Epidemic Sound Review
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Updated on |
5 min reading time
Written by Pablo Olóndriz
Holding a degree in Business Administration and Programming, Pablo established Legis Music in 2016. With a focus on the royalty-free music industry, he has contributed extensively to the field, authoring over 150 articles on various aspects of music licensing. His efforts have been instrumental in developing one of the most straightforward and liberal music licensing frameworks available today.
Key Takeaways
- One of the best options to obtain royalty-free music is Epidemic Sound.
- Their search system is really easy to use, dividing music by genres, moods, highlights and albums.
- Two of their two most useful tools are: “find similar” and “stems ”
- They have a license for creators, with a price of 13€/month, and a commercial license, with a price of 49€/month.
Why use a music provider?
The answer is simple, music has the power to elevate the quality and the engagement of your videos and give you all the creative freedom.
There have been many discussions about the best royalty free music subscription in the market, and so today we’re going to review one of the top players: Epidemic Sound .
The company was founded almost 10 years ago and it’s specialized in providing creators with high-quality royalty-free music.
In order to make the most of music in your videos, you should find a partner that can provide you with a wide variety of music, have consistently high production quality, and, maybe most importantly, provide tools that make it easy to work with.
And of course, you need to be able to trust them to cover your licensing needs.
The only thing worse than finding the right track is finding the right track and then getting a copyright strike on it.
Remember that, on YouTube, three strikes in the same 90 day period will result in your channel being permanently removed.
Music Search Features
Their search system is just plain amazing, very easy to use.
They’ve classified their songs on Genres, Moods, Featured, and Albums, as you can see here:
Each Genre is further divided into Sub-genres.
In terms of discovering new music and the search tools that they have, there are few companies that are that strong.
Once I understood Epidemic Sound player, they had two features that really set them apart:
- Their ‘find similar’ function makes discovery really easy once you have narrowed down what you are looking for.
- The ability to download the tracks in STEMS, that basically allows you to be more creative with the sound design, by removing vocals, bass, or other instruments, you can tailor the music in your needs. It is by far one of the best tools I’ve seen to find the right song since you can now take only the elements you like.
Finally, when it comes to music licensing, it’s always important to find a company that produces in close cooperation with the musicians.
When buying finished tracks, there is always a chance that someone that has been involved in the production is part of a PRO (collecting societies of royalties).
If that happens, then the music library does not actually own all the rights to the music.
This could definitely lead to some issues for you.
As far as I know, Epidemic has a dedicated producer with every musician that helps them through the production process, so they have the best rights coverage of all providers out there.
Also, you will not receive copyright strikes from YouTube if you use Epidemic Sound for a while and then decide to discontinue the service. As long as you’re a monthly subscriber when you upload your video, you’ll have the rights to be using that music forever – even if you’re not subscribed anymore, later on.
What are their options and prices?
The individual ‘ Personal Subscription ‘ is the best option for any YouTube Channel and social media creator, with more than 30,000 tracks and 60,000 sound effects.
Some of the top features are:
- Easy sign-up and use of the service. All new users get a 30-day free trial.
- One of the cheapest monthly fees, starting from $15.
- Never worry about copyright claims.
- Monetize your video content and whitelist all platforms YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Podcasts, and Twitch.
- Find an extensive 100% royalty-free catalog of top-quality music and SFX.
- Download tracks in stems: you can sound design and edit any track the way you like it, and make your content stand out.
- Pay a monthly fee and cancel any time (no annual commitment).
They also have available the ‘ Commercial Subscription ‘, covering the needs of small and medium-sized businesses that want to increase their social media presence and invest in video production:
- For businesses up to 50 employees.
- Social Media boosting and paid ads included (up to €1000 per video). And similar to the creator subscription you have:
- Access to all 30,000+ tracks.
- Rights cover for YoutTube, Facebook, Instagram.
- New tracks added every week.
- Unlimited downloads.
- Unlimited use in all your owned and operated channels.
- No copyright claims or royalty fees.
- Join today, cancel at any time.
- Create and share playlists/projects.
- No reporting necessary.
And the price for this subscription goes up to $49/month.
And also, as you can see in the picture, they have the Enterprise Plan, just for media companies, publishers, or broadcasters that need a specific solution to cover all their needs.
So, summing up, these are the strong and weak points of Epidemic:
Pros
- Amazing music quality and more than 30.000 tracks and 60.000 sound effects.
- Their music library is growing weekly.
- Crazy easy music search and the possibility to download only portions of each song with STEMS.
- Aimed at individuals as well as businesses, depending on the subscription you choose.
- 30-day free trial and cancellation at any time.
- Great support via email or Twitter .
Cons
- Their single track licensing (in opposed to the subscription service) can be much more expensive than other marketplaces.
- It’s kind of difficult to find right now any other con, they just have a truly great service!
Conclusion and rating
Nowadays for any video content creator, Youtuber or any business that wants to have a strong media presence, it is essential to have an easy-to-use and high-quality service to get the proper background music.
Long gone are the days where you had to spend hours searching for the right song without even knowing if the license was adequate for your project!
There are now many providers out there with high-quality music, but Epidemic Sound is the top one so far.
Their library is huge and they keep growing fast and constant.
They also make it easy to find new music all the time and their efforts are directed to make sure your content sounds truly unique.
Given what they provide, our rating for them is 4.6 stars out of 5!
I’ll leave you here with a nice in-depth review of the service by musician Sam Miller:
And then another one from Sean Ogle, to finish here this article:
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