There are tons of places to get royalty-free music for podcasts.
Whether you need intro tracks, outro music, sound effects, jingles, transitions, or background music these sites have you covered.
Some sites will offer free podcast music, usually for a link credit back to them. You can simply put this in your episode notes or website. Many of these also offer the option to pay for a license instead.
Other sites (like some of my favorites) will charge a one-time fee which lets you use the music royalty-free as much as you want. They typically have much larger selections and better search functionality.
It’s up to you which way to go, but you’re more likely to stand out and not use the same music as everyone else if you pay a little bit upfront. We’ll start with my favorites:
Best Royalty-Free Podcast Music
These royalty-free tracks will cost you a small licensing fee.
PremiumBeat
PremiumBeat has a great interface where you can search by genre, mood, instrument, or keywords. You can also browse curated tracks, trending, new releases, and more.
The Collections section is a hand-curated group of tracks based on different topics or moods. Whether you want to browse Energetic Intros or Nostalgic Moods, there are a bunch of collections that make it easy to find something that fits your needs.
PremiumBeat’s player has a ton of options to quickly listen to different parts of track, save to a favorites list, download, and a handful of other features:
They are regularly adding new tracks so it’s worth coming back every month or so to find something new.
Shutterstock
Shutterstock is actually quite similar to PremiumBeat (they are owned by the same company) but if you have the need to get tracks often, you’ll definitely want to take advantage of the Unlimited Music Subscription for $16.60/month.
You can use the exclusive songs for podcasts and YouTube so no need to worry about copyright takedowns.
They also have their own collections to browse things like Cheerful Mood and Epic Film Scores.
Pond5
Pond5 is a popular stock site for everything from video footage to music tracks, sound effects, images, and more.
They have a great player, search, and interface to find what you’re looking for.
Best Free Podcast Music
These sites offer free (and royalty-free) music. The “cost” is often just a link back to their website.
Pixabay Music
Pixabay offers free music and you aren’t required to provide attribution or link back to them, although they do ask if you’re willing to.
Their search and filtering is quite good and includes things like Genre, Mood, and Movement.
The one big downside here is that they don’t have a built-in player. You’ll have to download the tracks to play them, which can be somewhat annoying.
They also have free photos, illustrations, vectors, and videos.
SoundBible
SoundBible is a great place to find free sound effects in addition to music.
You can download either WAV or MP3 file completely free.
Purple Planet
Purple Planet has some cool and unique tracks you won’t find anywhere else.
Browse the top or newest tracks and check out the descriptions, they do a great job of letting you know what to expect.
Their music is free for personal use (192kbps MP3) or you can get a WAV file for commercial use for $8 or $40 for broadcast use.
Free Music Archive
Free Music Archive is the “#1 resource for free music and royalty free music”.
There is tons of stuff to search through, and you can play in the browser, but there is no player so you can’t skip around the tracks.
Silverman Sound Studios
Definitely not the best looking site but Silverman Sound Studios has a good amount of high-quality music.
Simply click the various tags to filter by what you’re looking for.
MP3s are free to use with a credit, but the higher-quality WAV files are $5.