- Today we're talking all about music and basically
if you're making videos that are for anything other
than just sharing with yourself or your friends like
at your house, you need
to be thinking about royalty free music.
Royalty free music is not subject to copyright,
so it's music that you're allowed to use in your videos.
You could even use it in client videos depending
on the licensing.
And as a filmmaker or just a video production person,
royalty free music is one of your best friends.
Fortunately, there are a ton of free resources online.
Things like incompetech.com or bensound.com
or freemusicarchive.org,
and especially the YouTube royalty free music library.
YouTube basically aggregates everything into one spot,
and so all of this royalty free music
from all these different sites are put
in a very searchable database,
with very specific explanations of how the licenses work,
and how you can and can't use those songs.
But sometimes you can find yourself feeling
a little bit limited by the YouTube library,
and if you wanna just take your filmmaking
up just a little bit, and you have a little bit
of money that you can spend each month,
it can really go a long ways towards uping
your overall production quality.
Because what you can do is get a subscription
to a royalty free music service.
And there are a ton of these online
but today we're gonna talk about two
of the most popular ones,
and what I think are two of the best ones.
Artlist.io and epidemicsound.com.
This isn't a sponsored video in any way
but there is an affiliate link for two months free
of Artlist in the description, if you wanna try it out.
And on the surface both Artlist
and Epidemic Sound seem relatively similar,
they're both $15 a month, and they both give you access
to a huge library of royalty free music.
They are different libraries,
so the same songs aren't on both websites.
So, just to kind of jump ahead to a spoiler alert,
if you can afford it,
I would recommend getting a subscription to both services.
I really do think they each have a lot
of unique strengths to offer, and if you're able
to have a subscription to both,
which would be about $30 a month,
it really kind of opens up
so many different options for you.
So even though they're similar,
there are some key differences.
The biggest one, no pun intended,
is that Epidemic Sound has a bigger library of music.
There are just more songs there.
Artlist has a smaller library,
but both websites have new music
being added like every single week,
so there's constantly new updates.
And there's some really good artists,
like it's like legit artists
and some genuinely good songs
that I just kind of like as songs, not even for videos.
Both websites let you narrow down what you're looking
for by like mood, genre, instrument, specific search terms.
But I found over the past year and a half
that I've been using both of these services,
that I'm more often able
to think of what kind of song I want,
and find that on Artlist, than I am on Epidemic.
I spend a lot more time browsing on Epidemic,
which could just be because there is more music there.
But I feel like their search functions isn't
as good as Artlist.
One of the biggest benefits to Epidemic Sound
is that they let you download stems to each song.
So you can download the full mix,
just the song as a complete track,
or you can actually download
the individual instrument tracks,
which is great and has like saved me
on more than one occasion where there's
an amazing song but you just wanna get rid of some vocals,
or like there's a super cool song that has great drums
and bass, and then for some reason there's
this weird little whistle and clapping happening
in the background and you're like, what is this?
This song is great.
That's totally bizarre, and you can just get rid
of it by not downloading that track.
And it's cool, it gives you a lot of options to kind
of mix and remix songs, or if you just need like
the drums or just the bass.
It gives you a ton of flexibility to be able
to download the individual instrument tracks,
that's one of the biggest benefits
to Epidemic Sound I think.
With your paid subscription does also include
a sound effects library.
So not just music, but sound effects.
The problem I found is that the library is so big,
and the search function is so bad
that I can usually never actually find the sound
that I want, unless I'm real specific
and I know exactly what's in my head.
But most of the time, when I just have an idea of like,
I need something that goes (sound effect),
like I don't know what
to type in the search bar for (sound effect),
and so I just browse
and browse and never end up finding what I want.
So even though Epidemic does offer sound effects,
I haven't found it useful.
But the most important difference between
these two services, even though they're the same price,
they have totally different licenses.
And that's really gonna be the key,
so if you're looking to use one or the other or both,
it's really crucial that you understand
how the licensing differs between them.
So right off the bat, Artlist licensing is way better.
So if you need to get just one service,
go with Artlist because it's the best license anywhere
for any of these sites period.
With Artlist licensing you have access to the songs
in perpetuity, regardless of whether
or not your account is still active with them.
So basically, you could sign up with Artlist,
download just every song you can find,
and then cancel your account,
and you still can use that music however you want.
You can put it on YouTube channel,
you can use it in client work, you could put
it on like broadcast television and use
it in like a crazy blockbuster film.
You have total free reign
over however you wanna use those songs.
Epidemic Sound on the other hand has
a much more restrictive license.
Basically, Epidemic is registered
to your specific YouTube account.
So if you want music for your YouTube channel,
sign up, it registers to your account,
and you can use all the songs you want on your channel.
But if you have like a second channel
or use it in client work,
you will get copyright claims really, really fast.
They're really aggressive about copyright claims.
I've even got copyright claims from Epidemic
on my channel which is licensed to use Epidemic music.
Of course they cleared that up and fixed it
because it was a mistake,
but they really are aggressive and active
in making sure that anywhere their songs are used
has a proper license.
So if you wanna use Epidemic Sound with client work,
there's actually a whole separate license
and subscription that you would need to get,
or sometimes even the client themselves would need
to purchase to use it.
And to me, it kind of gets a little complicated,
it kind of gets a little expensive,
especially when you think of Artlist
where literally you can just use the songs however you want.
Another big difference with the licensing
is that Artlist gives you access
to those songs in perpetuity.
So anything that you've downloaded
with an active subscription, you can use forever.
You can download it now, put it in a video in 10 years,
and you're safe, you're good to go.
With Epidemic Sound you can only use songs
while you have an active subscription.
So while your subscription is active you can download
as much music as you want, and you can upload
it to as many videos on your specific channel,
or whatever account is registered to your Epidemic account.
But as soon as you cancel your subscription,
you can't use that music anymore.
So, if I have an active Epidemic account right now,
I can upload a video today,
and then if I cancel my account tomorrow
and make a video the next day,
I can't use that music anymore, and it will get claimed.
The videos that I made while I had an account will still
be safe, but any videos I make
while I don't have an account will be claimed.
So if you're trying to decide which service to go with,
it obviously does depend on how you intend to use the music.
Like I just have my YouTube channel,
so I make mostly stuff for myself.
I have a subscription to both services,
and I use both on this channel.
I do sometimes do freelance and client work on the side
for fun, or just to make a little extra money,
and for all that stuff I only use Artlist,
because that's what that license gives me,
I can't use Epidemic music for those videos.
And that goes back to my point
that I made at the beginning where I really do think,
if you can spend $30 a month,
if that's realistically in your budget
and it's not too much, then having
a subscription to both services is really, really helpful,
and you find yourself covered in a lot of situations.
If you can only get one or the other, the $15 on Artlist
is really, really well spent, and I kind
of can't recommend it enough.
And again, this totally isn't sponsored,
I just really love this service.
I remember when you used to have to spend like one
or two or $300 on a single song, and so being able
to have access to like a giant library for $15 a month,
with as many songs as you want is like mind blowing to me.
Now what I kind of recommend
if you really wanna take your filmmaking,
your video production or YouTube channel seriously,
is maybe set aside like $50 a month
for expenses related to your channel.
That might be extreme, don't do that if you can't afford it.
But, if you have a little bit of money
that you can put aside if you think
of it as like a hobby that you be spending money
on every month anyway,
that $50 can go towards your Artlist
and Epidemic subscriptions.
But there's another service, which again, not sponsored,
I just wish I had found this much earlier.
I heard about this from Film Riot, and it's called Soundly,
which is a royalty free sound effects library,
and this is the most magical software ever.
So for another $15 a month, you have access
to Soundly which is this massive sound effects library.
You can type in almost like anything you can think of,
and it's there.
Some of the stuff is really specific like,
apple magic mouse left click.
That's a real specific thing.
But all the sound effects are incredibly high quality,
you can edit them and adjust them a little bit,
you can slow them down, and speed them up.
Soundly is online based, so there's an app
that you can just download on any computer,
you log in and you have access to all
of your sound effects that you need.
But by far the best thing about Soundly
is that when you find a sound effect that you wanna use,
all you need to do is click and highlight the part
that you want, and then you can literally just drag
it directly into your video editing software,
and it's ready to go.
There's no downloading to a special folder,
no organizing anything, no separate pages to click through,
it's just ultra ultra quick to add in sound effects.
That is some of the best $15 I've ever spent,
and once you start spending a little more time focusing
on the audio mix of your videos,
your overall production value
is just gonna skyrocket
because that's the little touches
that separate professional video from amateur video,
and not a lot of people realize that audio
is half of your video,
and so spending time getting good audio quality
really makes for a better finished video.
So you've got Artlist, you've got Epidemic,
you've got Soundly.
You maybe have a few dollars extra every month
is to check out rev.com, which again, not sponsored,
and I'm sure someone from rev.com is seeing this right now,
so hello and thank you for all of the great captioning
of my voice and my videos.
Rev.com is a caption and subtitle service for your videos,
and you just either upload a video
or you can connect your channel directly,
and for $1 a minute, they will caption your videos.
And they do a really good job, things are spelled correctly.
I have an English degree so having correct grammar
and spelling is pretty important to me.
So however long your video is,
if it's a five minute video it'll be $5,
with a 10 minute video, $10.
Then you can include correct accurate captions
in your video.
They say that it takes up to 24 hours, but personally,
I've been using them for about a year
and it's always been within like three
or four hours the caption files are done.
Once it's finished, they'll send you the file,
you can always log in and download your caption file.
You can upload it directly,
or you can just have them upload
it directly to your channel.
So when you're finished with the video,
you just place an order for captions for that,
and you know within a few hours,
the captions are uploaded and ready to go.
And captioning your videos on YouTube
is really important for a couple of reasons.
First if you're trying to grow your channel,
having captions does make it more search engine optimized
because now a wider audience of people can select it,
and so that does help you kind of show up
in the search results and whatever, get recommended.
But most importantly, adding captions makes
your videos more accessible so now people
who maybe otherwise wouldn't be able to enjoy
whatever you're making, can enjoy it
and can understand it because you've added captions
and you've opened up that accessibility.
So if you're getting serious about making your videos
at a certain point you're gonna have to drop a little bit
of money, but if you do that really smart,
it doesn't have to be a ton of money
and it can really add a lot to the videos
that you're making.
In fact, if you wanna know more just simple things
that cost very little or no money,
I did put together a playlist
of filmmaking tips and techniques.
Some of them are about equipment,
and others are just tips and techniques
that I think will help you take your filmmaking skills
to the next level.