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"Curating the Perfect Soundtrack YouTube's Best Audio Sites Ranked"
Curating the Perfect Soundtrack: YouTube’s Best Audio Sites Ranked
15 Best Sites to Find & Download Royalty-Free Music for YouTube
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
Choosing great royalty-free music for your YouTube videos will help put your audience in the right frame of mind, cover up flaws in your background audio, and help viewers feel more engaged with your content.
YouTube provides a free audio library, but since a lot of creators use it everyone’s videos can start to sound the same. Here are 15 alternative places where you can get royalty-free music for free! It’ll say at the beginning of every section whether they require attribution or allow commercial use.
Best Sites for Royalty-Free Music for YouTube Creators [Free Download]
If you are using Wondershare Filmora video editor , you will find there are some royalty-free music tracks and sound effects already pre-programmed in the Audio library. You will find different styles of music tacks, varying from Young & Bright to Electronic. Download Filmora, and you will get the royalty-free audio library and powerful video editing tools.
1. Audionautix
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the site with ‘music by audionautix.com’ if you want to use this music (if you have a website, they ask that you include a link back to them).
Paid Options? No. All of the music on this site is free.
One of the first things you’ll see when you arrive on Audiionautix is a ‘YouTube Friendly’ button. They know that most people browsing their music library are looking for songs for YouTube videos, and that want you to know their music is safe from copyright claims.
All of the music in the Audionautix collection was created by one man, Jason Shaw, but there’s still a huge variety of tracks.
On the front page of Audionautix, there are three selections you can make to start your music search – genre, mood, and tempo. Genres range from hard rock to bluegrass to techno (there are 28 genres in total), and the moods include things like ‘uplifting’, ‘evil’, and ‘bouncy’ (there are 37 of those). The tempos are fast, medium, and slow. So, if you want a medium-tempo acoustic song with a calming mood, you can easily find all of the songs that meet those qualifications.
Not every combination will deliver results, so it can be easier to just choose two of the three search parameters.
2. Bensound
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. You must include one of the following in your video description: “Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music” or “Music: Song title - Bensound.com”
Paid Options? Yes. If you don’t want to credit Bensound (or can’t for some reason) then you need to purchase a license. Licensing starts at about $28 USD (price listed as €24) per track.
The most popular music from Bensound is displayed on the first page. Beyond the titles of the tracks, each has a short description that will give you a good idea of what to expect from the song before you listen. You’ll need to listen to a song to know if you want it, but the descriptions are a fast way to figure out if you don’t want something. For example, ‘A New Beginning’ could be anything based on that title, but the description lets you know it’s ‘punk rock’ with an ‘epic/achievement’ feeling.
You can narrow down the music you are shown by choosing a genre from the menu near the top of your page (there are 8 genres including cinematic, electronica, and corporate/pop). There’s also a search bar, and you can choose whether to display popular or new songs first.
All of the music on Bensound was created by Benjamin TISSOT, a composer based in France. He has been creating music for over 10 years.
3. dig.ccMixter
Commercial Use? Depends. Some songs are available for commercial use, some are not. It is easy to search only for songs which are.
Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the musicians.
Paid Options? Yes. You can purchase licenses to get around commercial use or attribution restrictions. Personal licenses are $22 USD.
Musicians upload their work to ccMixter and make it available to creators like you at dig.ccMixter. Over 45,000 musicians have participated and this has resulted in a huge variety of music for you to discover.
Clicking ‘tag search’ at the top of the page is probably the best way to start your search. The ‘tags’ are displayed in three categories – genre, instrument, and style. You can click as many tags as you want from each category (i.e. you can check off ‘classical’ for the genre and then both bass and cello for instruments).
By default, your search will return results that have even just one of the tags you selected, but you can click ‘match all’ to see results that include all of your selected tags.
To the right of the screen, there’s a button called ‘filters’ and if you click it it’ll let you narrow your results by license (you can choose to only browse music that is free for commercial use). You can also specify if you only want instrumental songs.
If you do not use the ‘free for commercial use’ filter then you will need to click on songs to see whether their creative commons licenses allow commercial use.
If you’re an indie game developer, they have a Music for Video Games section for you too.
4. Free Music Archive
Commercial Use? Depends on the song.
Attribution Required? Depends on the song.
Paid Options? No. Everything is free.
There is a huge selection on Free Music Archive (they include songs curated by other sites, including other sites on this list), but using this site can be a bit trickier than using other sites because there are so many different licenses at play. There are even several licenses that do not allow songs to be used in YouTube videos (any Creative Commons license with ‘ND / No Derivatives’ will not allow for use in a video). You should read this page before downloading anything from the Free Music Archive to use on YouTube.
To start browsing Free Music Archive for music you can use for your videos, go to ‘Curators’ in the top menu, and select ‘Music for Video’. There’s no point in browsing music you might not be allowed to use for YouTube, and so the site has made it easy to find the music you can.
By default this screen will not include music you can use commercially, so you need to check ‘allows for commercial use’ in the side menu if that’s important to you. You can also select a genre and specify if you only want instrumental songs.
5. Free Stock Music
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? No.
Paid Options? No. Everything is free.
Simply choose a genre from the ‘Free Music’ drop-down menu to start browsing Free Stock Music’s collection. There are 10 genres including Pop, Hip Hop, and Corporate.
There are not a lot of ways to customize your search results on this site. You just can search for a keyword, like ‘happy’, but you can’t narrow your results down by things like instrument or mood like you can on some other sites. You just have to scroll through either your search results or the chosen genre until you find something.
To make it a bit easier, Free Stock Music has included detailed descriptions of each song you can read while your browsing and these descriptions do tend to include details about instruments and the moods of the songs.
You need to create a free account on Free Stock Music to access their songs.
6. Incompetech
Commercial Use? YouTube monetization allowed. Other kinds of commercial use may be restricted.
Attribution Required? Yes. You can put the attribution in your video description.
Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot (or do not want to) credit Incompetech then you can purchase a license instead. Licensing 1 piece of music costs $30.
Incompetech allows you to browse one of three ways. The ‘Full Search’ will be best for most people, but if you want to see every song in alphabetical order you can click on ‘Full List’, or you can browse collections like ‘Comedic’ in ‘View Collections’ (but not every piece of music on the site can be found in a collection).
If you go into ‘Full Search’ you’ll see a list of all the music and be able to filter it by feel, tempo, genre, and length. For example, you could set ‘Feels’ to ‘Grooving’ or ‘Length’ to ‘3:00-3:29’.
You can also use the search bar to look for an instrument or song title.
Clicking Expand All will reveal descriptions of all the songs and a ‘listen now’ button, but it will stretch the page a lot. You can see more details about individual songs, and listen to them, by clicking on the title. You won’t be taken to a new page, which is convenient.
You can also download all the music at once (by clicking ‘download all the music on this site at once’).
7. Josh Woodward
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Attribution goes in your description box and it should look like this: Music - “SONG TITLE HERE” by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/
Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot give Josh credit for some reason you can buy a single-song license for $30.
Josh Woodward is a singer-songwriter who has chosen to allow the free use of all his music (although he does appreciate donations).
You’ll immediately see a list of music on Josh’s site (not everything, there are over 200 songs on this site), and you can change what is displayed by using the filters on the right of the page. The filters available are Playlist, Genre, Album, Tags, Tempo, and Length.
The playlists are songs that have been bundled together around a theme like ‘fun and fast’ or ‘popular in videos’.
There are nine genres to choose from including ‘dark acoustic’ and ‘Americana’.
The albums are albums that Josh has released.
You can also search the song titles and lyrics by typing keywords into the search bar.
At the top of the page, there’s a player you can use to preview the songs, and you can choose whether to browse vocal songs or songs with lyrics (the results below may not appear to change, but if you use the player you’ll hear the instrumental version instead of the version with vocals).
8. Looperman
Commercial Use? Allowed for loops, but they make no guarantees.
Attribution Required? Unclear. The site doesn’t address attribution so it may be up to whoever has uploaded the loop you want to use.
Paid Options? No.
Looperman is a community for musicians. The goal is to provide instrumental loops and acapella vocals to other musicians for their own projects. In theory, all of the music loops and sounds are completely free to use in your projects, but since it’s a community they cannot guarantee that a user hasn’t uploaded something they don’t own (they aren’t allowed to, so in theory you should be safe, but the site doesn’t make any guarantees).
If you want to use vocals it seems like you have to talk to the person who owns the vocals about whether you can use them commercially or whether you need to include attribution.
9. Moby Gratis
Commercial Use? Never allowed. You cannot make money from the project you use this music in any way, including YouTube monetization or through a service like Patreon.
Attribution Required? Yes. Put this in your video description: Music: [Track Name] by Moby courtesy of Mobygratis.com
Paid Options? No.
Moby is a Grammy-nominated, VMA-winning, artist whose work you have probably heard on the radio. Even if you aren’t familiar with Moby himself, he has co-written, produced, and remixed music for other major artists like David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, and Daft Punk.
Moby has chosen to make a catalog of his work available to independent filmmakers for non-commercial projects. Not all of the music provided on the site is available for YouTube, only the music marked Unreleased (if it has been released, then it will be flagged by YouTube’s copyright system). There is a lot of music under the ‘Unreleased’ category, though.
In order to download songs, you will need to make an account, and it takes about 24 hours for your account to be approved.
10. Musopen
Commercial Use? Depends on the song.
Attribution Required? Depends on the song
Paid Options? No.
Musopen provides music that is either in the ‘public domain’, or protected by Creative Commons licenses. If it’s in the public domain that means that nobody owns the copyright and anyone can use it for anything (however, Musopen does warn that they do not review uploads from their users so it is possible that someone could upload something they claim is public domain and be lying or wrong).
Creative Commons licenses all have their own conditions. Some may block commercial use, some may require attribution. The ones you need to watch out for as a video creator are the ones marked ‘No Derivatives’, because you can’t use songs licensed this way in videos.
You can start using Musopen by typing a keyword into the search bar on the main page, or scrolling down to select ‘Browse royalty free music recordings’. Besides music recordings, Musopen provides sheet music. If you have some musical talent and want to record your own music for your videos then this might be useful. If not, you probably want to stick to the recordings.
If you click on the Music Discovery Tool you’ll be able to search the recordings not only by instrument, but by license (so you can make sure you’re only looking at music that is in the public domain, or make sure you’re not looking at anything with that ‘No Derivatives’ condition.
11. TeknoAXE
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes.
Paid Options? No.
All of the music on TeknoAXE is covered under a CC4.0 license, which means you can share and adapt the music for any purpose so long as you provide attribution.
TeknoAXE’s music is divided into four categories: electronic dance music, rock and metal music, orchestra and soundtrack, and miscellaneous. There are several sub-categories under every category.
Once you’ve clicked into subcategory you’ll see thumbnails for every song in the category. Click on one to be taken to the song’s page, where you can listen to it before you decide if you want to download.
There are tons of places where you can find great royalty-free music you can use on YouTube, so start hunting! Finding the perfect song for that cool montage you’ve got planned, your intro sequence, or the background of your vlog will take your content to a new level of quality.
12. PacDV
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/>
Paid Options? No.
PacDV is primarily a sound effects site, but they have a music section as well (just click Music in the menu to the left under Sound Effects. ‘Free Music’ under resources is a completely different site). There is no way to filter down the music, and there is no search function.
There is a column in the list of music for ‘moods/emotions’, so you can get an idea of which songs you might want to listen to before you click to their pages.
13. Partners In Rhyme
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Credit them in your video description.
Paid Options? Yes. You can’t buy a license for free songs to get around attribution, but they do offer paid music. At $100 or more per song, their paid music is outside the budget of most YouTubers.
Partners In Rhyme is mostly a paid site, and they’re at the pricier end of the spectrum for paid sites. The reason they’re included on this list is that they have kindly curated a selection of free music for use on YouTube or in projects like podcasts (the link above will take you to the free page, not the site in general).
There isn’t a search function for the free music, or a way to narrow down what’s displayed, but you can click the play button next to any title to hear what the song sounds like. To download, just right click and choose ‘save file’ or ‘save target as’.
14. Purple Planet Music
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Put ‘Music: http://www.purple-planet.com’ in your video description.
Paid Options? Yes. If you want to use the music for anything besides YouTube, or if you don’t want to give them credit, then you can buy a license for $5.
Purple Planet Music is a team of three people, two of whom compose, perform, record, and produce all of the music you’ll find on this site (the third is the studio manager).
From the home page of Purple Planet choose one of the categories listed under ‘Royalty Free Music’. The categories are more related to moods than genres and include things like ‘cute’, ‘sneaky’, and ‘reflective’. Because they know you may want to use this music in film projects, you can even find categories like ‘dark backgrounds’.
Once you click into a category everything is listed, you can’t narrow your results. There’s not an overwhelming number of songs in each category, though, so it’s easy to choose something just by reading descriptions and listening to what’s there.
15. Sounds Crate
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? No.
Paid Options? Yes. You can upgrade to a Pro account for $49 per year to access more content.
Sounds Crate has music and sound effects. After you click into music, you’ll see thumbnails for sections related to a number of themes such as action music, corporate music, and hip hop. You’ll be able to preview and download all the songs in the category once you’re on the category page.
You are only allowed 5 downloads per day while you’re using Sounds Crate for free. They also request a $10 annual donation from free users, but it’s optional.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
Choosing great royalty-free music for your YouTube videos will help put your audience in the right frame of mind, cover up flaws in your background audio, and help viewers feel more engaged with your content.
YouTube provides a free audio library, but since a lot of creators use it everyone’s videos can start to sound the same. Here are 15 alternative places where you can get royalty-free music for free! It’ll say at the beginning of every section whether they require attribution or allow commercial use.
Best Sites for Royalty-Free Music for YouTube Creators [Free Download]
If you are using Wondershare Filmora video editor , you will find there are some royalty-free music tracks and sound effects already pre-programmed in the Audio library. You will find different styles of music tacks, varying from Young & Bright to Electronic. Download Filmora, and you will get the royalty-free audio library and powerful video editing tools.
1. Audionautix
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the site with ‘music by audionautix.com’ if you want to use this music (if you have a website, they ask that you include a link back to them).
Paid Options? No. All of the music on this site is free.
One of the first things you’ll see when you arrive on Audiionautix is a ‘YouTube Friendly’ button. They know that most people browsing their music library are looking for songs for YouTube videos, and that want you to know their music is safe from copyright claims.
All of the music in the Audionautix collection was created by one man, Jason Shaw, but there’s still a huge variety of tracks.
On the front page of Audionautix, there are three selections you can make to start your music search – genre, mood, and tempo. Genres range from hard rock to bluegrass to techno (there are 28 genres in total), and the moods include things like ‘uplifting’, ‘evil’, and ‘bouncy’ (there are 37 of those). The tempos are fast, medium, and slow. So, if you want a medium-tempo acoustic song with a calming mood, you can easily find all of the songs that meet those qualifications.
Not every combination will deliver results, so it can be easier to just choose two of the three search parameters.
2. Bensound
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. You must include one of the following in your video description: “Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music” or “Music: Song title - Bensound.com”
Paid Options? Yes. If you don’t want to credit Bensound (or can’t for some reason) then you need to purchase a license. Licensing starts at about $28 USD (price listed as €24) per track.
The most popular music from Bensound is displayed on the first page. Beyond the titles of the tracks, each has a short description that will give you a good idea of what to expect from the song before you listen. You’ll need to listen to a song to know if you want it, but the descriptions are a fast way to figure out if you don’t want something. For example, ‘A New Beginning’ could be anything based on that title, but the description lets you know it’s ‘punk rock’ with an ‘epic/achievement’ feeling.
You can narrow down the music you are shown by choosing a genre from the menu near the top of your page (there are 8 genres including cinematic, electronica, and corporate/pop). There’s also a search bar, and you can choose whether to display popular or new songs first.
All of the music on Bensound was created by Benjamin TISSOT, a composer based in France. He has been creating music for over 10 years.
3. dig.ccMixter
Commercial Use? Depends. Some songs are available for commercial use, some are not. It is easy to search only for songs which are.
Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the musicians.
Paid Options? Yes. You can purchase licenses to get around commercial use or attribution restrictions. Personal licenses are $22 USD.
Musicians upload their work to ccMixter and make it available to creators like you at dig.ccMixter. Over 45,000 musicians have participated and this has resulted in a huge variety of music for you to discover.
Clicking ‘tag search’ at the top of the page is probably the best way to start your search. The ‘tags’ are displayed in three categories – genre, instrument, and style. You can click as many tags as you want from each category (i.e. you can check off ‘classical’ for the genre and then both bass and cello for instruments).
By default, your search will return results that have even just one of the tags you selected, but you can click ‘match all’ to see results that include all of your selected tags.
To the right of the screen, there’s a button called ‘filters’ and if you click it it’ll let you narrow your results by license (you can choose to only browse music that is free for commercial use). You can also specify if you only want instrumental songs.
If you do not use the ‘free for commercial use’ filter then you will need to click on songs to see whether their creative commons licenses allow commercial use.
If you’re an indie game developer, they have a Music for Video Games section for you too.
4. Free Music Archive
Commercial Use? Depends on the song.
Attribution Required? Depends on the song.
Paid Options? No. Everything is free.
There is a huge selection on Free Music Archive (they include songs curated by other sites, including other sites on this list), but using this site can be a bit trickier than using other sites because there are so many different licenses at play. There are even several licenses that do not allow songs to be used in YouTube videos (any Creative Commons license with ‘ND / No Derivatives’ will not allow for use in a video). You should read this page before downloading anything from the Free Music Archive to use on YouTube.
To start browsing Free Music Archive for music you can use for your videos, go to ‘Curators’ in the top menu, and select ‘Music for Video’. There’s no point in browsing music you might not be allowed to use for YouTube, and so the site has made it easy to find the music you can.
By default this screen will not include music you can use commercially, so you need to check ‘allows for commercial use’ in the side menu if that’s important to you. You can also select a genre and specify if you only want instrumental songs.
5. Free Stock Music
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? No.
Paid Options? No. Everything is free.
Simply choose a genre from the ‘Free Music’ drop-down menu to start browsing Free Stock Music’s collection. There are 10 genres including Pop, Hip Hop, and Corporate.
There are not a lot of ways to customize your search results on this site. You just can search for a keyword, like ‘happy’, but you can’t narrow your results down by things like instrument or mood like you can on some other sites. You just have to scroll through either your search results or the chosen genre until you find something.
To make it a bit easier, Free Stock Music has included detailed descriptions of each song you can read while your browsing and these descriptions do tend to include details about instruments and the moods of the songs.
You need to create a free account on Free Stock Music to access their songs.
6. Incompetech
Commercial Use? YouTube monetization allowed. Other kinds of commercial use may be restricted.
Attribution Required? Yes. You can put the attribution in your video description.
Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot (or do not want to) credit Incompetech then you can purchase a license instead. Licensing 1 piece of music costs $30.
Incompetech allows you to browse one of three ways. The ‘Full Search’ will be best for most people, but if you want to see every song in alphabetical order you can click on ‘Full List’, or you can browse collections like ‘Comedic’ in ‘View Collections’ (but not every piece of music on the site can be found in a collection).
If you go into ‘Full Search’ you’ll see a list of all the music and be able to filter it by feel, tempo, genre, and length. For example, you could set ‘Feels’ to ‘Grooving’ or ‘Length’ to ‘3:00-3:29’.
You can also use the search bar to look for an instrument or song title.
Clicking Expand All will reveal descriptions of all the songs and a ‘listen now’ button, but it will stretch the page a lot. You can see more details about individual songs, and listen to them, by clicking on the title. You won’t be taken to a new page, which is convenient.
You can also download all the music at once (by clicking ‘download all the music on this site at once’).
7. Josh Woodward
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Attribution goes in your description box and it should look like this: Music - “SONG TITLE HERE” by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/
Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot give Josh credit for some reason you can buy a single-song license for $30.
Josh Woodward is a singer-songwriter who has chosen to allow the free use of all his music (although he does appreciate donations).
You’ll immediately see a list of music on Josh’s site (not everything, there are over 200 songs on this site), and you can change what is displayed by using the filters on the right of the page. The filters available are Playlist, Genre, Album, Tags, Tempo, and Length.
The playlists are songs that have been bundled together around a theme like ‘fun and fast’ or ‘popular in videos’.
There are nine genres to choose from including ‘dark acoustic’ and ‘Americana’.
The albums are albums that Josh has released.
You can also search the song titles and lyrics by typing keywords into the search bar.
At the top of the page, there’s a player you can use to preview the songs, and you can choose whether to browse vocal songs or songs with lyrics (the results below may not appear to change, but if you use the player you’ll hear the instrumental version instead of the version with vocals).
8. Looperman
Commercial Use? Allowed for loops, but they make no guarantees.
Attribution Required? Unclear. The site doesn’t address attribution so it may be up to whoever has uploaded the loop you want to use.
Paid Options? No.
Looperman is a community for musicians. The goal is to provide instrumental loops and acapella vocals to other musicians for their own projects. In theory, all of the music loops and sounds are completely free to use in your projects, but since it’s a community they cannot guarantee that a user hasn’t uploaded something they don’t own (they aren’t allowed to, so in theory you should be safe, but the site doesn’t make any guarantees).
If you want to use vocals it seems like you have to talk to the person who owns the vocals about whether you can use them commercially or whether you need to include attribution.
9. Moby Gratis
Commercial Use? Never allowed. You cannot make money from the project you use this music in any way, including YouTube monetization or through a service like Patreon.
Attribution Required? Yes. Put this in your video description: Music: [Track Name] by Moby courtesy of Mobygratis.com
Paid Options? No.
Moby is a Grammy-nominated, VMA-winning, artist whose work you have probably heard on the radio. Even if you aren’t familiar with Moby himself, he has co-written, produced, and remixed music for other major artists like David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, and Daft Punk.
Moby has chosen to make a catalog of his work available to independent filmmakers for non-commercial projects. Not all of the music provided on the site is available for YouTube, only the music marked Unreleased (if it has been released, then it will be flagged by YouTube’s copyright system). There is a lot of music under the ‘Unreleased’ category, though.
In order to download songs, you will need to make an account, and it takes about 24 hours for your account to be approved.
10. Musopen
Commercial Use? Depends on the song.
Attribution Required? Depends on the song
Paid Options? No.
Musopen provides music that is either in the ‘public domain’, or protected by Creative Commons licenses. If it’s in the public domain that means that nobody owns the copyright and anyone can use it for anything (however, Musopen does warn that they do not review uploads from their users so it is possible that someone could upload something they claim is public domain and be lying or wrong).
Creative Commons licenses all have their own conditions. Some may block commercial use, some may require attribution. The ones you need to watch out for as a video creator are the ones marked ‘No Derivatives’, because you can’t use songs licensed this way in videos.
You can start using Musopen by typing a keyword into the search bar on the main page, or scrolling down to select ‘Browse royalty free music recordings’. Besides music recordings, Musopen provides sheet music. If you have some musical talent and want to record your own music for your videos then this might be useful. If not, you probably want to stick to the recordings.
If you click on the Music Discovery Tool you’ll be able to search the recordings not only by instrument, but by license (so you can make sure you’re only looking at music that is in the public domain, or make sure you’re not looking at anything with that ‘No Derivatives’ condition.
11. TeknoAXE
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes.
Paid Options? No.
All of the music on TeknoAXE is covered under a CC4.0 license, which means you can share and adapt the music for any purpose so long as you provide attribution.
TeknoAXE’s music is divided into four categories: electronic dance music, rock and metal music, orchestra and soundtrack, and miscellaneous. There are several sub-categories under every category.
Once you’ve clicked into subcategory you’ll see thumbnails for every song in the category. Click on one to be taken to the song’s page, where you can listen to it before you decide if you want to download.
There are tons of places where you can find great royalty-free music you can use on YouTube, so start hunting! Finding the perfect song for that cool montage you’ve got planned, your intro sequence, or the background of your vlog will take your content to a new level of quality.
12. PacDV
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/>
Paid Options? No.
PacDV is primarily a sound effects site, but they have a music section as well (just click Music in the menu to the left under Sound Effects. ‘Free Music’ under resources is a completely different site). There is no way to filter down the music, and there is no search function.
There is a column in the list of music for ‘moods/emotions’, so you can get an idea of which songs you might want to listen to before you click to their pages.
13. Partners In Rhyme
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Credit them in your video description.
Paid Options? Yes. You can’t buy a license for free songs to get around attribution, but they do offer paid music. At $100 or more per song, their paid music is outside the budget of most YouTubers.
Partners In Rhyme is mostly a paid site, and they’re at the pricier end of the spectrum for paid sites. The reason they’re included on this list is that they have kindly curated a selection of free music for use on YouTube or in projects like podcasts (the link above will take you to the free page, not the site in general).
There isn’t a search function for the free music, or a way to narrow down what’s displayed, but you can click the play button next to any title to hear what the song sounds like. To download, just right click and choose ‘save file’ or ‘save target as’.
14. Purple Planet Music
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Put ‘Music: http://www.purple-planet.com’ in your video description.
Paid Options? Yes. If you want to use the music for anything besides YouTube, or if you don’t want to give them credit, then you can buy a license for $5.
Purple Planet Music is a team of three people, two of whom compose, perform, record, and produce all of the music you’ll find on this site (the third is the studio manager).
From the home page of Purple Planet choose one of the categories listed under ‘Royalty Free Music’. The categories are more related to moods than genres and include things like ‘cute’, ‘sneaky’, and ‘reflective’. Because they know you may want to use this music in film projects, you can even find categories like ‘dark backgrounds’.
Once you click into a category everything is listed, you can’t narrow your results. There’s not an overwhelming number of songs in each category, though, so it’s easy to choose something just by reading descriptions and listening to what’s there.
15. Sounds Crate
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? No.
Paid Options? Yes. You can upgrade to a Pro account for $49 per year to access more content.
Sounds Crate has music and sound effects. After you click into music, you’ll see thumbnails for sections related to a number of themes such as action music, corporate music, and hip hop. You’ll be able to preview and download all the songs in the category once you’re on the category page.
You are only allowed 5 downloads per day while you’re using Sounds Crate for free. They also request a $10 annual donation from free users, but it’s optional.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
Choosing great royalty-free music for your YouTube videos will help put your audience in the right frame of mind, cover up flaws in your background audio, and help viewers feel more engaged with your content.
YouTube provides a free audio library, but since a lot of creators use it everyone’s videos can start to sound the same. Here are 15 alternative places where you can get royalty-free music for free! It’ll say at the beginning of every section whether they require attribution or allow commercial use.
Best Sites for Royalty-Free Music for YouTube Creators [Free Download]
If you are using Wondershare Filmora video editor , you will find there are some royalty-free music tracks and sound effects already pre-programmed in the Audio library. You will find different styles of music tacks, varying from Young & Bright to Electronic. Download Filmora, and you will get the royalty-free audio library and powerful video editing tools.
1. Audionautix
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the site with ‘music by audionautix.com’ if you want to use this music (if you have a website, they ask that you include a link back to them).
Paid Options? No. All of the music on this site is free.
One of the first things you’ll see when you arrive on Audiionautix is a ‘YouTube Friendly’ button. They know that most people browsing their music library are looking for songs for YouTube videos, and that want you to know their music is safe from copyright claims.
All of the music in the Audionautix collection was created by one man, Jason Shaw, but there’s still a huge variety of tracks.
On the front page of Audionautix, there are three selections you can make to start your music search – genre, mood, and tempo. Genres range from hard rock to bluegrass to techno (there are 28 genres in total), and the moods include things like ‘uplifting’, ‘evil’, and ‘bouncy’ (there are 37 of those). The tempos are fast, medium, and slow. So, if you want a medium-tempo acoustic song with a calming mood, you can easily find all of the songs that meet those qualifications.
Not every combination will deliver results, so it can be easier to just choose two of the three search parameters.
2. Bensound
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. You must include one of the following in your video description: “Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music” or “Music: Song title - Bensound.com”
Paid Options? Yes. If you don’t want to credit Bensound (or can’t for some reason) then you need to purchase a license. Licensing starts at about $28 USD (price listed as €24) per track.
The most popular music from Bensound is displayed on the first page. Beyond the titles of the tracks, each has a short description that will give you a good idea of what to expect from the song before you listen. You’ll need to listen to a song to know if you want it, but the descriptions are a fast way to figure out if you don’t want something. For example, ‘A New Beginning’ could be anything based on that title, but the description lets you know it’s ‘punk rock’ with an ‘epic/achievement’ feeling.
You can narrow down the music you are shown by choosing a genre from the menu near the top of your page (there are 8 genres including cinematic, electronica, and corporate/pop). There’s also a search bar, and you can choose whether to display popular or new songs first.
All of the music on Bensound was created by Benjamin TISSOT, a composer based in France. He has been creating music for over 10 years.
3. dig.ccMixter
Commercial Use? Depends. Some songs are available for commercial use, some are not. It is easy to search only for songs which are.
Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the musicians.
Paid Options? Yes. You can purchase licenses to get around commercial use or attribution restrictions. Personal licenses are $22 USD.
Musicians upload their work to ccMixter and make it available to creators like you at dig.ccMixter. Over 45,000 musicians have participated and this has resulted in a huge variety of music for you to discover.
Clicking ‘tag search’ at the top of the page is probably the best way to start your search. The ‘tags’ are displayed in three categories – genre, instrument, and style. You can click as many tags as you want from each category (i.e. you can check off ‘classical’ for the genre and then both bass and cello for instruments).
By default, your search will return results that have even just one of the tags you selected, but you can click ‘match all’ to see results that include all of your selected tags.
To the right of the screen, there’s a button called ‘filters’ and if you click it it’ll let you narrow your results by license (you can choose to only browse music that is free for commercial use). You can also specify if you only want instrumental songs.
If you do not use the ‘free for commercial use’ filter then you will need to click on songs to see whether their creative commons licenses allow commercial use.
If you’re an indie game developer, they have a Music for Video Games section for you too.
4. Free Music Archive
Commercial Use? Depends on the song.
Attribution Required? Depends on the song.
Paid Options? No. Everything is free.
There is a huge selection on Free Music Archive (they include songs curated by other sites, including other sites on this list), but using this site can be a bit trickier than using other sites because there are so many different licenses at play. There are even several licenses that do not allow songs to be used in YouTube videos (any Creative Commons license with ‘ND / No Derivatives’ will not allow for use in a video). You should read this page before downloading anything from the Free Music Archive to use on YouTube.
To start browsing Free Music Archive for music you can use for your videos, go to ‘Curators’ in the top menu, and select ‘Music for Video’. There’s no point in browsing music you might not be allowed to use for YouTube, and so the site has made it easy to find the music you can.
By default this screen will not include music you can use commercially, so you need to check ‘allows for commercial use’ in the side menu if that’s important to you. You can also select a genre and specify if you only want instrumental songs.
5. Free Stock Music
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? No.
Paid Options? No. Everything is free.
Simply choose a genre from the ‘Free Music’ drop-down menu to start browsing Free Stock Music’s collection. There are 10 genres including Pop, Hip Hop, and Corporate.
There are not a lot of ways to customize your search results on this site. You just can search for a keyword, like ‘happy’, but you can’t narrow your results down by things like instrument or mood like you can on some other sites. You just have to scroll through either your search results or the chosen genre until you find something.
To make it a bit easier, Free Stock Music has included detailed descriptions of each song you can read while your browsing and these descriptions do tend to include details about instruments and the moods of the songs.
You need to create a free account on Free Stock Music to access their songs.
6. Incompetech
Commercial Use? YouTube monetization allowed. Other kinds of commercial use may be restricted.
Attribution Required? Yes. You can put the attribution in your video description.
Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot (or do not want to) credit Incompetech then you can purchase a license instead. Licensing 1 piece of music costs $30.
Incompetech allows you to browse one of three ways. The ‘Full Search’ will be best for most people, but if you want to see every song in alphabetical order you can click on ‘Full List’, or you can browse collections like ‘Comedic’ in ‘View Collections’ (but not every piece of music on the site can be found in a collection).
If you go into ‘Full Search’ you’ll see a list of all the music and be able to filter it by feel, tempo, genre, and length. For example, you could set ‘Feels’ to ‘Grooving’ or ‘Length’ to ‘3:00-3:29’.
You can also use the search bar to look for an instrument or song title.
Clicking Expand All will reveal descriptions of all the songs and a ‘listen now’ button, but it will stretch the page a lot. You can see more details about individual songs, and listen to them, by clicking on the title. You won’t be taken to a new page, which is convenient.
You can also download all the music at once (by clicking ‘download all the music on this site at once’).
7. Josh Woodward
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Attribution goes in your description box and it should look like this: Music - “SONG TITLE HERE” by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/
Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot give Josh credit for some reason you can buy a single-song license for $30.
Josh Woodward is a singer-songwriter who has chosen to allow the free use of all his music (although he does appreciate donations).
You’ll immediately see a list of music on Josh’s site (not everything, there are over 200 songs on this site), and you can change what is displayed by using the filters on the right of the page. The filters available are Playlist, Genre, Album, Tags, Tempo, and Length.
The playlists are songs that have been bundled together around a theme like ‘fun and fast’ or ‘popular in videos’.
There are nine genres to choose from including ‘dark acoustic’ and ‘Americana’.
The albums are albums that Josh has released.
You can also search the song titles and lyrics by typing keywords into the search bar.
At the top of the page, there’s a player you can use to preview the songs, and you can choose whether to browse vocal songs or songs with lyrics (the results below may not appear to change, but if you use the player you’ll hear the instrumental version instead of the version with vocals).
8. Looperman
Commercial Use? Allowed for loops, but they make no guarantees.
Attribution Required? Unclear. The site doesn’t address attribution so it may be up to whoever has uploaded the loop you want to use.
Paid Options? No.
Looperman is a community for musicians. The goal is to provide instrumental loops and acapella vocals to other musicians for their own projects. In theory, all of the music loops and sounds are completely free to use in your projects, but since it’s a community they cannot guarantee that a user hasn’t uploaded something they don’t own (they aren’t allowed to, so in theory you should be safe, but the site doesn’t make any guarantees).
If you want to use vocals it seems like you have to talk to the person who owns the vocals about whether you can use them commercially or whether you need to include attribution.
9. Moby Gratis
Commercial Use? Never allowed. You cannot make money from the project you use this music in any way, including YouTube monetization or through a service like Patreon.
Attribution Required? Yes. Put this in your video description: Music: [Track Name] by Moby courtesy of Mobygratis.com
Paid Options? No.
Moby is a Grammy-nominated, VMA-winning, artist whose work you have probably heard on the radio. Even if you aren’t familiar with Moby himself, he has co-written, produced, and remixed music for other major artists like David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, and Daft Punk.
Moby has chosen to make a catalog of his work available to independent filmmakers for non-commercial projects. Not all of the music provided on the site is available for YouTube, only the music marked Unreleased (if it has been released, then it will be flagged by YouTube’s copyright system). There is a lot of music under the ‘Unreleased’ category, though.
In order to download songs, you will need to make an account, and it takes about 24 hours for your account to be approved.
10. Musopen
Commercial Use? Depends on the song.
Attribution Required? Depends on the song
Paid Options? No.
Musopen provides music that is either in the ‘public domain’, or protected by Creative Commons licenses. If it’s in the public domain that means that nobody owns the copyright and anyone can use it for anything (however, Musopen does warn that they do not review uploads from their users so it is possible that someone could upload something they claim is public domain and be lying or wrong).
Creative Commons licenses all have their own conditions. Some may block commercial use, some may require attribution. The ones you need to watch out for as a video creator are the ones marked ‘No Derivatives’, because you can’t use songs licensed this way in videos.
You can start using Musopen by typing a keyword into the search bar on the main page, or scrolling down to select ‘Browse royalty free music recordings’. Besides music recordings, Musopen provides sheet music. If you have some musical talent and want to record your own music for your videos then this might be useful. If not, you probably want to stick to the recordings.
If you click on the Music Discovery Tool you’ll be able to search the recordings not only by instrument, but by license (so you can make sure you’re only looking at music that is in the public domain, or make sure you’re not looking at anything with that ‘No Derivatives’ condition.
11. TeknoAXE
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes.
Paid Options? No.
All of the music on TeknoAXE is covered under a CC4.0 license, which means you can share and adapt the music for any purpose so long as you provide attribution.
TeknoAXE’s music is divided into four categories: electronic dance music, rock and metal music, orchestra and soundtrack, and miscellaneous. There are several sub-categories under every category.
Once you’ve clicked into subcategory you’ll see thumbnails for every song in the category. Click on one to be taken to the song’s page, where you can listen to it before you decide if you want to download.
There are tons of places where you can find great royalty-free music you can use on YouTube, so start hunting! Finding the perfect song for that cool montage you’ve got planned, your intro sequence, or the background of your vlog will take your content to a new level of quality.
12. PacDV
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/>
Paid Options? No.
PacDV is primarily a sound effects site, but they have a music section as well (just click Music in the menu to the left under Sound Effects. ‘Free Music’ under resources is a completely different site). There is no way to filter down the music, and there is no search function.
There is a column in the list of music for ‘moods/emotions’, so you can get an idea of which songs you might want to listen to before you click to their pages.
13. Partners In Rhyme
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Credit them in your video description.
Paid Options? Yes. You can’t buy a license for free songs to get around attribution, but they do offer paid music. At $100 or more per song, their paid music is outside the budget of most YouTubers.
Partners In Rhyme is mostly a paid site, and they’re at the pricier end of the spectrum for paid sites. The reason they’re included on this list is that they have kindly curated a selection of free music for use on YouTube or in projects like podcasts (the link above will take you to the free page, not the site in general).
There isn’t a search function for the free music, or a way to narrow down what’s displayed, but you can click the play button next to any title to hear what the song sounds like. To download, just right click and choose ‘save file’ or ‘save target as’.
14. Purple Planet Music
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Put ‘Music: http://www.purple-planet.com’ in your video description.
Paid Options? Yes. If you want to use the music for anything besides YouTube, or if you don’t want to give them credit, then you can buy a license for $5.
Purple Planet Music is a team of three people, two of whom compose, perform, record, and produce all of the music you’ll find on this site (the third is the studio manager).
From the home page of Purple Planet choose one of the categories listed under ‘Royalty Free Music’. The categories are more related to moods than genres and include things like ‘cute’, ‘sneaky’, and ‘reflective’. Because they know you may want to use this music in film projects, you can even find categories like ‘dark backgrounds’.
Once you click into a category everything is listed, you can’t narrow your results. There’s not an overwhelming number of songs in each category, though, so it’s easy to choose something just by reading descriptions and listening to what’s there.
15. Sounds Crate
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? No.
Paid Options? Yes. You can upgrade to a Pro account for $49 per year to access more content.
Sounds Crate has music and sound effects. After you click into music, you’ll see thumbnails for sections related to a number of themes such as action music, corporate music, and hip hop. You’ll be able to preview and download all the songs in the category once you’re on the category page.
You are only allowed 5 downloads per day while you’re using Sounds Crate for free. They also request a $10 annual donation from free users, but it’s optional.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
Choosing great royalty-free music for your YouTube videos will help put your audience in the right frame of mind, cover up flaws in your background audio, and help viewers feel more engaged with your content.
YouTube provides a free audio library, but since a lot of creators use it everyone’s videos can start to sound the same. Here are 15 alternative places where you can get royalty-free music for free! It’ll say at the beginning of every section whether they require attribution or allow commercial use.
Best Sites for Royalty-Free Music for YouTube Creators [Free Download]
If you are using Wondershare Filmora video editor , you will find there are some royalty-free music tracks and sound effects already pre-programmed in the Audio library. You will find different styles of music tacks, varying from Young & Bright to Electronic. Download Filmora, and you will get the royalty-free audio library and powerful video editing tools.
1. Audionautix
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the site with ‘music by audionautix.com’ if you want to use this music (if you have a website, they ask that you include a link back to them).
Paid Options? No. All of the music on this site is free.
One of the first things you’ll see when you arrive on Audiionautix is a ‘YouTube Friendly’ button. They know that most people browsing their music library are looking for songs for YouTube videos, and that want you to know their music is safe from copyright claims.
All of the music in the Audionautix collection was created by one man, Jason Shaw, but there’s still a huge variety of tracks.
On the front page of Audionautix, there are three selections you can make to start your music search – genre, mood, and tempo. Genres range from hard rock to bluegrass to techno (there are 28 genres in total), and the moods include things like ‘uplifting’, ‘evil’, and ‘bouncy’ (there are 37 of those). The tempos are fast, medium, and slow. So, if you want a medium-tempo acoustic song with a calming mood, you can easily find all of the songs that meet those qualifications.
Not every combination will deliver results, so it can be easier to just choose two of the three search parameters.
2. Bensound
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. You must include one of the following in your video description: “Music: https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music” or “Music: Song title - Bensound.com”
Paid Options? Yes. If you don’t want to credit Bensound (or can’t for some reason) then you need to purchase a license. Licensing starts at about $28 USD (price listed as €24) per track.
The most popular music from Bensound is displayed on the first page. Beyond the titles of the tracks, each has a short description that will give you a good idea of what to expect from the song before you listen. You’ll need to listen to a song to know if you want it, but the descriptions are a fast way to figure out if you don’t want something. For example, ‘A New Beginning’ could be anything based on that title, but the description lets you know it’s ‘punk rock’ with an ‘epic/achievement’ feeling.
You can narrow down the music you are shown by choosing a genre from the menu near the top of your page (there are 8 genres including cinematic, electronica, and corporate/pop). There’s also a search bar, and you can choose whether to display popular or new songs first.
All of the music on Bensound was created by Benjamin TISSOT, a composer based in France. He has been creating music for over 10 years.
3. dig.ccMixter
Commercial Use? Depends. Some songs are available for commercial use, some are not. It is easy to search only for songs which are.
Attribution Required? Yes. You must credit the musicians.
Paid Options? Yes. You can purchase licenses to get around commercial use or attribution restrictions. Personal licenses are $22 USD.
Musicians upload their work to ccMixter and make it available to creators like you at dig.ccMixter. Over 45,000 musicians have participated and this has resulted in a huge variety of music for you to discover.
Clicking ‘tag search’ at the top of the page is probably the best way to start your search. The ‘tags’ are displayed in three categories – genre, instrument, and style. You can click as many tags as you want from each category (i.e. you can check off ‘classical’ for the genre and then both bass and cello for instruments).
By default, your search will return results that have even just one of the tags you selected, but you can click ‘match all’ to see results that include all of your selected tags.
To the right of the screen, there’s a button called ‘filters’ and if you click it it’ll let you narrow your results by license (you can choose to only browse music that is free for commercial use). You can also specify if you only want instrumental songs.
If you do not use the ‘free for commercial use’ filter then you will need to click on songs to see whether their creative commons licenses allow commercial use.
If you’re an indie game developer, they have a Music for Video Games section for you too.
4. Free Music Archive
Commercial Use? Depends on the song.
Attribution Required? Depends on the song.
Paid Options? No. Everything is free.
There is a huge selection on Free Music Archive (they include songs curated by other sites, including other sites on this list), but using this site can be a bit trickier than using other sites because there are so many different licenses at play. There are even several licenses that do not allow songs to be used in YouTube videos (any Creative Commons license with ‘ND / No Derivatives’ will not allow for use in a video). You should read this page before downloading anything from the Free Music Archive to use on YouTube.
To start browsing Free Music Archive for music you can use for your videos, go to ‘Curators’ in the top menu, and select ‘Music for Video’. There’s no point in browsing music you might not be allowed to use for YouTube, and so the site has made it easy to find the music you can.
By default this screen will not include music you can use commercially, so you need to check ‘allows for commercial use’ in the side menu if that’s important to you. You can also select a genre and specify if you only want instrumental songs.
5. Free Stock Music
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? No.
Paid Options? No. Everything is free.
Simply choose a genre from the ‘Free Music’ drop-down menu to start browsing Free Stock Music’s collection. There are 10 genres including Pop, Hip Hop, and Corporate.
There are not a lot of ways to customize your search results on this site. You just can search for a keyword, like ‘happy’, but you can’t narrow your results down by things like instrument or mood like you can on some other sites. You just have to scroll through either your search results or the chosen genre until you find something.
To make it a bit easier, Free Stock Music has included detailed descriptions of each song you can read while your browsing and these descriptions do tend to include details about instruments and the moods of the songs.
You need to create a free account on Free Stock Music to access their songs.
6. Incompetech
Commercial Use? YouTube monetization allowed. Other kinds of commercial use may be restricted.
Attribution Required? Yes. You can put the attribution in your video description.
Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot (or do not want to) credit Incompetech then you can purchase a license instead. Licensing 1 piece of music costs $30.
Incompetech allows you to browse one of three ways. The ‘Full Search’ will be best for most people, but if you want to see every song in alphabetical order you can click on ‘Full List’, or you can browse collections like ‘Comedic’ in ‘View Collections’ (but not every piece of music on the site can be found in a collection).
If you go into ‘Full Search’ you’ll see a list of all the music and be able to filter it by feel, tempo, genre, and length. For example, you could set ‘Feels’ to ‘Grooving’ or ‘Length’ to ‘3:00-3:29’.
You can also use the search bar to look for an instrument or song title.
Clicking Expand All will reveal descriptions of all the songs and a ‘listen now’ button, but it will stretch the page a lot. You can see more details about individual songs, and listen to them, by clicking on the title. You won’t be taken to a new page, which is convenient.
You can also download all the music at once (by clicking ‘download all the music on this site at once’).
7. Josh Woodward
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Attribution goes in your description box and it should look like this: Music - “SONG TITLE HERE” by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/
Paid Options? Yes. If you cannot give Josh credit for some reason you can buy a single-song license for $30.
Josh Woodward is a singer-songwriter who has chosen to allow the free use of all his music (although he does appreciate donations).
You’ll immediately see a list of music on Josh’s site (not everything, there are over 200 songs on this site), and you can change what is displayed by using the filters on the right of the page. The filters available are Playlist, Genre, Album, Tags, Tempo, and Length.
The playlists are songs that have been bundled together around a theme like ‘fun and fast’ or ‘popular in videos’.
There are nine genres to choose from including ‘dark acoustic’ and ‘Americana’.
The albums are albums that Josh has released.
You can also search the song titles and lyrics by typing keywords into the search bar.
At the top of the page, there’s a player you can use to preview the songs, and you can choose whether to browse vocal songs or songs with lyrics (the results below may not appear to change, but if you use the player you’ll hear the instrumental version instead of the version with vocals).
8. Looperman
Commercial Use? Allowed for loops, but they make no guarantees.
Attribution Required? Unclear. The site doesn’t address attribution so it may be up to whoever has uploaded the loop you want to use.
Paid Options? No.
Looperman is a community for musicians. The goal is to provide instrumental loops and acapella vocals to other musicians for their own projects. In theory, all of the music loops and sounds are completely free to use in your projects, but since it’s a community they cannot guarantee that a user hasn’t uploaded something they don’t own (they aren’t allowed to, so in theory you should be safe, but the site doesn’t make any guarantees).
If you want to use vocals it seems like you have to talk to the person who owns the vocals about whether you can use them commercially or whether you need to include attribution.
9. Moby Gratis
Commercial Use? Never allowed. You cannot make money from the project you use this music in any way, including YouTube monetization or through a service like Patreon.
Attribution Required? Yes. Put this in your video description: Music: [Track Name] by Moby courtesy of Mobygratis.com
Paid Options? No.
Moby is a Grammy-nominated, VMA-winning, artist whose work you have probably heard on the radio. Even if you aren’t familiar with Moby himself, he has co-written, produced, and remixed music for other major artists like David Bowie, Guns N’ Roses, and Daft Punk.
Moby has chosen to make a catalog of his work available to independent filmmakers for non-commercial projects. Not all of the music provided on the site is available for YouTube, only the music marked Unreleased (if it has been released, then it will be flagged by YouTube’s copyright system). There is a lot of music under the ‘Unreleased’ category, though.
In order to download songs, you will need to make an account, and it takes about 24 hours for your account to be approved.
10. Musopen
Commercial Use? Depends on the song.
Attribution Required? Depends on the song
Paid Options? No.
Musopen provides music that is either in the ‘public domain’, or protected by Creative Commons licenses. If it’s in the public domain that means that nobody owns the copyright and anyone can use it for anything (however, Musopen does warn that they do not review uploads from their users so it is possible that someone could upload something they claim is public domain and be lying or wrong).
Creative Commons licenses all have their own conditions. Some may block commercial use, some may require attribution. The ones you need to watch out for as a video creator are the ones marked ‘No Derivatives’, because you can’t use songs licensed this way in videos.
You can start using Musopen by typing a keyword into the search bar on the main page, or scrolling down to select ‘Browse royalty free music recordings’. Besides music recordings, Musopen provides sheet music. If you have some musical talent and want to record your own music for your videos then this might be useful. If not, you probably want to stick to the recordings.
If you click on the Music Discovery Tool you’ll be able to search the recordings not only by instrument, but by license (so you can make sure you’re only looking at music that is in the public domain, or make sure you’re not looking at anything with that ‘No Derivatives’ condition.
11. TeknoAXE
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes.
Paid Options? No.
All of the music on TeknoAXE is covered under a CC4.0 license, which means you can share and adapt the music for any purpose so long as you provide attribution.
TeknoAXE’s music is divided into four categories: electronic dance music, rock and metal music, orchestra and soundtrack, and miscellaneous. There are several sub-categories under every category.
Once you’ve clicked into subcategory you’ll see thumbnails for every song in the category. Click on one to be taken to the song’s page, where you can listen to it before you decide if you want to download.
There are tons of places where you can find great royalty-free music you can use on YouTube, so start hunting! Finding the perfect song for that cool montage you’ve got planned, your intro sequence, or the background of your vlog will take your content to a new level of quality.
12. PacDV
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Music by <www.pacdv.com/sounds/>
Paid Options? No.
PacDV is primarily a sound effects site, but they have a music section as well (just click Music in the menu to the left under Sound Effects. ‘Free Music’ under resources is a completely different site). There is no way to filter down the music, and there is no search function.
There is a column in the list of music for ‘moods/emotions’, so you can get an idea of which songs you might want to listen to before you click to their pages.
13. Partners In Rhyme
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Credit them in your video description.
Paid Options? Yes. You can’t buy a license for free songs to get around attribution, but they do offer paid music. At $100 or more per song, their paid music is outside the budget of most YouTubers.
Partners In Rhyme is mostly a paid site, and they’re at the pricier end of the spectrum for paid sites. The reason they’re included on this list is that they have kindly curated a selection of free music for use on YouTube or in projects like podcasts (the link above will take you to the free page, not the site in general).
There isn’t a search function for the free music, or a way to narrow down what’s displayed, but you can click the play button next to any title to hear what the song sounds like. To download, just right click and choose ‘save file’ or ‘save target as’.
14. Purple Planet Music
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? Yes. Put ‘Music: http://www.purple-planet.com’ in your video description.
Paid Options? Yes. If you want to use the music for anything besides YouTube, or if you don’t want to give them credit, then you can buy a license for $5.
Purple Planet Music is a team of three people, two of whom compose, perform, record, and produce all of the music you’ll find on this site (the third is the studio manager).
From the home page of Purple Planet choose one of the categories listed under ‘Royalty Free Music’. The categories are more related to moods than genres and include things like ‘cute’, ‘sneaky’, and ‘reflective’. Because they know you may want to use this music in film projects, you can even find categories like ‘dark backgrounds’.
Once you click into a category everything is listed, you can’t narrow your results. There’s not an overwhelming number of songs in each category, though, so it’s easy to choose something just by reading descriptions and listening to what’s there.
15. Sounds Crate
Commercial Use? Allowed.
Attribution Required? No.
Paid Options? Yes. You can upgrade to a Pro account for $49 per year to access more content.
Sounds Crate has music and sound effects. After you click into music, you’ll see thumbnails for sections related to a number of themes such as action music, corporate music, and hip hop. You’ll be able to preview and download all the songs in the category once you’re on the category page.
You are only allowed 5 downloads per day while you’re using Sounds Crate for free. They also request a $10 annual donation from free users, but it’s optional.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Pro Video Enthusiasts: Essential Laptop Models You Need
The Best Laptops for Video Editing
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
This article lists the 3 best laptops for video editing in 2018.
Whether you’re an industry professional or an avid YouTuber, you know how important it is to produce quality videos consistently.
The quality of the videos you create will depend on your creativity, the editing software you use, and the hardware that software is installed on. And as you probably know, it can be tough to work fast and get good results when your hardware or laptop isn’t strong enough to power your software properly and allow you to work at the pace you want.
The best laptops for video editing in 2018 have three things in common. First, they have top-of-the-line display technology for color accuracy, color depth, and clarity. Next, they have discrete (dedicated) Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) with accompanying RAM to enable them to handle video processing fast without compromising other system functions. And finally, they have Intel core i7 CPU processors and Solid-State Drives (SSD) for faster overall performance.
THE TOP 3 LAPTOPS FOR EDITING VIDEO IN 2018
The top 3 laptops below are quite impressive. They have the right mix of power and function that video editing requires.
1.MACBOOK PRO WITH TOUCH BAR
PRICE: $1500 - $1800
SYSTEM SPECS:
CPU: Intel Core i7 Processor
GRAPHICS: Radeon Pro 555 with 2GB memory – 560 with 4GB memory
RAM: 16GB
SCREEN: 15.4” Retina Display
RES: 2880 x 1800px
STORAGE: 128 – 256GB SSD
PROS
- OLED Touch Bar
- Thunderbolt 3 ports
- Large Trackpad
CONS:
- No other input ports available besides Thunderbolt 3
- Expensive
The MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is the best video editing laptop produced by Apple. It has a wide 15.4” screen with thin bezels, and its proprietary OLED Touch bar amps up its flexibility and functionality considerably. The Touch Bar is set-up to show different shortcuts for different apps. It works quite well with Photoshop and will show thumbnails, filter options, a color picker, and more while you’re editing videos or stills.
Working with large 4K video files is much easier with the MacBook Pro. It’s fitted with Thunderbolt 3 Ports which have the highest data and video bandwidth available for USB-C connections. With these Thunderbolt ports, you can also use high-speed and high-power peripherals without a hitch. This laptop also has an extra-wide touchpad or Trackpad (as Apple calls it) which expands your physical working surface while also making it easier to do detailed video editing.
Unfortunately, if you need a variety of ports like most videographers, working with the MacBook Pro could be a challenge as it only has Thunderbolt 3 ports. If this is the laptop you prefer, you’ll need to buy additional connection hardware to work with different input devices. And while this laptop impresses in many ways, it’s also quite expensive. There are certainly other laptops on the market which can give you similar performance at a lower cost.
2. DELL XPS 15
PRICE: $999 - $1300
SYSTEM SPECS:
CPU: Intel Core i7 Processor
GRAPHICS: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050
RAM: 8 - 16GB
SCREEN: 15.6”
RES: FHD - 4k UHD 3840 x 2160px
STORAGE: 256GB – 1TB SSD
PROS
- 4k InfinityEdge display
- Good battery life
- Has multiple input ports
CONS:
- Webcam is oddly positioned
The Dell XPS 15 is one laptop that hits the sweet spot for many videographers. It’s considered the closest competitor to the MacBook Pro reviewed above. In fact, many would argue that it tops the MacBook Pro when it comes to speed, color accuracy, and color depth. Its 15.6” screen has very thin bezels for minimal distraction and immersive work experience. At 4K resolution and displaying a wide range of the sRGB gamut, video editing with the Dell XPS 15 promises to be both smooth and enjoyable.
The Dell XPS 15 is certainly more affordable, while still delivering excellent graphics performance. It features an Intel i7 processor and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 graphics processor. This makes it remarkably fast for video editing, as well as energy-efficient. People who work with different input devices will also like that this laptop has legacy adapters (USB, HDMI, ethernet) alongside a USB type C port.
The biggest downside to the Dell XPS 15 laptop is its oddly positioned webcam. It feels awkward and can be an inconvenience to use since you’ll have to adjust your position significantly while making video calls or recording for your YouTube channel.
3. MICROSOFT SURFACE BOOK 2
PRICE: $1499 - $2499
SYSTEM SPECS:
CPU: Intel Core i7 Processor
GRAPHICS: Intel HD 620 or Nvidia GTX 1050 / GTX 1060
RAM: 16GB
SCREEN: 15.0”
RES: 3240 x 2160px
STORAGE: 256GB, 512GB – 1TB SSD
PROS
- Detachable screen
- Has multiple input ports (USB Type-A, USB Type-C, SD card reader)
- Works with a Stylus
CONS:
- Expensive
- Fulcrum hinge
The Microsoft Surface Book 2 is a laptop and a tablet thanks to its detachable screen. At a resolution of 3240 x 2160px, its screen is nearly 4k and can handle Full HD and HD footage with ease. Add to this its capacity to show a considerable portion of the sRGB gamut and its easy-to-use stylus and you can see why this 2-in-1 combo from Microsoft is one of the top 3 laptops for video editing in 2018.
Surface Book 2 also has the right combination of power and storage capacity that video editing requires. It boasts a state-of-the-art NVIDIA graphics processor and an Intel i7 processor for a smooth workflow no matter the size or level of detail involved in your video editing project.
On the downside, this laptop is undoubtedly very expensive. Compared to the function and power you can get from the DELL XPS 15, it’s hard to justify paying nearly $2500 for the Surface Book 2. Its detachable screen, supported by a fulcrum hinge, also comes at a price. It makes the laptop a bit bulky at one end when it’s folded. This in turn can make day-to-day handling a bit more tricky than it has to be.
CONCLUSION
If you’re searching for a good laptop to help you improve the quality of your videos in 2018, look no further than these 3. They have all the power, function, and storage capacity you need to handle any project with ease. Just be mindful of your budget and consider which extras are worth the expense. Go for the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar if customizing your workflow is a priority. Opt for the Dell XPS 15 if you want the best combination of display quality and graphics processing. Finally, consider the Surface Book 2 if you need the flexibility of a 2-in-1 device.
What do you think is the best laptop for video editing?
Equip Your Laptop with the Best Video Editing Software
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
This article lists the 3 best laptops for video editing in 2018.
Whether you’re an industry professional or an avid YouTuber, you know how important it is to produce quality videos consistently.
The quality of the videos you create will depend on your creativity, the editing software you use, and the hardware that software is installed on. And as you probably know, it can be tough to work fast and get good results when your hardware or laptop isn’t strong enough to power your software properly and allow you to work at the pace you want.
The best laptops for video editing in 2018 have three things in common. First, they have top-of-the-line display technology for color accuracy, color depth, and clarity. Next, they have discrete (dedicated) Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) with accompanying RAM to enable them to handle video processing fast without compromising other system functions. And finally, they have Intel core i7 CPU processors and Solid-State Drives (SSD) for faster overall performance.
THE TOP 3 LAPTOPS FOR EDITING VIDEO IN 2018
The top 3 laptops below are quite impressive. They have the right mix of power and function that video editing requires.
1.MACBOOK PRO WITH TOUCH BAR
PRICE: $1500 - $1800
SYSTEM SPECS:
CPU: Intel Core i7 Processor
GRAPHICS: Radeon Pro 555 with 2GB memory – 560 with 4GB memory
RAM: 16GB
SCREEN: 15.4” Retina Display
RES: 2880 x 1800px
STORAGE: 128 – 256GB SSD
PROS
- OLED Touch Bar
- Thunderbolt 3 ports
- Large Trackpad
CONS:
- No other input ports available besides Thunderbolt 3
- Expensive
The MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is the best video editing laptop produced by Apple. It has a wide 15.4” screen with thin bezels, and its proprietary OLED Touch bar amps up its flexibility and functionality considerably. The Touch Bar is set-up to show different shortcuts for different apps. It works quite well with Photoshop and will show thumbnails, filter options, a color picker, and more while you’re editing videos or stills.
Working with large 4K video files is much easier with the MacBook Pro. It’s fitted with Thunderbolt 3 Ports which have the highest data and video bandwidth available for USB-C connections. With these Thunderbolt ports, you can also use high-speed and high-power peripherals without a hitch. This laptop also has an extra-wide touchpad or Trackpad (as Apple calls it) which expands your physical working surface while also making it easier to do detailed video editing.
Unfortunately, if you need a variety of ports like most videographers, working with the MacBook Pro could be a challenge as it only has Thunderbolt 3 ports. If this is the laptop you prefer, you’ll need to buy additional connection hardware to work with different input devices. And while this laptop impresses in many ways, it’s also quite expensive. There are certainly other laptops on the market which can give you similar performance at a lower cost.
2. DELL XPS 15
PRICE: $999 - $1300
SYSTEM SPECS:
CPU: Intel Core i7 Processor
GRAPHICS: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050
RAM: 8 - 16GB
SCREEN: 15.6”
RES: FHD - 4k UHD 3840 x 2160px
STORAGE: 256GB – 1TB SSD
PROS
- 4k InfinityEdge display
- Good battery life
- Has multiple input ports
CONS:
- Webcam is oddly positioned
The Dell XPS 15 is one laptop that hits the sweet spot for many videographers. It’s considered the closest competitor to the MacBook Pro reviewed above. In fact, many would argue that it tops the MacBook Pro when it comes to speed, color accuracy, and color depth. Its 15.6” screen has very thin bezels for minimal distraction and immersive work experience. At 4K resolution and displaying a wide range of the sRGB gamut, video editing with the Dell XPS 15 promises to be both smooth and enjoyable.
The Dell XPS 15 is certainly more affordable, while still delivering excellent graphics performance. It features an Intel i7 processor and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 graphics processor. This makes it remarkably fast for video editing, as well as energy-efficient. People who work with different input devices will also like that this laptop has legacy adapters (USB, HDMI, ethernet) alongside a USB type C port.
The biggest downside to the Dell XPS 15 laptop is its oddly positioned webcam. It feels awkward and can be an inconvenience to use since you’ll have to adjust your position significantly while making video calls or recording for your YouTube channel.
3. MICROSOFT SURFACE BOOK 2
PRICE: $1499 - $2499
SYSTEM SPECS:
CPU: Intel Core i7 Processor
GRAPHICS: Intel HD 620 or Nvidia GTX 1050 / GTX 1060
RAM: 16GB
SCREEN: 15.0”
RES: 3240 x 2160px
STORAGE: 256GB, 512GB – 1TB SSD
PROS
- Detachable screen
- Has multiple input ports (USB Type-A, USB Type-C, SD card reader)
- Works with a Stylus
CONS:
- Expensive
- Fulcrum hinge
The Microsoft Surface Book 2 is a laptop and a tablet thanks to its detachable screen. At a resolution of 3240 x 2160px, its screen is nearly 4k and can handle Full HD and HD footage with ease. Add to this its capacity to show a considerable portion of the sRGB gamut and its easy-to-use stylus and you can see why this 2-in-1 combo from Microsoft is one of the top 3 laptops for video editing in 2018.
Surface Book 2 also has the right combination of power and storage capacity that video editing requires. It boasts a state-of-the-art NVIDIA graphics processor and an Intel i7 processor for a smooth workflow no matter the size or level of detail involved in your video editing project.
On the downside, this laptop is undoubtedly very expensive. Compared to the function and power you can get from the DELL XPS 15, it’s hard to justify paying nearly $2500 for the Surface Book 2. Its detachable screen, supported by a fulcrum hinge, also comes at a price. It makes the laptop a bit bulky at one end when it’s folded. This in turn can make day-to-day handling a bit more tricky than it has to be.
CONCLUSION
If you’re searching for a good laptop to help you improve the quality of your videos in 2018, look no further than these 3. They have all the power, function, and storage capacity you need to handle any project with ease. Just be mindful of your budget and consider which extras are worth the expense. Go for the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar if customizing your workflow is a priority. Opt for the Dell XPS 15 if you want the best combination of display quality and graphics processing. Finally, consider the Surface Book 2 if you need the flexibility of a 2-in-1 device.
What do you think is the best laptop for video editing?
Equip Your Laptop with the Best Video Editing Software
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
This article lists the 3 best laptops for video editing in 2018.
Whether you’re an industry professional or an avid YouTuber, you know how important it is to produce quality videos consistently.
The quality of the videos you create will depend on your creativity, the editing software you use, and the hardware that software is installed on. And as you probably know, it can be tough to work fast and get good results when your hardware or laptop isn’t strong enough to power your software properly and allow you to work at the pace you want.
The best laptops for video editing in 2018 have three things in common. First, they have top-of-the-line display technology for color accuracy, color depth, and clarity. Next, they have discrete (dedicated) Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) with accompanying RAM to enable them to handle video processing fast without compromising other system functions. And finally, they have Intel core i7 CPU processors and Solid-State Drives (SSD) for faster overall performance.
THE TOP 3 LAPTOPS FOR EDITING VIDEO IN 2018
The top 3 laptops below are quite impressive. They have the right mix of power and function that video editing requires.
1.MACBOOK PRO WITH TOUCH BAR
PRICE: $1500 - $1800
SYSTEM SPECS:
CPU: Intel Core i7 Processor
GRAPHICS: Radeon Pro 555 with 2GB memory – 560 with 4GB memory
RAM: 16GB
SCREEN: 15.4” Retina Display
RES: 2880 x 1800px
STORAGE: 128 – 256GB SSD
PROS
- OLED Touch Bar
- Thunderbolt 3 ports
- Large Trackpad
CONS:
- No other input ports available besides Thunderbolt 3
- Expensive
The MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is the best video editing laptop produced by Apple. It has a wide 15.4” screen with thin bezels, and its proprietary OLED Touch bar amps up its flexibility and functionality considerably. The Touch Bar is set-up to show different shortcuts for different apps. It works quite well with Photoshop and will show thumbnails, filter options, a color picker, and more while you’re editing videos or stills.
Working with large 4K video files is much easier with the MacBook Pro. It’s fitted with Thunderbolt 3 Ports which have the highest data and video bandwidth available for USB-C connections. With these Thunderbolt ports, you can also use high-speed and high-power peripherals without a hitch. This laptop also has an extra-wide touchpad or Trackpad (as Apple calls it) which expands your physical working surface while also making it easier to do detailed video editing.
Unfortunately, if you need a variety of ports like most videographers, working with the MacBook Pro could be a challenge as it only has Thunderbolt 3 ports. If this is the laptop you prefer, you’ll need to buy additional connection hardware to work with different input devices. And while this laptop impresses in many ways, it’s also quite expensive. There are certainly other laptops on the market which can give you similar performance at a lower cost.
2. DELL XPS 15
PRICE: $999 - $1300
SYSTEM SPECS:
CPU: Intel Core i7 Processor
GRAPHICS: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050
RAM: 8 - 16GB
SCREEN: 15.6”
RES: FHD - 4k UHD 3840 x 2160px
STORAGE: 256GB – 1TB SSD
PROS
- 4k InfinityEdge display
- Good battery life
- Has multiple input ports
CONS:
- Webcam is oddly positioned
The Dell XPS 15 is one laptop that hits the sweet spot for many videographers. It’s considered the closest competitor to the MacBook Pro reviewed above. In fact, many would argue that it tops the MacBook Pro when it comes to speed, color accuracy, and color depth. Its 15.6” screen has very thin bezels for minimal distraction and immersive work experience. At 4K resolution and displaying a wide range of the sRGB gamut, video editing with the Dell XPS 15 promises to be both smooth and enjoyable.
The Dell XPS 15 is certainly more affordable, while still delivering excellent graphics performance. It features an Intel i7 processor and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 graphics processor. This makes it remarkably fast for video editing, as well as energy-efficient. People who work with different input devices will also like that this laptop has legacy adapters (USB, HDMI, ethernet) alongside a USB type C port.
The biggest downside to the Dell XPS 15 laptop is its oddly positioned webcam. It feels awkward and can be an inconvenience to use since you’ll have to adjust your position significantly while making video calls or recording for your YouTube channel.
3. MICROSOFT SURFACE BOOK 2
PRICE: $1499 - $2499
SYSTEM SPECS:
CPU: Intel Core i7 Processor
GRAPHICS: Intel HD 620 or Nvidia GTX 1050 / GTX 1060
RAM: 16GB
SCREEN: 15.0”
RES: 3240 x 2160px
STORAGE: 256GB, 512GB – 1TB SSD
PROS
- Detachable screen
- Has multiple input ports (USB Type-A, USB Type-C, SD card reader)
- Works with a Stylus
CONS:
- Expensive
- Fulcrum hinge
The Microsoft Surface Book 2 is a laptop and a tablet thanks to its detachable screen. At a resolution of 3240 x 2160px, its screen is nearly 4k and can handle Full HD and HD footage with ease. Add to this its capacity to show a considerable portion of the sRGB gamut and its easy-to-use stylus and you can see why this 2-in-1 combo from Microsoft is one of the top 3 laptops for video editing in 2018.
Surface Book 2 also has the right combination of power and storage capacity that video editing requires. It boasts a state-of-the-art NVIDIA graphics processor and an Intel i7 processor for a smooth workflow no matter the size or level of detail involved in your video editing project.
On the downside, this laptop is undoubtedly very expensive. Compared to the function and power you can get from the DELL XPS 15, it’s hard to justify paying nearly $2500 for the Surface Book 2. Its detachable screen, supported by a fulcrum hinge, also comes at a price. It makes the laptop a bit bulky at one end when it’s folded. This in turn can make day-to-day handling a bit more tricky than it has to be.
CONCLUSION
If you’re searching for a good laptop to help you improve the quality of your videos in 2018, look no further than these 3. They have all the power, function, and storage capacity you need to handle any project with ease. Just be mindful of your budget and consider which extras are worth the expense. Go for the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar if customizing your workflow is a priority. Opt for the Dell XPS 15 if you want the best combination of display quality and graphics processing. Finally, consider the Surface Book 2 if you need the flexibility of a 2-in-1 device.
What do you think is the best laptop for video editing?
Equip Your Laptop with the Best Video Editing Software
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
This article lists the 3 best laptops for video editing in 2018.
Whether you’re an industry professional or an avid YouTuber, you know how important it is to produce quality videos consistently.
The quality of the videos you create will depend on your creativity, the editing software you use, and the hardware that software is installed on. And as you probably know, it can be tough to work fast and get good results when your hardware or laptop isn’t strong enough to power your software properly and allow you to work at the pace you want.
The best laptops for video editing in 2018 have three things in common. First, they have top-of-the-line display technology for color accuracy, color depth, and clarity. Next, they have discrete (dedicated) Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) with accompanying RAM to enable them to handle video processing fast without compromising other system functions. And finally, they have Intel core i7 CPU processors and Solid-State Drives (SSD) for faster overall performance.
THE TOP 3 LAPTOPS FOR EDITING VIDEO IN 2018
The top 3 laptops below are quite impressive. They have the right mix of power and function that video editing requires.
1.MACBOOK PRO WITH TOUCH BAR
PRICE: $1500 - $1800
SYSTEM SPECS:
CPU: Intel Core i7 Processor
GRAPHICS: Radeon Pro 555 with 2GB memory – 560 with 4GB memory
RAM: 16GB
SCREEN: 15.4” Retina Display
RES: 2880 x 1800px
STORAGE: 128 – 256GB SSD
PROS
- OLED Touch Bar
- Thunderbolt 3 ports
- Large Trackpad
CONS:
- No other input ports available besides Thunderbolt 3
- Expensive
The MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is the best video editing laptop produced by Apple. It has a wide 15.4” screen with thin bezels, and its proprietary OLED Touch bar amps up its flexibility and functionality considerably. The Touch Bar is set-up to show different shortcuts for different apps. It works quite well with Photoshop and will show thumbnails, filter options, a color picker, and more while you’re editing videos or stills.
Working with large 4K video files is much easier with the MacBook Pro. It’s fitted with Thunderbolt 3 Ports which have the highest data and video bandwidth available for USB-C connections. With these Thunderbolt ports, you can also use high-speed and high-power peripherals without a hitch. This laptop also has an extra-wide touchpad or Trackpad (as Apple calls it) which expands your physical working surface while also making it easier to do detailed video editing.
Unfortunately, if you need a variety of ports like most videographers, working with the MacBook Pro could be a challenge as it only has Thunderbolt 3 ports. If this is the laptop you prefer, you’ll need to buy additional connection hardware to work with different input devices. And while this laptop impresses in many ways, it’s also quite expensive. There are certainly other laptops on the market which can give you similar performance at a lower cost.
2. DELL XPS 15
PRICE: $999 - $1300
SYSTEM SPECS:
CPU: Intel Core i7 Processor
GRAPHICS: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050
RAM: 8 - 16GB
SCREEN: 15.6”
RES: FHD - 4k UHD 3840 x 2160px
STORAGE: 256GB – 1TB SSD
PROS
- 4k InfinityEdge display
- Good battery life
- Has multiple input ports
CONS:
- Webcam is oddly positioned
The Dell XPS 15 is one laptop that hits the sweet spot for many videographers. It’s considered the closest competitor to the MacBook Pro reviewed above. In fact, many would argue that it tops the MacBook Pro when it comes to speed, color accuracy, and color depth. Its 15.6” screen has very thin bezels for minimal distraction and immersive work experience. At 4K resolution and displaying a wide range of the sRGB gamut, video editing with the Dell XPS 15 promises to be both smooth and enjoyable.
The Dell XPS 15 is certainly more affordable, while still delivering excellent graphics performance. It features an Intel i7 processor and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 graphics processor. This makes it remarkably fast for video editing, as well as energy-efficient. People who work with different input devices will also like that this laptop has legacy adapters (USB, HDMI, ethernet) alongside a USB type C port.
The biggest downside to the Dell XPS 15 laptop is its oddly positioned webcam. It feels awkward and can be an inconvenience to use since you’ll have to adjust your position significantly while making video calls or recording for your YouTube channel.
3. MICROSOFT SURFACE BOOK 2
PRICE: $1499 - $2499
SYSTEM SPECS:
CPU: Intel Core i7 Processor
GRAPHICS: Intel HD 620 or Nvidia GTX 1050 / GTX 1060
RAM: 16GB
SCREEN: 15.0”
RES: 3240 x 2160px
STORAGE: 256GB, 512GB – 1TB SSD
PROS
- Detachable screen
- Has multiple input ports (USB Type-A, USB Type-C, SD card reader)
- Works with a Stylus
CONS:
- Expensive
- Fulcrum hinge
The Microsoft Surface Book 2 is a laptop and a tablet thanks to its detachable screen. At a resolution of 3240 x 2160px, its screen is nearly 4k and can handle Full HD and HD footage with ease. Add to this its capacity to show a considerable portion of the sRGB gamut and its easy-to-use stylus and you can see why this 2-in-1 combo from Microsoft is one of the top 3 laptops for video editing in 2018.
Surface Book 2 also has the right combination of power and storage capacity that video editing requires. It boasts a state-of-the-art NVIDIA graphics processor and an Intel i7 processor for a smooth workflow no matter the size or level of detail involved in your video editing project.
On the downside, this laptop is undoubtedly very expensive. Compared to the function and power you can get from the DELL XPS 15, it’s hard to justify paying nearly $2500 for the Surface Book 2. Its detachable screen, supported by a fulcrum hinge, also comes at a price. It makes the laptop a bit bulky at one end when it’s folded. This in turn can make day-to-day handling a bit more tricky than it has to be.
CONCLUSION
If you’re searching for a good laptop to help you improve the quality of your videos in 2018, look no further than these 3. They have all the power, function, and storage capacity you need to handle any project with ease. Just be mindful of your budget and consider which extras are worth the expense. Go for the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar if customizing your workflow is a priority. Opt for the Dell XPS 15 if you want the best combination of display quality and graphics processing. Finally, consider the Surface Book 2 if you need the flexibility of a 2-in-1 device.
What do you think is the best laptop for video editing?
Equip Your Laptop with the Best Video Editing Software
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
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- Title: "Curating the Perfect Soundtrack YouTube's Best Audio Sites Ranked"
- Author: Kevin
- Created at : 2024-05-25 14:55:29
- Updated at : 2024-05-26 14:55:29
- Link: https://youtube-videos.techidaily.com/curating-the-perfect-soundtrack-youtubes-best-audio-sites-ranked/
- License: This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
