needs.

Licensing: An annual contract with Musicbed grants you unlimited music, monetization included. This option is best if you need the music for multiple releases.

You can also purchase a Single Use license for one-off projects (monetization not included).

Soundstripe

Soundstripe is a royalty-free music licensing site for video creators. Their music and sounds are radio quality and studio grade, with many songs composed by Grammy-winning artists. The platform integrates with Adobe Premiere, Twitch, and Frame.io.

Music library size: Soundstripe has over 7,000 songs with stems and over 45,000 sound effects.

Licenses: Soundstripe offers unlimited licenses that can be used anywhere, including broadcast (select plans).

You can list your YouTube channels on the platform to let YouTube know you have clearance on the music you’re using. You can also get URL-based clearance by whitelisting as many YouTube video URLs as you need to.

Single-use codes are also available if you just need one song.

Pricing: The Creator plan costs $9.99 per month billed yearly ($119 total), or $14.99 billed monthly. This gives you unlimited music and sound effects for personal use on web, social media, and podcasts, as well as clearance and monetization for one YouTube channel.

The Pro plan costs $19.99 per month billed yearly (total $239), or $29.99 billed monthly. It gives you unlimited music and SFX for commercial use, plus stems for all songs. You can clear up to five YouTube channels and unlimited YouTube URLs. Assets can be used for web, social media, podcasts, paid ads, commercials, and broadcast.

A Pro Plus plan is also available that gives you access to a massive library of video footage.

What is music licensing?

Music licensing is a legal agreement where the creator or copyright holder of a piece of music grants permission to someone else to use their work under agreed-upon circumstances. In return, the creator or copyright holder receives a flat fee and/or royalties.

How much does music licensing cost?

Nowadays it’s a lot easier to obtain permission to use music and SFX for an affordable one-time licensing fee, thanks to stock music and sync licensing sites. These sites let you purchase a license to use creative assets for as low as $1 apiece, or around $20-$30 a month for a commercial membership and unlimited access to their database.

What is royalty-free music?

Royalty-free music sites let you purchase a license to use music many times, or an unlimited number of times, without having to pay royalties to the creator every time their music is played. The music creator retains the copyright, and the music licensing company or site is responsible for paying out any royalties to the artist.

Royalty-free music is used for a wide variety of purposes, including documentaries, commercials, film trailers, and marketing and sales videos.

Wrapping up

Whether you’re a video creator or a music artist, it’s never been easier to create high-quality content and earn from your productions, thanks to today’s top music licensing companies.

Are you a music influencer? Be sure to check out our list of the best music affiliate programs. We’ve also published a list of today’s top online side jobs for musicians.