Epidemic Sound: The Best Royalty-Free Music Library For Content Creators
It’s the little extras that can really make or break the production of your podcast. Your show might sound fantastic already, with interesting content and excellent audio quality, but elements like killer intro music or incidental SFX can make a huge difference.
But finding high-quality music and audio to use for these purposes can be a challenge. How do you get appropriate, affordable music that works for your podcast?
Here at The Podcast Haven, we’ve relied on Epidemic Sound to source high-quality music for our podcasts over the last few years.
The platform stands out from the crowd, with an extensive library of tracks that perfectly align with the diverse thematic needs of podcast productions.
Their library features both music and SFX to enhance your podcast, ensuring every episode gets off to a great start.
Like the music? Find the Podcast Music Playlist here.
If you sign up to Epidemic Sound through the playlist link, you’ll get 7 days for free!
What Is Epidemic Sound?
Epidemic Sound is a huge music catalog with a vast selection of music in all genres. With their diverse range of options, you can easily enhance the auditory experience of podcasts and other media, such as YouTube videos.
Based in Stockholm, Sweden, Epidemic Sound offers high-quality music for our podcasts.
There’s something to capture every mood, atmosphere, or scene among their many pieces of music and sounds.
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What Music Can You Find in the Epidemic Sound Library?
The Epidemic Sound platform is a veritable treasure trove of music options and sound effects. Subscribers have the freedom to explore their entire catalog, which features a broad range of genres.
You can head straight to Podcast Hooks or Podcast Editing to find playlists curated specifically for the moods and styles that podcast producers want to create.
There are even options for specific genres, including history and crime podcasts.
We’re particularly fond of “Chill Out Beats” at The Podcast Haven.
Their soothing and engaging rhythms are ideal for intros, transitions, and beds. We find that rhythmic music tends to drive dialogue forward, so we use the Chill Out stuff a lot for our clients, as well as for our flagship podcast, CLIPPED.
Of course, you can explore further if you want to think outside of the box.
Playlists in the catalog range from “Confident Soundbeds” to “Trap Noir”.
You can find sounds to suit any atmosphere, style, or mood. Explore further into the over 90,000 SFX and you can discover even more to enhance any podcast production.
Where Can Epidemic Sound Be Accessed Globally?
Epidemic Sound offers their entire catalog to be accessed globally, enabling creators from all corners of the world to enhance their projects with professionally produced sounds.
There are no geographical boundaries limiting creative expression with the complete availability of their thousands of tracks and sounds.
The platform is able to do this because they own the rights to all of the music and sounds they offer. This means they can decide to license it around the world.
Their sounds can be used on any platform too, so it doesn’t matter where your podcast is hosted. Even TV, film, and offline events are covered.
So if you wanted to record a live episode of your podcast or post video content on YouTube, for example, you could still use your intro music.
Because Epidemic Sound has a mobile app, it means we’re really able to choose music and sounds from anywhere.
Browsing their catalog is simple, allowing us to quickly find the perfect intro music and other sounds for any podcast we produce and publish.
Epidemic Sound Tools
Epidemic Sound offers a variety of tools to select and manage sounds effectively.
Playlists
Create playlists to organize and revisit your favorite tracks anytime.
Download Formats
You have the flexibility to download soundtracks in either WAV or MP3 formats, catering to diverse project needs.
Stereo Mixes or Stems
Download complete stereo mixes or individual song stems. With stems, you can remix tracks or tailor specific segments to suit your content.
These tracks are fully customizable, allowing for cutting, mixing, and looping to achieve the perfect fit for your podcast.
Safelist Tracks
Epidemic Sound provides features to link your content channels securely, ensuring your music remains uninterrupted on those platforms.
The Safelist function also facilitates video monetization by clearing videos either directly or through a link that clients can use themselves.
Once cleared, videos remain eligible for monetization permanently.
Epidemic Sound Licensing and Pricing?
The straightforward pricing plans from Epidemic Sound is one of the things we love most about them. Their plans provide unlimited access to their sound libraries for a monthly fee.
This model means podcasters can keep enhancing their content without having to worry about recurring licensing fees or limitations.
Anything published while the subscription is active has the benefit of the music and SFX used remaining cleared for use.
So even if the subscription ends, there still won’t be any royalties due on content published during the subscription period.
All sounds and tracks within the catalog can be used across different channels to monetize content without any worries.
Epidemic Sound is Royalty Free
The company uses a direct licensing model that isn’t linked to Performance Rights Organizations (PROs).
That gives them the freedom to offer their music and sound effects without customers having to worry about copyright, royalties, or any of the other legal issues that often come with finding and using music.
This also offers a huge benefit over music that’s simply royalty-free. Royalty-free music means you don’t need to pay any royalties, but it doesn’t necessarily provide the freedom to use the music however you want.
PRO-free music, on the other hand, does offer the option of using it however you want.
Music rights on Epidemic Sound are mostly split into three different categories.
Synchronization rights give you the right to add the track to a video or moving image, mechanical rights allow you to make copies of the audiovisual production that includes the track, and public performance rights allow you to make the production, including the track, available to the public.
It’s not just the licensing that’s global at Epidemic Sound, either.
Their catalog features a roster of artists from around the globe crafting sounds influenced by all kinds of genres and backgrounds.
There are 160 genres and even Grammy winners in the mix.
Plus, you can rest assured that the musicians don’t miss out when selling to Epidemic Sound.
We love that they earn well, at an average of $50,000 per year, which means that fellow creatives are rewarded for their hard work.
Epidemic Sound Subscriptions
Epidemic Sound has two main subscription options. The Commercial subscription offers:
- The ability to publish anywhere online
- Unlimited downloads
- The Epidemic Sound mobile app
- The ability to monetize up to 3 channels per platform
- The ability to publish content for clients and business
- Unlimited use in digital ads
The Enterprise plan (for businesses with an annual revenue of $10 million or that need multiple users) includes everything in the Commercial subscription, plus:
- Multiple user accounts
- All rights covered for TV shows and ads
- Customer Success Manager and music curation
- Customized deal terms
These subscription options make Epidemic Sound ideal for podcast producers and publishers. They offer all of the tools needed to find and use the right music and sounds for any podcast.
The Podcast Haven and Epidemic Sound: The Perfect Partnership
The high-quality production values of Epidemic Sound’s royalty-free music library greatly surpasses available options. We won’t mention any names, but there’s one music library that comes to mind that ends with the word “blocks”.
We at The Podcast Haven believe that using Epidemic Sound is not just a choice, but a significant enhancement to the production quality of any podcast, ensuring that each episode sounds crisp, professional, and engaging.
This partnership has proven indispensable in the growth and success of our content and our clients content.
We’re not the only ones who see the benefit of everything Epidemic Sound has to offer.
They’re also trusted by huge brands such as BuzzFeed, Hubspot, Ubisoft, and more. See for yourself just what Epidemic Sound offers by taking a look at their music and SFX.
Epidemic Sound Final Thoughts
The right music and SFX are a must to make your podcast polished and ready for publication. You need the best resource to provide an extensive choice of options, which is why we trust Epidemic Sound.
Oh, and just a reminder.
If you sign up to Epidemic Sound through the playlist link below, you’ll get 7 days for free!
https://share.epidemicsound.com/bmloa9/?playlist=yp4cpaom7chszd8fo8i1nj4i2cvxep6u
Connect With Us:
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