Royalty Free Music for Content Creation Agencies: 4 Tips to Select the Best Royalty Free Music for Business

Looking to find the best business music solutions for your creative agency's various needs?

Well, you’ve come to the right article. We know music, and we know the myriad problems high-quality, royalty free music solves for creative agencies looking to use music for multimedia projects.

We also know that there are always new opportunities to use music in different types of digital content. The industry is constantly changing, making it harder to keep up with the various copyright rules and regulations that govern how music is licensed today.

So if you’re a manager, producer, or even a video editor at a creative agency of any size, we’re here to help you make the best—and most informed—decision regarding what royalty free music solution will be the right pick for you. 

What is royalty free music?

Before we discuss some solutions for the best royalty free music for content creation agencies below, if you’re unfamiliar with them, let’s first review the basic music licensing terms that you should know.

First, let’s talk about “royalty free music” and what that means. No, it’s not free music. But yes, it is what you want for your creative agency’s music solution. Royalty free music is a term that covers all music that has its licenses and copyrights covered for you and your clients. It’s worry-free, hassle-free, and high-quality.

It’s also the best option for creative agencies looking to find a diverse music library of songs and sound effects that they can use for all of their internal and external marketing needs and all of the content that they create for their clients.

You can learn more about how you can use royalty free music for commercial use here, in our full explainer article.

Indemnification and protections

Another element to consider before you decide on the best music solution for your creative agency is what type of protections your music licensing library or company offers. 

With Soundstripe, for example, we offer indemnification, which is important because it protects you against copyright issues. At Soundstripe, our Enterprise Plans offer guarantees and promises that are not available in our regular plans.

These promises about your subscription require Soundstripe to provide and pay for, including legal fees related to claims made against your usage and distribution of Soundstripe music. Which, depending on the size of any claims, can be a sizable sum of money.

These protections don’t just extend to you and your creative agency but also to your clients, as they are the ones you’re licensing music for at the end of the day. All of these indemnifications, protections, and true licensing are set up to permit your clients to use music, and they’re also set up to use music with the best protection and worry-free licensing available.

Best royalty free music solutions for creative agencies

Now, let’s review some of the best royalty free music solutions and services for creative agencies. This list covers some of the biggest companies in this space, which should be able to provide you with high-quality music, diverse libraries, and plenty of protection.

It’s important to note too that while many of these solutions do offer agencies the option to be on smaller plans (which can range from a variety of prices based on your agency size and size of the clients you work with), these small company plans may not offer offer the same indemnification, protections, and true business B2B level licensing your clients need and expect.

Soundstripe

Our first pick should be no surprise. For this reason, Soundstripe is one of the world’s top music licensing companies. Based in the world's music capital, Nashville, Tennessee, we offer amazing music by Grammy-winning artists and large, diverse, agency-minded songs and sound effects that will cover all of your diverse multimedia music needs.

Here at Soundstripe we work with creative agencies of all sizes and are capable of creating customized plans that fit both the needs of your agency as well as your clients. We offer unique solutions specifically set up and bespoke to how your agencies and clients operate—something which goes much further beyond your typical subscription account.

The other benefit of Soundstripe is that part of our Enterprise Plans includes options that are customized for agencies specifically. We work with a wide variety of agencies, and when they work with our licensing specialists, we ensure that however you operate and license content to your clients, all of our agreements are aligned to provide the best protections for you and them, and structure our partnership to help pass costs along. 

If you’d like to learn more about starting with Soundstripe and get a quote for your customized plan, contact a Soundstripe sales representative directly here. 

Artlist

Another one of the bigger names in royalty free music is Artlist. Along with music, Artlist also offers other stock assets like footage and templates. They are similar to Soundstripe in many ways and are another solid option worth considering for your creative agencies.

Musicbed

Musicbed is another respectable option for video agencies. It’s known for its high-quality music and diverse roster of musicians. Like all of the main royalty free music licensing companies, Musicbed has its own pros and cons, but it is another worthy option to consider.

Pixabay

Pixabay is a creative licensing service that covers a wide variety of asset types, focusing on photos and stock images, illustration vectors, videos, animated GIFs, and music. While royalty free music might not be its main offering, it’s a nice option for those looking to bundle all of their creative assets together.

Motion Array

Similar to Pixabay, Motion Array is another strong option for creative agencies and designers looking to license many different types of assets for their projects. Motion Array is perhaps best known for its motion graphic assets and templates, but it also offers photos, footage, sound effects, and music.

Advice for creative agencies looking for royalty free music

There are truly no right or wrong answers as to who might be the best solution in finding royalty free music for your content creation agency. So, some honest advice might simply be to try out a few at a time and see which ones seem like the best solutions for you and your agency's needs.

That being said, we do have some further advice regarding your decision. Please keep these tips in mind as you explore any of the options above (or if you find any other royalty free music for business solutions online).

1. Look for consistency and quality

Many music licensing companies and royalty free music options tend to top-load their libraries with several high-quality tracks, which they feature in their marketing. However, once you get logged in, you might discover that the rest of their library drops in quality significantly—which might not be a problem for the first few months or projects, but if you plan to use the solution for longer periods, you’re going to want consistent quality throughout.

2. Look for a diversity of libraries

Another aspect to consider is diversity. Just as your clients and their marketing needs are diverse, you, too, will need a music library that is more than just the same genre and style of songs. Look for royalty free music solutions that offer many different genres and styles of music that reflect diverse voices, themes, and musical influences. 

3. Look for coverage and protection

As mentioned above, coverage and protection are very important issues for everyone—but especially for creative agencies. The last thing you want is to have a song you use so that a client can get flagged for social media copyright infringement when posting it on their channels. So, do the research and ensure that your royalty free music solution protects you and your projects from a legal perspective.

4. Look for features and useability

Finally, the last aspect worth considering is the usability of your royalty free music. With Soundstripe, for example, we offer music stems for all songs, allowing editors to quickly and easily splice together their royalty free music tracks into longer and shorter videos. We also offer plugins that help editors work more seamlessly with Soundstripe’s library directly in their video editing software, like this Adobe Premiere Pro extension, and directly on our Twitch music extension for your streams.

Ultimately, though, the best advice is to find the royalty free music solution that matches the voice of you and your brand. Or, for creative agencies, find the solution that matches the voices of your brands.