15 Premium, Free Music Websites Every Videographer Needs

15 Best Sites to Find & Download Royalty-Free Music for YouTube

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

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

0

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

0

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

0

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

Liven Up Thumbnails: Enchanted Settings

YouTube is a platform where you can make money from videos. But in order to earn, your videos should get lots of views. The thing is that YouTube is a competitive space. So many others are trying to do the same. Thus, you’ll be competing for viewers’ time and attention. How can you win that battle? One way is to add eye-catching YouTube thumbnail backgrounds.

The video thumbnail will leave an impression on viewers looking for something to watch. So ensuring it is high-quality is crucial. In this article, you’ll learn where to find amazing thumbnail backgrounds and how to add them to your thumbnails.

Why Change YouTube Thumbnail Background?

When people are searching for something to watch on YouTube, they’ll look at two (2) things:

1. They’ll check the title to see how relevant it is to what they’re looking for.
2. Two, they’ll check the video thumbnail.

Thumbnail helps them determine off the bat if the video is high quality or not. A poor thumbnail will push them away, while a good one will encourage them to click.

That said, YouTubers should ensure their thumbnails are on point. Your thumbnails should be visually striking. One way to achieve that is by changing the thumbnail background. It allows you to remove unnecessary objects from the image. Additionally, it lets you improve the aesthetic of the thumbnail.

Now the question is: how do you change a YouTube thumbnail background?

Where To Find a New YouTube Thumbnail Background?

Thanks to the resource sites on the Internet, you can always find kickass backgrounds to create an attractive YouTube Thumbnail. Here, we recommend five (5) powerful apps/websites to help you easily find ideal thumbnail backgrounds.

1. Search for Numerous YouTube Thumbnail Backgrounds in Filmora

Pros

• Get access to YouTube Thumbnail Backgrounds within the video editing tool.
• Provides you with millions of stock images to choose from.
• The collection of stock media is constantly updated, giving you more and more options for your thumbnail background.

Cons

• The software itself is not totally free.

Wondershare Filmora is one of the leading video editors in the world. And it does not stop at enabling you to make amazing videos. Filmora also helps you make that video succeed. It provides you with over 4 million stock media! That includes gorgeous photos that you can use as YouTube thumbnail backgrounds.

The best thing is that you can access those images within the video editor. Meaning there’s a streamlined workflow that makes things more convenient.

Where Do the Photos Come From? Wondershare Filmora takes images from the websites Pexels, GIPHY, Pixabay, and Unsplash. Besides those, Filmora also has its own stock media library - Filmstock.

Filmstock was previously known as Filmora Store. It is the effect store for Filmora version 9.1.0 and above. From there, you can find stock media, including videos, images that you can use for your thumbnails, and royalty-free music and sound effects. You can download these resources to turn your videos into art.

2. Use Freepik To Find YouTube Thumbnail Background Images

Pros

• With over 22 million stock media resources, it offers a significant amount of photos, vectors, and graphic resources.
• The website is well-designed and void of pop-ups, making it very easy to search for specific photos.

Cons

• The free version has lots of limitations.
• The premium version is expensive.
• Download times can sometimes be slow.

Freepik is one of the largest image bank websites. It has over 22 million stock media that you can choose from to be your YouTube thumbnail backgrounds. And that collection grows further every day. Therefore, it’s highly likely to have the image you are looking for.

Not just that. Freepik has a special section containing only YouTube thumbnail backgrounds. That expedites your search. Then, you can use the filters to show only the thumbnail background designs that match your vision.

3. Find YouTube Thumbnail Background on Shutterstock for Free

Pros

• One of the largest libraries of stock photos.
• Gives a 30-day free trial that lets you make 10 downloads totally free of charge.
• Includes free images.

Cons

• The free trial lasts only 30 days. It becomes very expensive after that has expired.

Shutterstock is probably the biggest website that offers stock images. It’s so popular Shutterstock is what many people first think of when they need to find stock images.

Shutterstock has been around since 2003. As such, its collection consists of over 200 million stock photos. From that many resources, you’ll surely be able to find something to use for your YouTube thumbnail background. Even after the free trial expires, you can find some free photos from the website.

4. Download Thumbnail Background Images for YouTube in Vecteezy

Pros

• Millions of free resources.
• Cheaper than alternatives.

Cons

• The free version does not give you full commercial rights and requires you to add attribution.
• The free version allows you to download only 10 files a day.

Vecteezy allows you to download stock images for free. However, if you are serious about your YouTubing career, you must upgrade to Pro for full commercial rights. The good thing is that Vecteezy is very affordable. It costs only $7 per month! And that already gives you unlimited downloads.

Now the question is, does it have YouTube thumbnail backgrounds? Yes, it does! Whether you prefer vectors or images, Vecteezy has you covered.

5. Attractive Backgrounds for YouTube Thumbnail – NegativeSpace

Pros

• Photos downloaded from the website are free to use
• NegativeSpace encourages attribution, though, to thank the photographer that took the photo.

Cons

• The collection includes mostly photographs with just a few vectors here and there.
• The website can sometimes be slow to load.

NegativeSpace is the perfect place to get your YouTube thumbnail background if you are on a tight budget. It allows you not only to download the photos but also to use them commercially! And the photos are high-quality too, and they’re meant to be used as backgrounds.

Please note, however, that if you’re looking for vector illustrations, you’d better be on another site. NegativeSpace is built by a community of photographers. So, most of the resources you can download from this website are photos captured by a camera.

How To Change YouTube Thumbnail Background?

Suppose you have downloaded a high-quality image that will work great as a thumbnail background for your YouTube video. What shall you do next? Of course, the next step is to make the actual thumbnail.

Choosing the background image from Filmora is great because it saves you lots of time and resources. The program allows you to select from millions of high-quality options. After selecting, you can use Filmora’s native features to edit the thumbnail. You can even resize the thumbnail background to 1280x720 - YouTube’s suggested thumbnail size.

It is more convenient than you may initially think. Yes, it saves you time and effort because you don’t have to switch to another program to edit the thumbnail. But it also makes the workload easier for your computer. Opening another program will eat more RAM and will slow down the computer.

Filmora’s tools for editing the video thumbnail aren’t too shabby, either. Suppose you have a great image with the main subject where exactly you want it to be. However, you want to change the background to make the subject stand out more. You can use Wondershare Filmora’s AI Portrait feature to easily change it.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

What is Filmora’s AI Portrait Feature?

Wondershare Filmora’s AI Portrait feature allows you to quickly remove and change the background of an image.

Normally, you would need a green screen or chroma key to do that. Another method is to manually erase the background using an eraser. The AI Portrait feature has an effect called “human segmentation.” It separates the humans in an image from the background. Then, you can delete or change the background with the thumbnail background that you have downloaded. It’s really convenient!

Here is a guide on changing a YouTube thumbnail background using Wondershare Filmora.

1. Put the Thumbnail image in the timeline.

2. Select the thumbnail image. Click “Tools” > “Video” > “AI Portrait.”

3. The AI Portrait tool will remove the background automatically. Click “OK.”

4. Click “Stock Media” > “Photos.” Search for a background image that you like. Download the photo.

5. Drag the new background to the track below your thumbnail image.

6. Select your thumbnail image to adjust its size and position.

7. Click the camera icon to take a snapshot of the still frame you want to use as the YouTube video thumbnail.

8. Select the format and storage path.

9. Find the icon of the snapshot in the Media tab. Right-click and select “Reveal In Explorer” to open your local folder to find the new thumbnail.

The Bottom Line

Your YouTube video thumbnail is almost as important as the video content itself. So you must not neglect it. Ensuring it is high-quality is important. One big step in doing that is selecting a great thumbnail background image. You can find these in many places.

The video editor Wondershare Filmora even allows you to browse for some within the program! Furthermore, Filmora provides you with tools to edit the thumbnail. In turn, it streamlines the whole process. Give it a try to start creating video thumbnails that will make YouTube users click on your video easily.

Wondershare Filmora is one of the leading video editors in the world. And it does not stop at enabling you to make amazing videos. Filmora also helps you make that video succeed. It provides you with over 4 million stock media! That includes gorgeous photos that you can use as YouTube thumbnail backgrounds.

The best thing is that you can access those images within the video editor. Meaning there’s a streamlined workflow that makes things more convenient.

Where Do the Photos Come From? Wondershare Filmora takes images from the websites Pexels, GIPHY, Pixabay, and Unsplash. Besides those, Filmora also has its own stock media library - Filmstock.

Filmstock was previously known as Filmora Store. It is the effect store for Filmora version 9.1.0 and above. From there, you can find stock media, including videos, images that you can use for your thumbnails, and royalty-free music and sound effects. You can download these resources to turn your videos into art.

2. Use Freepik To Find YouTube Thumbnail Background Images

Pros

• With over 22 million stock media resources, it offers a significant amount of photos, vectors, and graphic resources.
• The website is well-designed and void of pop-ups, making it very easy to search for specific photos.

Cons

• The free version has lots of limitations.
• The premium version is expensive.
• Download times can sometimes be slow.

Freepik is one of the largest image bank websites. It has over 22 million stock media that you can choose from to be your YouTube thumbnail backgrounds. And that collection grows further every day. Therefore, it’s highly likely to have the image you are looking for.

Not just that. Freepik has a special section containing only YouTube thumbnail backgrounds. That expedites your search. Then, you can use the filters to show only the thumbnail background designs that match your vision.

3. Find YouTube Thumbnail Background on Shutterstock for Free

Pros

• One of the largest libraries of stock photos.
• Gives a 30-day free trial that lets you make 10 downloads totally free of charge.
• Includes free images.

Cons

• The free trial lasts only 30 days. It becomes very expensive after that has expired.

Shutterstock is probably the biggest website that offers stock images. It’s so popular Shutterstock is what many people first think of when they need to find stock images.

Shutterstock has been around since 2003. As such, its collection consists of over 200 million stock photos. From that many resources, you’ll surely be able to find something to use for your YouTube thumbnail background. Even after the free trial expires, you can find some free photos from the website.

4. Download Thumbnail Background Images for YouTube in Vecteezy

Pros

• Millions of free resources.
• Cheaper than alternatives.

Cons

• The free version does not give you full commercial rights and requires you to add attribution.
• The free version allows you to download only 10 files a day.

Vecteezy allows you to download stock images for free. However, if you are serious about your YouTubing career, you must upgrade to Pro for full commercial rights. The good thing is that Vecteezy is very affordable. It costs only $7 per month! And that already gives you unlimited downloads.

Now the question is, does it have YouTube thumbnail backgrounds? Yes, it does! Whether you prefer vectors or images, Vecteezy has you covered.

5. Attractive Backgrounds for YouTube Thumbnail – NegativeSpace

Pros

• Photos downloaded from the website are free to use
• NegativeSpace encourages attribution, though, to thank the photographer that took the photo.

Cons

• The collection includes mostly photographs with just a few vectors here and there.
• The website can sometimes be slow to load.

NegativeSpace is the perfect place to get your YouTube thumbnail background if you are on a tight budget. It allows you not only to download the photos but also to use them commercially! And the photos are high-quality too, and they’re meant to be used as backgrounds.

Please note, however, that if you’re looking for vector illustrations, you’d better be on another site. NegativeSpace is built by a community of photographers. So, most of the resources you can download from this website are photos captured by a camera.

How To Change YouTube Thumbnail Background?

Suppose you have downloaded a high-quality image that will work great as a thumbnail background for your YouTube video. What shall you do next? Of course, the next step is to make the actual thumbnail.

Choosing the background image from Filmora is great because it saves you lots of time and resources. The program allows you to select from millions of high-quality options. After selecting, you can use Filmora’s native features to edit the thumbnail. You can even resize the thumbnail background to 1280x720 - YouTube’s suggested thumbnail size.

It is more convenient than you may initially think. Yes, it saves you time and effort because you don’t have to switch to another program to edit the thumbnail. But it also makes the workload easier for your computer. Opening another program will eat more RAM and will slow down the computer.

Filmora’s tools for editing the video thumbnail aren’t too shabby, either. Suppose you have a great image with the main subject where exactly you want it to be. However, you want to change the background to make the subject stand out more. You can use Wondershare Filmora’s AI Portrait feature to easily change it.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

What is Filmora’s AI Portrait Feature?

Wondershare Filmora’s AI Portrait feature allows you to quickly remove and change the background of an image.

Normally, you would need a green screen or chroma key to do that. Another method is to manually erase the background using an eraser. The AI Portrait feature has an effect called “human segmentation.” It separates the humans in an image from the background. Then, you can delete or change the background with the thumbnail background that you have downloaded. It’s really convenient!

Here is a guide on changing a YouTube thumbnail background using Wondershare Filmora.

1. Put the Thumbnail image in the timeline.

2. Select the thumbnail image. Click “Tools” > “Video” > “AI Portrait.”

3. The AI Portrait tool will remove the background automatically. Click “OK.”

4. Click “Stock Media” > “Photos.” Search for a background image that you like. Download the photo.

5. Drag the new background to the track below your thumbnail image.

6. Select your thumbnail image to adjust its size and position.

7. Click the camera icon to take a snapshot of the still frame you want to use as the YouTube video thumbnail.

8. Select the format and storage path.

9. Find the icon of the snapshot in the Media tab. Right-click and select “Reveal In Explorer” to open your local folder to find the new thumbnail.

The Bottom Line

Your YouTube video thumbnail is almost as important as the video content itself. So you must not neglect it. Ensuring it is high-quality is important. One big step in doing that is selecting a great thumbnail background image. You can find these in many places.

The video editor Wondershare Filmora even allows you to browse for some within the program! Furthermore, Filmora provides you with tools to edit the thumbnail. In turn, it streamlines the whole process. Give it a try to start creating video thumbnails that will make YouTube users click on your video easily.

Wondershare Filmora is one of the leading video editors in the world. And it does not stop at enabling you to make amazing videos. Filmora also helps you make that video succeed. It provides you with over 4 million stock media! That includes gorgeous photos that you can use as YouTube thumbnail backgrounds.

The best thing is that you can access those images within the video editor. Meaning there’s a streamlined workflow that makes things more convenient.

Where Do the Photos Come From? Wondershare Filmora takes images from the websites Pexels, GIPHY, Pixabay, and Unsplash. Besides those, Filmora also has its own stock media library - Filmstock.

Filmstock was previously known as Filmora Store. It is the effect store for Filmora version 9.1.0 and above. From there, you can find stock media, including videos, images that you can use for your thumbnails, and royalty-free music and sound effects. You can download these resources to turn your videos into art.

2. Use Freepik To Find YouTube Thumbnail Background Images

Pros

• With over 22 million stock media resources, it offers a significant amount of photos, vectors, and graphic resources.
• The website is well-designed and void of pop-ups, making it very easy to search for specific photos.

Cons

• The free version has lots of limitations.
• The premium version is expensive.
• Download times can sometimes be slow.

Freepik is one of the largest image bank websites. It has over 22 million stock media that you can choose from to be your YouTube thumbnail backgrounds. And that collection grows further every day. Therefore, it’s highly likely to have the image you are looking for.

Not just that. Freepik has a special section containing only YouTube thumbnail backgrounds. That expedites your search. Then, you can use the filters to show only the thumbnail background designs that match your vision.

3. Find YouTube Thumbnail Background on Shutterstock for Free

Pros

• One of the largest libraries of stock photos.
• Gives a 30-day free trial that lets you make 10 downloads totally free of charge.
• Includes free images.

Cons

• The free trial lasts only 30 days. It becomes very expensive after that has expired.

Shutterstock is probably the biggest website that offers stock images. It’s so popular Shutterstock is what many people first think of when they need to find stock images.

Shutterstock has been around since 2003. As such, its collection consists of over 200 million stock photos. From that many resources, you’ll surely be able to find something to use for your YouTube thumbnail background. Even after the free trial expires, you can find some free photos from the website.

4. Download Thumbnail Background Images for YouTube in Vecteezy

Pros

• Millions of free resources.
• Cheaper than alternatives.

Cons

• The free version does not give you full commercial rights and requires you to add attribution.
• The free version allows you to download only 10 files a day.

Vecteezy allows you to download stock images for free. However, if you are serious about your YouTubing career, you must upgrade to Pro for full commercial rights. The good thing is that Vecteezy is very affordable. It costs only $7 per month! And that already gives you unlimited downloads.

Now the question is, does it have YouTube thumbnail backgrounds? Yes, it does! Whether you prefer vectors or images, Vecteezy has you covered.

5. Attractive Backgrounds for YouTube Thumbnail – NegativeSpace

Pros

• Photos downloaded from the website are free to use
• NegativeSpace encourages attribution, though, to thank the photographer that took the photo.

Cons

• The collection includes mostly photographs with just a few vectors here and there.
• The website can sometimes be slow to load.

NegativeSpace is the perfect place to get your YouTube thumbnail background if you are on a tight budget. It allows you not only to download the photos but also to use them commercially! And the photos are high-quality too, and they’re meant to be used as backgrounds.

Please note, however, that if you’re looking for vector illustrations, you’d better be on another site. NegativeSpace is built by a community of photographers. So, most of the resources you can download from this website are photos captured by a camera.

How To Change YouTube Thumbnail Background?

Suppose you have downloaded a high-quality image that will work great as a thumbnail background for your YouTube video. What shall you do next? Of course, the next step is to make the actual thumbnail.

Choosing the background image from Filmora is great because it saves you lots of time and resources. The program allows you to select from millions of high-quality options. After selecting, you can use Filmora’s native features to edit the thumbnail. You can even resize the thumbnail background to 1280x720 - YouTube’s suggested thumbnail size.

It is more convenient than you may initially think. Yes, it saves you time and effort because you don’t have to switch to another program to edit the thumbnail. But it also makes the workload easier for your computer. Opening another program will eat more RAM and will slow down the computer.

Filmora’s tools for editing the video thumbnail aren’t too shabby, either. Suppose you have a great image with the main subject where exactly you want it to be. However, you want to change the background to make the subject stand out more. You can use Wondershare Filmora’s AI Portrait feature to easily change it.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

What is Filmora’s AI Portrait Feature?

Wondershare Filmora’s AI Portrait feature allows you to quickly remove and change the background of an image.

Normally, you would need a green screen or chroma key to do that. Another method is to manually erase the background using an eraser. The AI Portrait feature has an effect called “human segmentation.” It separates the humans in an image from the background. Then, you can delete or change the background with the thumbnail background that you have downloaded. It’s really convenient!

Here is a guide on changing a YouTube thumbnail background using Wondershare Filmora.

1. Put the Thumbnail image in the timeline.

2. Select the thumbnail image. Click “Tools” > “Video” > “AI Portrait.”

3. The AI Portrait tool will remove the background automatically. Click “OK.”

4. Click “Stock Media” > “Photos.” Search for a background image that you like. Download the photo.

5. Drag the new background to the track below your thumbnail image.

6. Select your thumbnail image to adjust its size and position.

7. Click the camera icon to take a snapshot of the still frame you want to use as the YouTube video thumbnail.

8. Select the format and storage path.

9. Find the icon of the snapshot in the Media tab. Right-click and select “Reveal In Explorer” to open your local folder to find the new thumbnail.

The Bottom Line

Your YouTube video thumbnail is almost as important as the video content itself. So you must not neglect it. Ensuring it is high-quality is important. One big step in doing that is selecting a great thumbnail background image. You can find these in many places.

The video editor Wondershare Filmora even allows you to browse for some within the program! Furthermore, Filmora provides you with tools to edit the thumbnail. In turn, it streamlines the whole process. Give it a try to start creating video thumbnails that will make YouTube users click on your video easily.

Wondershare Filmora is one of the leading video editors in the world. And it does not stop at enabling you to make amazing videos. Filmora also helps you make that video succeed. It provides you with over 4 million stock media! That includes gorgeous photos that you can use as YouTube thumbnail backgrounds.

The best thing is that you can access those images within the video editor. Meaning there’s a streamlined workflow that makes things more convenient.

Where Do the Photos Come From? Wondershare Filmora takes images from the websites Pexels, GIPHY, Pixabay, and Unsplash. Besides those, Filmora also has its own stock media library - Filmstock.

Filmstock was previously known as Filmora Store. It is the effect store for Filmora version 9.1.0 and above. From there, you can find stock media, including videos, images that you can use for your thumbnails, and royalty-free music and sound effects. You can download these resources to turn your videos into art.

2. Use Freepik To Find YouTube Thumbnail Background Images

Pros

• With over 22 million stock media resources, it offers a significant amount of photos, vectors, and graphic resources.
• The website is well-designed and void of pop-ups, making it very easy to search for specific photos.

Cons

• The free version has lots of limitations.
• The premium version is expensive.
• Download times can sometimes be slow.

Freepik is one of the largest image bank websites. It has over 22 million stock media that you can choose from to be your YouTube thumbnail backgrounds. And that collection grows further every day. Therefore, it’s highly likely to have the image you are looking for.

Not just that. Freepik has a special section containing only YouTube thumbnail backgrounds. That expedites your search. Then, you can use the filters to show only the thumbnail background designs that match your vision.

3. Find YouTube Thumbnail Background on Shutterstock for Free

Pros

• One of the largest libraries of stock photos.
• Gives a 30-day free trial that lets you make 10 downloads totally free of charge.
• Includes free images.

Cons

• The free trial lasts only 30 days. It becomes very expensive after that has expired.

Shutterstock is probably the biggest website that offers stock images. It’s so popular Shutterstock is what many people first think of when they need to find stock images.

Shutterstock has been around since 2003. As such, its collection consists of over 200 million stock photos. From that many resources, you’ll surely be able to find something to use for your YouTube thumbnail background. Even after the free trial expires, you can find some free photos from the website.

4. Download Thumbnail Background Images for YouTube in Vecteezy

Pros

• Millions of free resources.
• Cheaper than alternatives.

Cons

• The free version does not give you full commercial rights and requires you to add attribution.
• The free version allows you to download only 10 files a day.

Vecteezy allows you to download stock images for free. However, if you are serious about your YouTubing career, you must upgrade to Pro for full commercial rights. The good thing is that Vecteezy is very affordable. It costs only $7 per month! And that already gives you unlimited downloads.

Now the question is, does it have YouTube thumbnail backgrounds? Yes, it does! Whether you prefer vectors or images, Vecteezy has you covered.

5. Attractive Backgrounds for YouTube Thumbnail – NegativeSpace

Pros

• Photos downloaded from the website are free to use
• NegativeSpace encourages attribution, though, to thank the photographer that took the photo.

Cons

• The collection includes mostly photographs with just a few vectors here and there.
• The website can sometimes be slow to load.

NegativeSpace is the perfect place to get your YouTube thumbnail background if you are on a tight budget. It allows you not only to download the photos but also to use them commercially! And the photos are high-quality too, and they’re meant to be used as backgrounds.

Please note, however, that if you’re looking for vector illustrations, you’d better be on another site. NegativeSpace is built by a community of photographers. So, most of the resources you can download from this website are photos captured by a camera.

How To Change YouTube Thumbnail Background?

Suppose you have downloaded a high-quality image that will work great as a thumbnail background for your YouTube video. What shall you do next? Of course, the next step is to make the actual thumbnail.

Choosing the background image from Filmora is great because it saves you lots of time and resources. The program allows you to select from millions of high-quality options. After selecting, you can use Filmora’s native features to edit the thumbnail. You can even resize the thumbnail background to 1280x720 - YouTube’s suggested thumbnail size.

It is more convenient than you may initially think. Yes, it saves you time and effort because you don’t have to switch to another program to edit the thumbnail. But it also makes the workload easier for your computer. Opening another program will eat more RAM and will slow down the computer.

Filmora’s tools for editing the video thumbnail aren’t too shabby, either. Suppose you have a great image with the main subject where exactly you want it to be. However, you want to change the background to make the subject stand out more. You can use Wondershare Filmora’s AI Portrait feature to easily change it.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

What is Filmora’s AI Portrait Feature?

Wondershare Filmora’s AI Portrait feature allows you to quickly remove and change the background of an image.

Normally, you would need a green screen or chroma key to do that. Another method is to manually erase the background using an eraser. The AI Portrait feature has an effect called “human segmentation.” It separates the humans in an image from the background. Then, you can delete or change the background with the thumbnail background that you have downloaded. It’s really convenient!

Here is a guide on changing a YouTube thumbnail background using Wondershare Filmora.

1. Put the Thumbnail image in the timeline.

2. Select the thumbnail image. Click “Tools” > “Video” > “AI Portrait.”

3. The AI Portrait tool will remove the background automatically. Click “OK.”

4. Click “Stock Media” > “Photos.” Search for a background image that you like. Download the photo.

5. Drag the new background to the track below your thumbnail image.

6. Select your thumbnail image to adjust its size and position.

7. Click the camera icon to take a snapshot of the still frame you want to use as the YouTube video thumbnail.

8. Select the format and storage path.

9. Find the icon of the snapshot in the Media tab. Right-click and select “Reveal In Explorer” to open your local folder to find the new thumbnail.

The Bottom Line

Your YouTube video thumbnail is almost as important as the video content itself. So you must not neglect it. Ensuring it is high-quality is important. One big step in doing that is selecting a great thumbnail background image. You can find these in many places.

The video editor Wondershare Filmora even allows you to browse for some within the program! Furthermore, Filmora provides you with tools to edit the thumbnail. In turn, it streamlines the whole process. Give it a try to start creating video thumbnails that will make YouTube users click on your video easily.

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