Music for Podcast & Podsafe Music

Podcasting continues to have an upward trend: it remains for many the main stone of marketing in their online business, a way of expressing themselves, a hobby or even a source of support for their personal blog.

With the rise of smartphones, there has also been a substantial increase in consumers of this service.

Before showing you which are the best sites to get music for podcasting, it’s important for you to understand why you cannot use any famous song in them.

What happens if I use a famous song on my podcast?

The best thing that could happen is nothing and the worst would be that the record label or the owner of the copyrights claim payment for their use…

But the usual is that the online platform on which you have published your podcast -iTunes, Amazon, Youtube, iVoox…- blocks it without prior notice when their algorithms detect that you’re using music without the proper license.

So, how to avoid these potential problems?

First of all, we’ll have to differentiate between:

• Podsafe music (which can be used without problems)
• Music protected under Copyright (which cannot be used without explicit permission)

Sure, you want to know if you can use your favorite Rolling Stones song or a piece of Mozart’s music as background music for your podcast.

The answer is:

If it’s not your own music or you don’t have permission from the owners of the rights to the song, don’t use it.

If music is under copyright, you’re at the risk of legal problems.

How can I know if a song is protected by Copyright?

Copyright laws can be quite complicated.

The fact that there’s no notice anywhere doesn’t mean that can be used freely and more often than not it’s unclear whether a work is protected or not. So when in doubt, better to not use it.

But what we can use is Royalty-Free music, a type of music created specifically for these use cases.

Let’s see where we can get it:

Royalty free music for a podcast (paid)

Royalty-free music is always the best option for a podcast. It is what we referred to earlier with the name Podsafe: music that you can use without any problem.

While it is true that cost us some money, standard licenses are usually pretty cheap (around $ 15) and ensure peace of mind, because you can use it without any problems.

Here are the best sites to get it:

Royalty-free music for a podcast (for free)

If you have a low budget for your podcast, we can always get access to free music sites.

Most of the songs there are under Creative Commons licenses or similar (we highly recommend reading the license of each of the websites before downloading and using anything).

What if the music is licensed under Creative Commons?

In between Podsafe music and protected under copyright music there’s music under Creative Commons licenses, which tracks can be used under certain conditions, which may include:

• Attribution to the author, that is, writing in a visible spot who’s the creator of the music and where did we download it from.
• You cannot modify the song or sound effect.
• You cannot use it for commercial use (so, be aware if you’re monetizing your podcast!).

These are the best free music websites:

How to find the right songs for your podcast

Just using the search engine on Envato Elements you will be able to navigate very easily between different moods, instruments and use cases.

So, you can use any song anywhere you want but according to the limitation of the license of the music you bought. Read them!

Those are the benefits of Elements for podcasting:

You can read also if you’re interested in this topic our article about background music for video games.