Royalty Free Sound Effects for Drone Footage: 10 Essential SFX & Playlists to Make Your Drone Videos Soar
Jourdan Aldredge
Feb 19, 2025
One of the most inspiring innovations and new technologies released in the film and video industry over the past decade has been camera drone technology. Gone are the days when the only means of aerial cinematography was helicopter flights, during which videographers had to strap themselves in and lean out the window.
Today, anyone with any budget can send a powerful and affordable drone into the air and get high-quality video footage back to their smartphones or computers. It’s the ultimate cheat code for cinematic footage.
Yet, just because you can capture such dynamic aerial footage doesn’t mean your videos will instantly improve. In fact, to truly capitalize on the breathtaking footage thousands of drone camera owners are shooting daily, the real trick is to use the right music and sound effects to make the drone videos rise above the rest.
Let’s explore some of the best royalty free sound effects for drone footage, share some recommendations, and review some tips for improving your videos.
10 top royalty free sound effects for drone footage
By their nature, drone videos are already quite dynamic and exciting. Yet, as anyone who’s shot drone footage with audio before can tell you, the clips are also always quite noisy. Drone audio is usually a mixture of wind noises and the whirring of the drone itself.
So, it’s unsurprising that most drone videographers do not use the drone's audio. Instead, they use royalty-free drone music and other added sound effects.
Here are some top selections of royalty-free sound effects for your drone videos.
1. High Approach 01 Sound Effect
Description: Reversed cymbal.
Description: Whoosh-sound of propulsion, then deep impact followed by metallic ringing. Reverberant.
3. Hum Movement 01 Sound Effect
Description: Electromagnetic field buzz movement.
4. Grainy High 01 Sound Effect
Description: Grainy, high-pitched, reversed hit.
Description: Deep electric spark sound.
Description: Power on click with delay, radio static white noise drone, and Sci-fi whoosh out.
7. Swoosh Hard Large 01 Sound Effect
Description: Harsh, short swoosh sound with a big and loud squall. Reverberant.
8. Large Mechanical Lock Sequence 01 Sound Effect
Description: Large mechanical lock movement with clicks and clangs.
Description: Rain falling, and water is dripping out of the gutter
10. Radio Glitch Logo Sequence 01 Sound Effect
Description: Sharp glitch with different intensities of distorted voices and metallic clangs in each variation.
These are just ten of our top picks for these types of videos. If you’d like to see thousands more, visit our full sound effects library, as we’ll share some of our best-curated sound effects playlists below.
How do sound effects work with drone videos?
Now, if you’re already familiar with editing audio and video together, it shouldn’t be too hard to add sound effects like these to your footage. However, if you’re a bit more of a newbie, it can be a bit tricky to do this with your usual beginner smartphone video editing apps.
If you’re looking to add music to videos specifically for short-form content formats, here’s a guide to follow on how to add music to YouTube Shorts as a reference. In truth, adding sound effects to drone videos specifically isn’t much different—especially since we recommend that users get the highest quality video, create their content on their own, and then upload the completed videos directly to YouTube.
The steps for adding sound effects would then be passed on to your normal video and sound editing workflow. You’ll have complete control over when, where, and how many sound effects you want to use in your videos.
What are royalty free sound effects?
We should also cover some basics about what this “royalty-free " term we’ve been using means. Like music—and the royalty-free music we offer here at Soundstripe—sound effects are copyright-protected on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
That’s why your best bet for music or sound effects (or other video or photo assets, for that matter) is royalty free options that can be licensed from royalty free music websites like Soundstripe.
This is because sound effects, like songs and other musical tracks, are created by artists who deserve compensation. Companies like Soundstripe both compensate the artists who created the music or sound effects and provide full protection and coverage for creators to use the music and sound effects on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, etc.…
Our top sound effects playlists for drone videos
Now that we’ve covered some of those important—but not as engaging—questions about royalty free sound effects and how to use them, let’s get back to giving you more of what you came here for. Along with the selections above, here are some recommended royalty free sound effects playlists which you can use to further explore more SFX for your drone videos.
Description: Electrical hums, buzzes, and sparks signal a device's turning on.
Description: Whoosh transitions and elements simulating motion.
Description: Cinematic transitions and textures that really fly by.
Description: Transitions and whooshes are reversed to add cinematic textures to your project.
Description: Thunder, lightning, and other inclement weather soundscapes.
Planes, Trains, & Automobiles Playlist
Description: Traveling sounds of various passenger vehicles
Description: Cinematic sound effects, pre-arranged into powerful sequences, you can cut your footage to
Of course, if you’d like to keep exploring more sound effects for drone videos, here are some additional royalty free sound effect playlists that would be great for your cinematic aerial content
Tips for using royalty free sound effects in drone videos
Shooting and editing drone footage is always going to be a fun process. It’s a type of video that, until very recently, was impossible for hobbyists and small crews to capture. It’s also just very interesting to view as you get perspectives you’d never find before. Check out this article for tips on how to fly a drone like a pro.
With that being said, there are still some tips and tricks that we can recommend to help you get the most out of these royalty free sound effects in your drone videos. So try out these tips to help make your drone videos even more dynamic.
- Consider using “powering on” or “booting up” sound effects to mimic the sound of a drone’s startup.
- If your videos use bumpers or title cards, consider using sound effects to make these sections more impactful.
- To give a sense of speed, look for “whooshes” and other flight sound effects to help the footage feel faster and more dynamic.
There are never any right or wrong sound effects to use in your drone videos, though. So have fun with the exploration process and see what SFXs help your videos take flight.