2024's Most Popular Royalty Free Music: What We Can Learn From Our Top 10 Most Licensed Songs
Soundstripe Team
Jan 13, 2025
As we enter 2025, we’re excited to explore how content creators of all types can take our collective learnings from last year and turn them into actionable plans for the coming year.
Regardless of your own successes and setbacks experienced in 2024, the next year will always be full of potential for you to make great personal and professional strides forward.
To help you on your content creation journey, we’re here to share some of our learnings here at Soundstripe—including insights into our most popular royalty free music, our most licensed songs, genres and moods, and industry trends we expect to see in 2025.
A look back at 2024
While 2024 was different from the year before it in many ways, we also saw many of the same trends repeat themselves from the year before. Looking at our most downloaded songs, 2024 saw our “happy” mood tag lead the pack, which also topped the list in 2023. And we’re delighted to report that “happy” continues to be one of our most popular tags—and royalty free happiness music is still one of our most robust catalogs of music.
Second to “happy,” though, we saw “hopeful” music rise from the third spot in 2023 to second place in 2024. This move from “hopeful” surpassed “fun,” which fell from second to third. We’re taking this as a sign that 2024 – which saw the Paris Olympics, charged elections across the globe, and more – was a year about dreams and aspirations, with fun holding steady right behind.
As you’ll see in our list of our top 10 downloaded songs of 2024, along with “inspiring” and “happy” tags appearing multiple times in the top 10, all of our top tracks share the “hopeful” tag as well.
Overall, 2024 was a year in which creators looked for music to tell uplifting stories in their content. Optimistic messaging has proven both popular and successful as a way to encourage audiences to better engage with your content and brand, plus find ways to click through to any next steps to keep the good vibes going.
Our most popular royalty free songs from 2024
Now, without further ado, let’s share a list of our top ten downloaded songs from 2024. These tracks are from seven different Soundstripe artists, are predominantly in eight different keys, and— despite sharing many “happy,” “hopeful” and “inspiring” music tags—run the gamut across different musical styles and genres.
Here are Soundstripe’s most downloaded royalty free music tracks from 2024:
- Description: A high-energy rock song that is best described as inspiring and hopeful. The guitar and electric guitar are the primary instruments on this track.
- BPM: 117
- Key: G Major
- Listen and license here
- Description: A medium-energy, electronic song that is best described as happy and hopeful. Synth and guitar are the primary instruments in this track.
- BPM: 155
- Key: G Major
- Listen and license here
- Description: A low-energy, acoustic song that is best described as hopeful and inspiring. Guitar and acoustic guitar are the primary instruments in this track.
- BPM: 102
- Key: Db/C# Major
- Listen and license here
4. Born To Roam by Tommy Welton
- Description: A medium-energy pop song that is best described as hopeful and inspiring. Drums and drum kits are the primary instruments in this track.
- BPM: 130
- Key: A Major
- Listen and license here
- Description: A low-energy, electronic song that is best described as inspiring and hopeful. Synth and guitar are the primary instruments in this track.
- BPM: 120
- Key: E Major
- Listen and license here
- Description: A high-energy, electronic song that is best described as fun and happy. Drums and electronic drums are the primary instruments in this track.
- BPM: 120
- Key: D Major
- Listen and license here
- Description: A low-energy, classical song best described as calm and inspiring. Piano and strings are the primary instruments in this track.
- BPM: 160
- Key: D Major
- Listen and license here
- Description: A low-energy, acoustic song that is best described as inspiring and hopeful. Guitar and acoustic guitar are the primary instruments in this track.
- BPM: 150
- Key: F Major
- Listen and license here
- Description: A medium-energy, electronic song best described as hopeful and inspiring. Synth and piano are the primary instruments in this track.
- BPM: 107
- Key: Bb/A# Major
- Listen and license here
- Description: A high-energy, electronic song that is best described as happy and fun. Synth and percussion are the primary instruments in this track.
- BPM: 170
- Key: F Minor
- Listen and license here
Artist Reveille (which features the organically grown instrumentals by Brendan St. Gelais) had three tracks featured in our top ten most popular royalty free music downloads, while writer and composer Landon Bailey’s artist profile LNDÖ featured two top choices. Both are talented Soundstripe artists, and we’d recommend checking out their complete Soundstripe catalogs.
What to plan for in 2025
Now, with 2024 in the rearview, let’s look forward to 2025. We expect technology trends in both music and content industries to continue at a rapid pace. AI has been one of the biggest stories of the past year for good reason, and we’re excited to share that our Soundstripe AI Song Editor released this year is helping creators edit a Soundstripe track to perfectly fit their videos in seconds.
We expect 2025 to bring many more innovations, not just in AI but also in other technologies. These innovations will likely further speed up workflows, streamlining and impacting content and marketing efforts.
The Soundstripe catalog will continue to grow and diversify as well, with the aim of giving Soundstripe users even more high-quality, royalty free music and sound effects to use in their growing and diversifying content needs.
So, good luck in 2025 on your evolving content creation journeys. We’ll be hard at work, creating, curating, and collaborating with our talented artists to provide you with the best tunes and assets for your projects.