Let’s talk music!
I think it’s safe to say that almost all video content creators are looking for a combination of great music, affordable pricing, and easy licensing options. Music sets the mood for each video so it’s crucial to find the right song and also enjoy the process of doing it. A couple of months ago we switched from Epidemic Sound to Artlist.io.
There are a few reasons why we moved over, the biggest one is licensing structure. We don’t always create content just to be used on YouTube and the baseline license we had with Epidemic Sound was limited to YouTube only. If we published content anywhere else – we would get copyright infringement, unless we upgraded our licence to commercial at 3 times the cost.
With Artlist you pay for the annual subscription and you can download songs and use them on any platform, so you can publish the same video on YouTube, Facebook or even add it to your own short film. All you do is find the right song, add it to the cart and process it. Then you can download it straight from the page, or from the email that they send (the email also includes your license).
Once you have downloaded the song, you don’t have to use it straight away. Even if your subscription runs out – you are ok to use it on a project sometime in the future without risking having copyright claims as you already own the license. You can download up to 40 songs a day and have your own library that you could use in the future once your subscription ends. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend it. I like to keep getting new songs, and to be fair you will never be able to compete with Artlist filtering tools.
The second big thing for us was the newly established special effects library. We use SFX quite a bit on our projects but we are not sound engineers. We really like how easy it is to find the relevant sounds.
Unlike some other sites, Artlist has waveforms shown on all the songs. This immensely helps with filtering down the right sound. If we know what we’re looking for – for example, if we need a sound that goes a bit more quiet in the middle, or has the same pattern throughout the whole clip, we can see it all at once and listen to only what we were looking for.
The usability and look of the product is one of the best we’ve seen so far. The menu system is very intuitive and you can adjust the search parameters without ever needing to scroll back up, they are always right there.
It not only offers the standard search filters like Mood, Genre, Tempo etc., but it also has Video Theme and Instrument – very useful! We can use as many of these filters as necessary to shorten down the list and find the right song. And, honestly, Video Theme is probably the most useful filter out of all of them. It sets us on the right path straight away. And then using the rest of the filters, we narrow down the search.
If we kinda like a song, but it is not quite the one we’re looking for, click on it and it opens a page where all the keywords are listed, so we can check what kind of style it is and try filtering down the rest of the songs. Similarly, we can search by artists as well, even though in our case we never use it, since every project usually has a particular feel that we are after.
Other neat tools are :
My Music section – a page that lists our Download History, Collections, Favorite Artists, Albums and Songs in different tabs.
You can select instrumental track results only and leave out all the songs with lyrics. Very useful for reviews. On the other hand – if we need songs with vocals, Artlist provides lyrics so we can match it better to our video theme.
It also shows already downloaded, saved or favorited songs by marking the little icons in yellow. It makes our life so much easier. When you spend some searching, it is very helpful to see which songs we have already downloaded or which we kinda liked but they weren’t the right for that particular project, since all of them start to sound the same by then.
So if you think Artlist would be suitable for your type of work, check them out! You can browse their songs without registering and using their free trial you can even download the songs (do note – those will be watermarked).
You can follow this link and if you choose to subscribe, you will get an 2 extra months for free.
If you have any questions do let us know in the comments down below.
I hope it was useful! See you guys in the next one!
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