How, where and when to download free background music for your videos?
Do you need background music for your videos or media projects?
It’s easy to think that, because music can be found pretty easily for free on the Internet, we can use it freely as well on any video that we’re creating.
Nothing further from reality.
Let’s see first the pros and cons of using free music and then we will explain how can we download it:
The world of Royalty-Free music on the Internet is complex, as there are a wide variety of types of licenses and it is not always clear to which we should stick to.
Not playing by the rules can lead to bad surprises, like your video being removed from Youtube or Facebook because of Content ID, receiving copyright complaints and, even in the worst-case scenario, a lawsuit, since the ignorance of the law does not exempt from its fulfillment.
To clarify the subject, we have made a brief summary below with all the basics:
Royalty-Free Music primarily refers to a type of music license that allows the buyer to pay the corresponding license only once and use the music for as long as desired in a single final product or video.
However, this term has been extended, often including also free music that we can use in our projects – either under ‘Public Domain’ or ‘Creative Commons’, as we will see below – and also has been widely confused with the term ‘music without copyright’.
Music under ‘Public Domain’ consists of all works that are not protected by copyright and which can, therefore, be used without permission or without having to pay to the original author. Either because this has expressed it or because some time has already elapsed since his/her death (that amount of time, usually between 50-70 years depends on every country or region).
If you want to know more about it, visit our in-depth article about Public Domain.
Here is the author himself who establishes the limitations for the reproduction, distribution, diffusion and copy of his work.
There are 6 different types of Creative Commons licenses, some more restrictive than others. It is essential to know them well if you want to use some of these songs on your projects.
these icons help us to differentiate the Creative Commons licenses
This means that most of the time we will have to attribute -mention- the artist. Attribution means that you have to explain in the video description -or inside the project- who’s the author of the music.
For example, if you use the song ‘Odyssey Drums’, from artist Kevin MacLeod and you have downloaded the song from the webpage Incompetech.com, you should write a phrase like this one below:
Odyssey Drums from Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution license (Creative Commons – Attribution 4.0 International – CC BY 4.0)
That said, it’s very important to read carefully all the legal terms (there are different Creative Commons licenses and each one has his own different terms) and legal advice of the web page from which you’re downloading the music.
If you don’t find any term or you’re not sure about the conditions, don’t risk yourself or your project!
The best sources for high-quality free Royalty-free music on the Internet are:
Click on any of these links to download songs that can be used in your personal projects without a problem. However, it is essential that you understand under what kind of licenses these songs are, to know how far their use extends and what you can and cannot do with them.
Imagine that you are making a video or audiovisual project. Maybe you’re in one of those situations:
In any of these cases, it is best to purchase a paid license.
This means going to a portal that offers this type of music free of charge, doing a search for the type of music you need, downloading it, and using it.
The best known is Epidemic Sound, the web par excellence used by all the most famous YouTubers. A platform with more than 300,000 royalty-free songs.
Their current plans are:
| Plan | Price | Visit |
| Personal | $15 / month | |
| Commercial | $49 / month |
Thanks to this service you will be able to monetize your videos without problems and you will never receive a copyright notice from Youtube again. In addition, you can now try it out for 30 days for free.
On the other hand, you also have other subscription services through which you can access a library with thousands of royalty-free songs, as in the case of Envato Elements.
Its licenses are very economical since for $16.50 per month you can access an entire library of thousands of songs and download as many as you need.
Paying $16,50 a month may seem a lot to a person who is used to download free songs, however, we have to keep in mind that both products have nothing in common: we are paying a license to use that music in another final product that will be distributed and viewed, and not for simple personal use.
Los artistas creadores de la música libre de derechos no suelen ser artistas famosos, sino un equipo de personas trabajando desde un estudio o empresa dedicada específicamente a ello.
If you’re interested in playing music on videos that you’ll upload to any social network, we’ve written a very comprehensive article on music for Facebook ads and Instagram.
Yes, downloading free background music is oftentimes easier and convenient. Also, there are times in which a person doesn’t really have a budget to do otherwise.
But as your project or Youtube Channel grows, it becomes mandatory to start using music under the corresponding licenses. This will allow you to monetize them, save a lot of time searching for the music, and differentiate yourself from the rest. Thankfully, nowadays this has become a quick, cheap, and easy option as well, thanks to music libraries like Epidemic Sound.
Pablo Olóndriz founded Legis Music in 2016 and, since then, has been working non-stop on the online Royalty-Free industry, managing to build a great source of information for people who need amazing background music for their projects and videos.
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Thanks for the guide. I really need this for my Youtube channel.
Thanks once again.
You’re welcome Ritik! 🙂
Thank you for sharing, it’s great. I am trying to download free-copyright music to join my work. Thank you for your information
Glad that we could be useful Jackson!
Very complete and useful article!
Thank you very much Hicham! 🙂
Thanks for all the information, it’s very important for the content creators to know about copyright issues 🙂
That’s so right Patrick, it’s essential nowadays! Thank you 🙂