Where To Find the Best Royalty-Free Media of Every Type

If you’re running an online business or are a creative with an online presence, engaging media is an absolute must. Perhaps it’s a video on your website highlighting your product, or simply stock images that align with your brand. Or maybe you’re a visual artist who occasionally does time-lapse videos of your painting and posts them to social media. Whatever the case may be, royalty-free media is something that you should get familiar with.

Why is royalty-free media so important? Well, you’ve made an excellent investment getting the equipment to create your main type of media or hiring professionals to do it for you. However, that blog post you’re writing is going to need relevant photos and your YouTube video will feel pretty flat without any background music, as will your podcast. The Internet is no longer the Wild West where you could just slap any image or song into your work, throwing copyright to the wind. Paying royalties every time a song is used or getting extended licenses to use copyrighted work can be expensive.

What Are Royalties?

First of all, what are royalties? In the simplest of terms, royalties are payments made to the creator or copyright owner of applicable works. If you’re paying royalties on media included in your work, in many cases the more popular your work is, the more you’ll have to pay.

That’s why every creative and entrepreneur should have a source of good, royalty-free media. To make sure your multimedia is up to par (and to keep you out of copyright jail, which we hear is totally a thing), here are some of the best places to get royalty-free music, royalty-free images, free icon packs and more.

Royalty-Free Music

If you’re going to get in trouble for unlicensed use of media, this is most likely where it’ll happen. The main reason you need royalty-free music: YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and other social media sites have advanced algorithms that quickly recognize copyright infringement. At best, the music will be removed; at worst, you’ll have a legal team knocking on your (virtual) door. The easiest solution is free royalty-free music. Sure, you won’t have Beyonce backing up your latest vid, but you can find the right style and mood through any good, free music archive. Note that not all royalty-free music is free to purchase, but the licenses offered on these sites for premium music are usually pretty inexpensive.

Free Music Archive

Don’t pretend you’re not impressed by that segue. Freemusicarchive.org has been a repository of royalty-free music for over a decade. It very nearly bit the dust a couple of years ago due to lack of funding but has recently been relaunched, now offering both free music and premium tunes that can be purchased affordably. With over 100,000 songs on tap, this is a great resource to support.

Bensound

This is one of the most popular places to find royalty-free music for videos, royalty-free music for podcasts or whatever your needs might be. It becomes a lot more impressive when you find out that the majority of the music, and there’s a lot, is created by one guy (spoiler: his name is Ben). He composes in every major genre from hip-hop to acoustic folk. If you do have a budget, bensound.com also offers different licenses depending on your planned use. If you’ll be using the music in a corporate arena, you’ll want to look into this.

YouTube Music Library

Don’t like new things? Now you’ll be able to add music to your YouTube videos without ever leaving YouTube. Their free repository is actually pretty good, with a host of music tracks and sound effects that are searchable by mood, genre, instrument and other categories.

Artlist

Free is great and all, but sometimes you need some truly premium tracks in order to compete with the corporate big boys but without the corporate pricetag. Artlist.io is the go-to for many vloggers and even professional digital media creators on a budget. There are no free downloads here, but there is a ton of high-quality yet affordable music and sound effect content for your next important project. Sites like Premium Beat and Audio Jungle offer a similar service.

Royalty-Free Video and Images

Bad news: that Google search for relevant images or video isn’t going to cut it anymore. We’re all hoping our media gets out to the widest possible audience, and if we succeed, those uncleared visuals are going to come back to haunt us. Even if your usage is for your personal projects and you hope to claim fair use in a non-commercial setting, it’s often not cut and dry. In a business setting, it’s imperative you don’t run into copyright issues, as having your media taken down as a result looks quite unprofessional. The good news is that it’s easier than ever to get royalty-free video and royalty-free images, some even free of charge.

Pexels

If you get a slight “too good to be true” feeling from pexels.com, you’re not alone. There’s no trickery here though, just beautiful HD footage that’s 100 percent free to use. You don’t even have to credit the source for the license to be valid. (But you’d be a lot cooler if you credited them anyway.) As icing on the cake, Pexels also offers great still images.

Pixabay

One of the best-known sources of royalty-free still images, pixabay.com also has a pretty solid collection of royalty-free video clips as well. Unlike Pexels, there are a few 4k options to choose from as well. Everything is free for both personal and commercial use.

Videvo

Where the above sites shine most in terms of video quality, videvo.net may be the way to go when the quantity of clips to choose from is more important. Don’t get us wrong, there’s great high-quality stuff here as well, but within their massive library, you’ll also come across more amateurish footage. Still, with thousands of community-sourced videos, you’re likely to find one that suits your project perfectly here.

Free Royalty-Free Image Sites

Royalty-free image sites are the best-known type of royalty-free media, so rather than introduce you to names you likely already know, we’ll outline which may be the best bet for your particular uses. Use Unsplash when quality is of the utmost importance because you’ll only find beautiful shots by talented amateur and professional photographers here. Everything can be downloaded and used free of charge whether for personal or commercial use. Pixabay may have shots of varying quality, but with nearly 2 million images to choose from, your chances of finding a fit are pretty good. There is one site we’d like to highlight though…

Rawpixel

Rawpixel.com stands out from the pack because it is clearly geared toward graphic designers and other creatives needing a bit more from their royalty-free images. The media here is incredibly diverse, consisting of both free and paid options. There’s a wealth of illustrations, vector images, and other visuals that designers will find useful. There are also intuitive filtering options to help you find exactly what you need. The personal use and commercial use subscriptions that give you access to everything on the site are surprisingly affordable as well. 

Paid Royalty-Free Image Sites

If you’ve often needed to procure very specific, great quality photos, you’ll know that the paid sites have a distinct advantage here. Image repositories like Adobe Stock, Shutterstock and iStock have hundreds of millions of professional-looking images to choose from. Single photo purchases won’t break the bank, but if you regularly need royalty-free photos, a subscription will quickly pay for itself.

Icon Packs 

Icons are an often overlooked type of royalty-free media. Whether we’re talking cutesy illustrations, company logos or country flags, icons are often needed for design work, websites or other professional web presences and personal media projects. Scouring the net for a decent Spotify logo to add to your “Streaming Now” post or icons for your links section is a thing of the past thanks to icon pack websites. 

Flaticon

This usually ends up being our one-stop-shop for icons. Flaticon.com has nearly 80,000 quality icon packs. You’ll have to pay for some of them, but many of those most of us are likely to use are free of charge and only require that you credit the creator. 

Iconfinder

This freakishly large collection of icons and icon packs is another one that deserves a bookmark. The filter tool iconfinder.com uses is very intuitive and helps speed up your search. Like Flaticon, many of the icons are vector images and can be edited to suit your needs. 

Hover Gives Your Media the Perfect Home

The starting point for your media-rich web presence is, of course, the perfect domain name. For a memorable domain that fits you or your brand to a T, look no further than Hover. We have over 400 top-level domains (aka “extensions” like .com or .net), so your chances of finding an available domain you love are much higher. We offer flexible email options and numerous integrations with services designed to help you succeed. Unlike many other domain registrars, we offer free WHOIS protection to safeguard your privacy. Find your perfect domain today!