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AudioJungle
We can’t leave out one of our most useful sites on the Envato Network! It might seem like a shameless plug, but Audio Jungle, like all the other sites in the marketplace network have some of the most competitive prices in the business. The way they work, is you can deposit money into your account, and generally get files for a little cheaper than if you were to buy them outright. There is also a fantastic affiliate program that you can sign up for to earn money for all the marketplaces as well. Anyone can submit files, but only the best and highest quality get accepted.
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SmartSound.com
A division of SonicFire Pro’s awesome scoring software, the SmartSound library lets you pick from thousands of songs and hundreds of albums in their library. They also offer tools to trim your tracks to a custom length and you can also utilize an FCP Plugin to do that same task of automatically fitting your timeline.
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Pump Audio
The awesome thing about pump audio is that anyone can contribute to the pickings. They accept music and tracks from artists from all around the world. This is NOT stock music… these are actual songs from indie artists. The way Pump Audio sees it is, you don’t want to lay a lame, generic track over an edit you have poured your heart and soul into right? Well, then… why settle?
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Shockwave-Sound.com
These guys have been around for the past nine years as one of the pioneers of the online royalty free stock music industry. They have everything here… you can go into a song, pick different lengths, versions, sound effects FROM those songs… whatever you might need. There are always new tracks added every week, and they even have a service that you can request voiceover talent.
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Non Stop
Wow, Non Stop has a pretty hefty credit list when you check it out… Harry Potter, Monster VS Aliens, Wall-E, Chronicles of Narnia… the list just goes on. There is no wonder Warner/Chappel wanted to acquire them in 2007. They have over 700 in their library of music and by registering over at CUEgle you can preview every bit they have… this stuff is absolutely amazing.
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Digital Juice
Digital Juice is known for having just huge deals and amazing products that you get the best bang for your buck. They have two different kinds of audio products, StackTraxx and SoundFX Libraries. First, the StackTraxx are now on their 50th volume and come with 20 music tracks at varied lengths, and are usually $50 singly, but you can get a pack of five for $80, and a pack of 10 for $150! That is insanely cheap for stock music! As for the SoundFX libraries, they only have 4 collections right now, but each collection has over 11,000 elements and only costs about $250! If you are looking to buy a large pack of music or sound effects… this is probably one of your best bets.
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Video Copilot
Andrew Kramer and his team only have two products in the audio realm of things, but they are still pretty heavy hitters, and placed at a good price. The first, Designer Sound FX has been out for a couple years, and is still a pretty good package. It comes with 500 royalty free sound effects, and especially for use AE users, tutorials and project files for their killer promo video. Next, Pro Scores is more in the scoring department (hence the name) and includes orchestral music tracks and epic musical elements. There are also layered music tracks, tension building elements, and of course some killer tutorials. Both products are priced right around $100.
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SampleSwap
Finally the free stuff! Now, if you aren’t big money and can’t afford large packs, you might have to grab some free elements online and create your own beats and scores. That’s where SampleSwap comes in. They have 5.5 gigabytes of sounds from techno and drum’n'bass beats, to sound effects and instrument sounds to complete whatever your task may be.
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StockMusic.net
This site is pretty straighforward. $30 bucks a track, $200 for 10 tracks, pay once… use them forever. They have thousands of tracks in every single genre you could think of, and they are trusted by some big names in the industry. Chances are you have probably heard their work used somewhere on television or in the movies. I’m sure you didn’t miss the blockbuster, Black Dawn with Steven Seagal… yeah they had a hand in that one.
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Royalty Free Music Clips
This guy seems like he is doing a similar thing to me with his blog, and rounding up as many free music clips, stock sound effects and whatever else he can find from around the web. This is a great site to subscribe to and grab what he has to offer as it becomes available. He takes the hassle out of searching for you and provides it one, easy to find location!
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Partners In Rhyme
Partners in Rhyme have been delivering royalty free music since the AOL days… 1996! That’s a long time… and they have a collection to prove it. They have different CDs available for purchase (most from $70-$100), and they provide an awesome flash player so you can preview every track before you shell out your cash to buy.
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Free Music Archive (FMA)
The Free Music Archive is an editor’s paradise. You can never have enough stock music to pick and choose from, and you can never have enough FREE files either. This site is run by the WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. They are able to stick music created by artists online for use in productions, podcasts or whatever for those of us that can’t afford to by large packs of stock music. Make sure you bookmark this page, creator or consumer… it’s a great site to be a part of!
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Film Music Moby.com
You know about that musical artist Moby right? Well he has a portion of his website with free music he created for filmmakers to use in whatever they see fit, as long as it is non-commercial, and non-profit. This is obviously all professional stuff, and all you have to do to access it is create a free account on the page after the jump!
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Freeplay Music
More free stuff! Man, you gotta love sites like this! FreePlay has 6339 tracks as of the time of me writing this, and is growing every day. All of the tracks are downloadable absolutely free if you are just fooling around and this stuff is non-profit/non-commercial. If it is, however you need to go about purchasing licensing, where you can find all that information on their website.
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Free Stock Music
New to the scene, this site is worth a check out if you’re looking for a quick track to drop in your projects.
You can’t have video without audio… it just doesn’t work. That’s why in high school it was A/V club, not just V Club… although that does sound pretty rad. Anywho… if you want to complete an animation, short film, commercial or whatever… you have to have good audio, and that means scores and sound effects! I have found some of the best places around the web to purchase packages, find individual songs, and even snag some free tracks for you and your work!
AudioJungle
The Rest
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OMG where is http://www.neosounds.com with the best search engine and library I’ve ever seen?!!!
Best
Very successful in both content and style sheets. Thanks webmaster and content editor
Really really good list Topher. Here’s one good resource that is brand new:
Http://www.jewelbeat.com/
Music is $0.99. Can’t beat that if you are on a budget.
lovin’ it, some other free stock music sites i like to use are http://search.musicbeyond.com/ and http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/
i also used to use soundsnap.com a lot when it was still free.
thanks topher!
Just wanted to point out that although downloading is free on musicbeyond.com a license is required for use of all music and sound fx. Contact us for any need and we’ll work it out. Thanks!
can’t forget about
http://www.freesound.org/
been using it since college
Yes, freesound rocks, I use it all the time. Another great creative commons resource is http://ccmixter.org// – great for remixing and music stems.
Great list! Definitely any video without audio or sound effect it would feel like is incomplete.
haha I wanna be the first to recognize that I obviously can’t roundup ALL of the sites out there for this stuff… but I do invite you guys to post your own favorites! We can really make this a complete list!
Awesome thanks!!
You forgot http://www.audionetworkplc.com! Amazing library of music and sound effects!! Use RealPlay SP to download for free!
I second this! Awesome site. I got the soundtrack for my latest DVD from audio network. Royal Philamonic Orchestra contributions. Perfect. It cost me 400 quid for a full film soundtrack including 10.000 DVD copy license fees. Much cheaper deals (1 Pound) available for private videos. Great helpful staff too – super friendly over the phone with licensing questions. I recommend it highly.
What about http://www.istockaudio.com they have a large selection now and a good variety. Sound Effects too.
Yeah, keep commenting with more… Topher, great job in starting the list! We can all contribute guys, don’t complain, just add more links, we can use as much info as you know. This should be like a forum or whatever.
http://www.extrememusic.se/
this is a nice one.
Don`t know how much it costs cuz TV channel is paying for the music
One of my favorites that I’ve used often is http://www.royaltyfreemusiclibrary.com
http://www.twistedtracks.com/
hey check out http://opsound.org
Great site
Awesome list of sound/sound effects sites thanks for sharings!
It’s called a silent film. Look it up.
Well the majority of films these days aren’t silent… do you agree? And plus even silent films have a music track playing in the background…. Your rebuttal?
This is very Gooooood. Thanks a lot.
http://www.musicforproductions.com
Very good source with great rates.
I’ve used http://www.soundsnap.com/ several times for royalty free sound effects. Good selection; relatively good search option; user-generated sound samples. It used to be free to use, but now charges $1.80 per sound. I’d recommend it for effects, not so much for music.
Freeplay music is my best.
Beatsuite are pretty decent too.
http://www.beatsuite.com/
are any of these good for corporate projects?
This is the Greatest Article ever!
Thanks Dude
For a huge selection of royalty free music with a great search engine check out musicloops.com
http://www.musicloops.com/
Really easy licensing, they don’t charge extra like the other sites for mass distribution or film/tv.
Nice list – also a small but very high quality royalty free music site where you can download all tracks for free or purchase a cheap license to use a track forever:
http://www.stockmusicboutique.com
Music For Productions Inc. http://www.musicforproductions.com
High quality production tracks and song catalogue
Usefull list, thanks. Just checked out Jones’s link – great site, great concept!
I’m a music composer from Canada and I offer custom royalty free music, if you’d like to hear some of my work then please visit my website : http://sites.google.com/site/capoproductions/
Thank you
Capo Productions
Great post, thanks
I’ve bought a lot of music from this site:
http://www.smartassmusic.com
The quality of the music is superb and it’s also quite a bit cheaper than most!
Thank you for the great post.
this is very useful to me as i am looking for it.
You have a great and useful list. I will check on this. thanks
Try MusicRevolution.com (http://www.musicrevolution.com), an innovative new online marketplace for royalty-free music. MusicRevolution.com has thousands of tracks of affordable, high-quality royalty-free production music suitable for film, video, TV, radio, website, background music, on hold music and other business music applications. New music is being added every day. MusicRevolution.com offers four purchase options– Single Tracks, CDs, Subscriptions and our Internet Music Stream. I am the co-founder.
I love
http://www.soundscalpel.com – 50,000 sound effects here and all pro
http://www.freesfx.co.uk – over 1000 free sound effects here and all excellent quality
I have used several of the sites mentioned, but now only use http://www.royaltyfreemusiclibrary.com
The music is all current (no cheesy crap) and their licensing is simple and straight forward.
I don’t really fo for all these new music marketplaces that have been popping up for the past year, i find myself wasting valuable time searching endless tracks, poor quality and orchestration. I would add Hollywood Production Music – http://www.hollywoodproductionmusic.com since they have very high quality (litrerraly hand picked) music cues and they still keep the price more than fare. Their website is very convenient for quickly finding what you need. I have been using them for the past few months and i always return for more.
Coolstockmusic.com has brodcast quality tracks that are absolutely free
A good one is http://www.music2license.com. The site is simple to use and has a high quality selection of hand picked tracks.
Everyone stock music site should post his comment here cause all music is just great.
My vote for a http://www.melodyloops.com/ – unique user interface with great music.
A++
http://www.opuzz.com/ has CD options as well as the usual downloads. Besides that they have a hard drive option for those needing more music that belongs to them.
Just fresh from the oven …
300+ FREE royalty free music tracks at JewelBeat.com
http://www.jewelbeat.com/
And sound effects too here:
http://www.jewelbeat.com/free/free-sound-effects-1.htm and more.
http://www.freefilmstock.com is awesome huge library and grows everyday! Download anything for free no charge.
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Not all stock music sites have royalty free licensing. There are several mentioned here that would freak out if you called them royalty free. Non Stop and Extreme are NOT royalty free and they would not appreciate being included in this list.
I agree that http://www.royaltyfreemusiclibrary.com is the best.
Check out http://www.themusicase.com
Library has a selection of over 20,000 production tracks online.
Check Out http://www.royaltyfreeheaven.com
They are heading for some interesting promo of some kind now…
cheers
Mark
Great list of free sound / music sites! I have a couple to add:
free beats at http://probangers.com
and
free sounds in wav and sf2 format at http://freesounds.us
great site with good links. I should have found it half year ago where I was looking for royalty free music. Everything what I found was finally not for free… at the end I bought royalty free music on a cd in ebay for a small price.
I thought it wold be easy to find 3 upbeat minute countdown music – but alas no. Has anyone any suggestions?
Sorry – meant 3 minute long upbeat clips!
This is very Gooooood. Thanks a lot…
This company had some stellar material when I checked it the other day.I didn’t check prices though.
They do claim affordable rates on their intro video soo…
http://www.directcomposer.com
I would add FILMTV-TRACKS
http://www.royaltyfreemusicmp3.com/
they have very high quality
music TRACKS and they still keep the price more than fare.
Their website is very convenient for quickly finding what you need.
I have been using them for the past few months and i always return for more.
I thought it wold be easy to find 3 upbeat minute countdown music – but alas no. Has anyone any suggestions…?