The rise of royalty-free music is part of the democratizing renaissance of digital creativity. Licensing professional music was once so expensive, but not anymore. And, the fact that there are now several major players in the royalty-free music market just highlights the importance of an asset like royalty-free music. We know it too well that if you want your project to look good, it also has to sound good.
In the spirit of friendly competition, we’re taking a look at some of the other stock music players to see how we measure up. Here, we’ll look at the royalty-free music libraries, the available licenses, the pricing structures, and the music quality of both PremiumBeat and Audioblocks (now known as Storyblocks).
The most important element of any royalty-free music platform is its library. We at PremiumBeat have been playing the royalty free music game since 2005, and we’ve learned a few things in that time, starting with you need to be picky. We have been. There are over 20,000 songs in our royalty-free music library, carefully curated over the course of 15+ years by a team of music industry professionals who hand-pick all music tracks that you find on our site. We never use any kind of automation: each track gets vetted three times before it becomes a finalist for acquisition. This surgical approach means that each track we offer is professional-caliber. No matter what genre or mood you need, we’ve got you covered. Each of our downloads includes full tracks, as well as shorts, loops, and stems. That means you can edit our tracks however you want, creating truly one-of-a-kind tracks that no one will hear anywhere else.
Audioblocks (now part of the Storyblocks family) is a little younger (started in 2009). But, in that time they have rapidly acquired a ton of songs and sound effects. It’s not immediately clear how many tracks they have vs. how many sound effects, but the total number of audio files is 100,000+. This is an impressive resource with a lot to offer, especially on the sound effects front.
So, what can you expect when you land at each music site? There are a few different options. At PremiumBeat, you can dive directly into the track listings and playlists. This can be a bit of a staring-into-the-sun experience, but if you know your way around music catalogs, or you’ve worked with our tracks before, this approach can make a lot of sense. If you know what you’re looking for and how to find it, you can head straight to the source, get in, and get out. Easy peasy!
But, if you prefer to take a look around and examine the decor, we have a friendlier gateway, as well. Just look at our homepage. The first track listings you’ll see are our music acquisition team’s hot picks. They choose each of these tracks on their own, with no oversight, and they represent our latest ideas on cutting-edge music that you might want to consider. We follow this with trending tracks, which is important if you want to cash in on what’s popular right now. Then we offer up our latest releases, which means you can get in on some music that no one has even had a chance to hear yet. All of these approaches are based on the idea that you’re still feeling out the sound you need and not looking for something very specific.
If you need other types of sounds, we can go a little further with our moods and genres. These gateways are a great way to bring the audio of your project into alignment with a mood board. Our genre collections have something for every project, from ambient to indie pop to trip hop and beyond. We’ve got Reggaeton and bluegrass. We’ve got Western and horror music, and we even have music for kids and music from around the world. And, if that isn’t enough, there’s no shortage of moods for you to browse, like Feel Good, Sexy/Sensual, or Action/Sports.
Being picky about the songs we acquire means being picky about the artists creating them, so we hold them to a very high standard. And, once they’re on our roster, our acquisitions team works with them directly to keep developing winning tracks. You can see this talent at work in our Signature Series over at our YouTube channel.
The library experience at PremiumBeat goes beyond sorting music into categories. We make it a point to bring you the type of high-end sound that is worth the price. The first worth mentioning is the PRO-free collection (Performance Rights Organization). This particular collection is important if you’re planning on taking your project into broadcast distribution. While our premium license will cover your use of the track, many industry professionals won’t even partner with you unless you use PRO-free tracks, essentially guaranteeing that there won’t be any kind of rights trouble with the content.
Another of our crown jewels is the Masterworks Collection. It can be difficult to find orchestral music out there, and this is often precisely what you’re looking for. The epic drone shot of the meadow in your drama doesn’t need another K-Pop song—it needs some strings. Our Masterworks Collection is full of live recordings of professional orchestras, so you can actually score your project.
You need to drill down into the audio section at Audioblocks (the Music section on the Storyblocks site). Once you do, you can scroll down below the fold to see the music library itself, or you can mouse over the browse link for some options like ours. The Audioblocks section has ten moods you can explore, seven types of instrument filters, and fifteen genres to help you narrow down your search. The real strength here are the dozens of collections you can listen to. You’ll need to scroll through, as they are some specific concepts you might not be thinking of, but there are more options here.
The real value of royalty-free music is the licensing agreement. Most platforms offer variations of similar agreements, based on their pricing structure—different tiers and uses will cost different amounts. In the past, music was really only available if you wrote it yourself or paid someone to write it for you. If you weren’t writing your own music, then you were left with finding the budget to acquire someone else’s work.
Royalty-free music catalogs have changed all this. The music platforms like PremiumBeat and Audioblocks make agreements with the musicians for the rights to their songs, and then you, the content creator, make an agreement with the platform of your choice. Royalty-free music platforms act sort of like agents in this regard, brokering an agreement between you, the creator, and the musician whose songs you want to use.
This reduces paperwork for content creators while making sure they have all the rights they need to legally use someone else’s music. The rates you pay to a royalty free music library are substantially lower than you might pay a musician to score your project, and since most creators license one song at a time, musicians are free to keep cranking out songs for various projects instead of focusing on only one soundtrack for one project.
Combined with the increasing affordability of professional-grade equipment, the production power of filmmaking applications, and the ease of digital distribution, royalty-free music is a key element of the newer, more democratized filmmaking and video production world. It allows you to pair professional sound with professional video and get around huge budgets and production companies.
So, let’s take a look at the licensing models at PremiumBeat and Audioblocks. We’ll start with PremiumBeat.
Most royalty-free music platforms have different licenses for different uses. How you intend to distribute your project and whether or not you’re going to monetize it affect the agreements that platforms make with their musicians. It’s usually cheaper at the top-tier music platforms to license a song if you don’t intend to make money off of your project (either by charging a fee to view it, or collecting advertising dollars). Further, one-time downloads can be cheaper than monthly subscription fees, although you end up paying substantially more per song this way.
All of this brings us to PremiumBeat’s Single Purchase Standard License. This is a one-time purchase for one specific track, which the agreement allows you to use in as many projects as you like in perpetuity—as long as you don’t monetize any of those projects. It’s perfect for smaller projects that don’t need several tracks—or for creators who don’t have as much available time and are therefore working on a project longer.
The Single Purchase Standard License is $59 USD per song, and your download includes the full track as well as shorts, loops, and stems. You can edit and customize the track however you’d like to create a truly unique soundtrack for your project. If you need to get in and out with a single song and you’re not ready for a subscription, then this license is perfect.
PremiumBeat has new unlimited music subscription plans for every budget. The best value is the all-new Unlimited subscription Creator Plan at just $9.99 per month with an annual commitment.
Explore our vast library of studio-quality music to bring your project to the next level. Start downloading today!
When you’re ready to take your work to the next level and starting bringing in some earnings, you’re ready for the Premium License. This agreement allows you to earn some money from your content, either by charging for distribution or bringing in ad revenue. It also allows you to take your work to RTVF or digital broadcast, so if you’ve got a show to make or an event to put on, this license will cover all of your music needs. It’s $199 USD per track, again with full downloads, shorts, loops, and stems. Use the tracks as many times as you like on as many projects as you like—we’re about it.
Audioblocks offers individual and business licensing plans. The business license is a custom arrangement based on the size of your team. This means you’ll need to contact them for a quote.
Let’s focus here on the individual plan. Because Audioblocks offers video and SFX as well as songs, they have several different subscription plans. If you want access to all assets, it’s $30 USD per month. Unlimited video is $20 USD per month. Basic audio covers three song downloads per month at $10 USD, and unlimited SFX downloads are $15 USD per month. Content ID claims can be an issue with the downloads, but Audioblocks offers support to help resolve these claims when they arise.
Outside of the quality of the tracks themselves, a royalty-free library‘s searchability is probably the next most important element of a music library. The larger your music library gets, the more critical accurate search functionality becomes. We’ve already discussed how you might browse the libraries at PremiumBeat and Audioblocks, but if you’re inclined to do less exploring and more direct searching, what can you expect from the two music sites?
Searching music libraries is all about filters. Any given search term is going to yield tons of results on its own, so you have to be able to work with the site’s search filters to tell it what you want to hear. The more of these filters you have, the quicker you’ll find the needle in the haystack.
When you land at PremiumBeat.com, our search functionality is front and center. There’s a big, gold button, right above the fold—you can’t miss it. Click on “Start Your Search,” and we’ll guide you right into the library. From there, click the toggle to the left of the search field, and the filters will open right up. You can open each option one a time, and check all the parameters you want to apply to your search. Here’s the list of PremiumBeat’s primary search filters:
At Audioblocks, you’ll need to click the dropdown next to the search field to select which medium you want. If you choose “All Audio” > “Music,” you’ll need to actually perform a search before you can begin filtering, so enter something that matches your project like “dark” or “uplifting.” From there, you can apply the following filters:
Once you’ve spent some time searching within a library, you’ll begin to get a feel for the nuances of the collection, and your searches will get you to the tracks you want more quickly. In the beginning, don’t be afraid to experiment with different search terms while applying your filters.
When you’re comparing two music sites like PremiumBeat and Audioblocks, you’re talking about similar calibers of music. What, then, becomes the difference between them? Issues of licensing, searchability, and customization aside, you’re trying to determine which offering deserves the label “best in class.” We can’t speak to the action behind-the-scenes at Audioblocks, but we can position our offering by telling you a little about our music curation.
Our acquisitions team comes straight from the music industry—we recruited them directly onto our team to oversee our library from the beginning. These professionals hand-vet each track three times—we don’t rely on any algorithms or automation. If a track meets our high quality standards and clears three vettings, then it is headed to join the library. Once we have the shorts, loops, and stems for the track ready, we take the time to prepare the metadata about the song so you’ll be able to find it.
Beyond this sort of white-glove inspection, we also aim to make music available to you that you wouldn’t think to consider—making the job of scoring your project easier and more interesting. With tracks from around the globe, our world music genre includes work from twenty different countries. That’s twenty different cultures with new ideas about what’s trending and why.
Building a successful royalty free music library full of professional-grade tracks that content creators actually want to use is one thing—keeping it going is another thing altogether. Any library that simply focuses on being bigger will eventually begin to miss the point. These libraries are full of music assets that creators need to keep rising above all the noise. They need to grow and adapt because needs and trends will change. The old adage “adapt or die” is so true.
To offer truly helpful assets for content creators, you have to actually know what they need. And, that means being in the game yourself. At PremiumBeat, we’re also content creators. You can click through to our popular blog, The Beat, where we’ve been putting out dozens of articles, interviews, product reviews, tutorials, and case studies every month for several years. If it has to do with filmmaking, we’ve covered it—industry news, gear, cinematography techniques, color correction, industry trends, you name it. We know what it is to create content, and we know how difficult it can be to find the assets you need when you need them (that’s why we’re always giving some away for free).
But, we’re not only talking about articles. We put out videos on our YouTube channel on all things filmmaking—how-tos, reviews, tutorials, walk-throughs. If there’s something you want to learn how to do, we’ve done it. And, you’ll see that we use our music in everything we do—click through to the meta descriptions and you’ll find everything you need to know about which songs we chose for each video. And, not only do we use PremiumBeat tracks on the PremiumBeat channel, we use them in our work, as well, because we believe in what we’ve curated.
We’d be lying if we didn’t say that we think our royalty-free music library is the best out there. We know we have some competition, and there are some great platforms like Audioblocks you can also consider. When you take all of these criteria together, we believe that PremiumBeat offers the most comprehensive, best-in-class experience you’re looking for. But, don’t take our word for it. Hit the library and listen to some music yourself. We’ll bet you find a thing or two you could use in your current or next video or podcast. Start here!
