Speaker 1: Soundtracking your videos with good music is a hugely important step for most creators and video production companies. But there are a bunch of options out there. Well, I tried them all, and this is my list of the top four music sites here in 2024. Let's find out where each of their strong suits are and which one is best for you. Starting with music, let's take a look at the stats across our options here. Epidemic Sound leads with 40,000 tracks, followed by Artlist with roughly 30,000. Then we jump way down to Soundstripe with around 9,000 songs. And finally, Audio has roughly 6,000. Epidemic and Artlist both feel pretty endless when it comes to the music selection. But once you dip below that 10,000 song mark, you do start to notice sort of a lack of selection where you maybe only have five or six good artists for each genre. Both Soundstripe and Audio suffer from this, but Audio is obviously more egregious. It doesn't make them unusable by any means, but it does dock their score here. Epidemic Sound gets a 10, Artlist gets a 9, Soundstripe a 6, and Audio a 4. I am being particularly harsh on Audio here because they don't seem to be adding as many new tracks as quickly as Soundstripe. Now, music isn't the only thing to consider when it comes to getting a royalty-free sound service. Sound effects play a massive role in video editing. Epidemic has 90,000, Artlist has 80,000, Soundstripe has 76,000, and Audio has 30,000. Artlist definitely has my favorite UI for sound effects, with a simple filter browse on the left, a search bar, and a well-curated collections page. Soundstripe is fairly similar, but with less filter categories and more basic collections. Neither Epidemic Sound nor Audio have a direct filter browse feature for sound effects, but they both have simple collections and search functionality. Taking all of these things, both quantity and the sort of search functions, into account, I'm going to give Epidemic Sound an 8 out of 10, Artlist gets a 10 out of 10, Soundstripe an 8, and Audio a 5. The biggest issue with Audio is lack of quantity. I mean, they only have five options when you search for the sound of ocean waves, and that's kind of unacceptable. And I think the biggest strength of our winner here, Artlist, is that they have that awesome, smooth user interface. Speaking of user interface, let's compare these sites. There's a lot to cover here, so in this video, I'm just going to do a quick kind of pros and cons, or the best and the worst of each of the sites. But if you want a deeper dive into them and to really see what each site is about, I have done full reviews on each one of these websites. I'll link those down in the description below. Epidemic Sound, okay, good things. Epidemic Sound has a similar songs tool that absolutely beats out every other site I've ever used. It allows you to search for songs that match any portion of another track on the site. So if you like the first portion of a song, then you can select that and find other songs that sound like that first portion, or middle portion, or whatever you decide you like. They also have stems for each one of their songs, which enables you to isolate the different elements of a song, like the melody or the drums, and then customize each one individually for a ton of flexibility in the edit. I use this all the time to introduce songs a lot more smoothly, maybe start with the instruments, then bring in the melody, then bring in the bass. Like, I can't live without it. Epidemic has a themes page that serves as a great browse feature if you're looking for inspiration. But they recently did an overhaul on the brand, and they replaced all of the images on their site with this new kind of clip art style and more pastel colors. And while I appreciate the art side of it, it's just kind of, it's pretty distracting to me. There's a lot going on. And honestly, I just I preferred the old images. Epidemic does have a mobile app though, which is great for you mobile creators out there. It makes it easier to browse music if you're even a computer editor and just trying to find good music on the go. So plus one for the mobile app. Now Artlist. Artlist's design is much more up my alley. They have more cinematic style imagery, and an almost appley feel to the buttons, fonts and site layout. A lot of this is likely due to the fact that Artlist also offers stock footage templates and plugins for an additional fee under Artlist Max. But if you're only interested in music and sound effects, you will be disappointed to hear that Artlist doesn't offer stems for any of their songs and their find similar feature is quite basic. They also do not have a mobile app. So if you're a mobile creator, you have to go through their mobile website. It's still pretty well optimized, but most people like to have a separate app. Soundstripe. Soundstripe has stems for their music, which is a huge win. They also have an AI search tool where you can describe the type of music you need and it will find good music in their library that matches what you're looking for. Like Epidemic Sound, they have a mobile app. And while I really like the design of their website, it honestly suffers from lack of music quantity. They also have a stock video section, which costs extra, but the quality is absolutely terrible. I'd never use any of this stock footage. Finally, audio. Audio is very, very basic and their pre curated playlists. They're not that great. There's no mobile app and their download system is a little convoluted. They do have stems, but the stems have to be downloaded one at a time, which is a pain in the neck. I can't see myself ever doing this. Audio's greatest strength is their implementation of AI. They have a unique tool called Link Match where you can paste a song link from any external website like SoundCloud or Spotify and the AI will find the closest match to that track from songs within Audio's library. This means you can copy and paste your favorite mainstream song into it and find a royalty free version sort of that sounds similar to that mainstream song from Audio's library. It's pretty dope. They also have a music licensing system that caters to a sort of different demographic than all of the other options. We'll talk about that more in a minute. All of these sites work on a subscription basis and they have two different options for you. Well, two main options for you. When you go to sign up, you can choose a personal or social subscription, which is good for creators who have one social media account per website, or just have one YouTube channel that they want to monetize. Or the second option is a pro or commercial subscription, which is for freelancers or creators that have more than one YouTube channel or more than one social media account that they want to use the music on. Commercial subscriptions are also what you need if you have a video production company or doing client work. It would take way too long to speak out all of these numbers, so I just made a graphic to compare all of the different pricing options for these two main plans for each of the sites. Artlist has an extra column for their plan that includes stock footage and templates, Artlist Max, and Audio has one for their lifetime subscription, which gives you access to their library forever after paying a one time fee. One super important note here is that Epidemic Sound is the only service that supplies creators with a free seven day trial of their website so that you can use the service, use the library for a whole week before deciding whether you're going to invest in a subscription or not. I don't know about you, but for me, free trials are a big deal. It's a big deal. In my opinion, Epidemic Sound is the best option for you if you're an editor who wants a lot of high quality music and sound effects while having the flexibility of stems. Soundstripe has stems and maybe a better UI than Epidemic Sound at this point. However, they just have far too few songs to justify the price tag. Artlist is an awesome option if you value the smooth website design over having music stems. You want to save a little bit of money on the commercial plan or you need to have your stock footage, music, sound effects, templates all in the same place under Artlist max. And finally, audio is your go to site if you just need something simple and you are sick and tired of paying monthly subscriptions. I wouldn't recommend buying anything but that lifetime license from them, though, because the math just it simply doesn't add up. Now, if you want to dive deeper into Epidemic Sound, which is my number one pick here in twenty twenty four, you should check out this video where I go into it in depth.