"Where do you get your music from?" is the question I get asked the most. In 2018, juggling twins, a full-time job and YouTube, I did the maths on music licensing and found a way to save thousands: Artlist.
Outgrowing free music
Back when I vlogged in Italian, I made a video on where to find copyright-free music without spending a cent. Those tracks sounded fine at the time. But as my channel grew, they stopped meeting my needs. I felt I was growing professionally and needed something better.
The numbers
A single licensed track costs on average around $99. Say you publish one video a week, with just one track each (I often use three). That's 99 × 4 × 12, almost $5,000 a year. And that's only YouTube, not counting the weddings and short films I edit. With numbers like that I'd have had to close my business.
Why Artlist
Artlist is a music licensing site that covers not only YouTube but also personal and commercial projects, TV, podcasts, every kind of production. Once you download a song with a subscription, it's licensed to you forever. And it costs less than $200 a year: about $16.50 a month, 55 cents a day. Less than a coffee, and I drink four or five a day!
The quality is above other platforms. The tracks are authentic and, from what I know, they're fair to independent musicians: the artists keep the rights to their songs. You'll find everything from indie pop to New Age. The one thing missing at the time was a sound-effects category.
My workflow
Every track has tags describing its feeling and mood, so stacking tags usually gets me where I need. I've got into the habit of listening to tracks in the car over Bluetooth, hitting favourite, and organising them back in the office. In the video I search for a peaceful, soul/R&B lifestyle track for a b-roll sequence, pick the second one, and edit my cuts and transitions to the beat.
Long story short: unlimited downloads, no hidden fees, easy to use. You can create a free account and play around with it before subscribing.