Overview
SoundCloud is a great place to go if you’re in search of unique royalty free music for your drone videos. Countless artists are posting new music tracks there daily. This guide will help you find unique music, ensure it’s really free to use, and show you how to give proper credit to artists that require it.
Finding Free Music Tracks on SoundCloud
Locating royalty free music on SoundCloud can be tricky since SoundsCloud’s website doesn’t have great filtering tools for locating music tracks that are really free to use. These steps usually provide good search results:
1) Start your search at this link:
2) In the search box at the top of the page, search for generic terms that are commonly used in royalty free tracks – like “free”, “youtube”, “vlog”, or “*” (to see all results).
3) Use the filter on the left side of the page if you’d only like to find tracks that were released in the past day/week/month. Choosing a more recent time frame like “Past week” will help you discover new music tracks that aren’t already being used in hundreds of videos on the Internet.
4) After locating a music track you’d like to use, check the track description to ensure the track is really free to use. If it’s free, it will be listed under a license named “Creative Commons”.
You might need to click the “Show more” link to get to display the full track details.
While many tracks licensed under a Creative Commons license can be used in commercial work, those that are not allowed to be used in commercial work will show this dollar sign symbol:
Note: If the music track contains clips from a well known artist or the track is some kind of cover or mashup from a well known artist, you should not assume it’s really free to use even if the track is listed as being licensed under a Creative Commons license on SoundCloud.
Giving Proper Credit to the Artists
Some artists will require you to give them credit whenever using one of their music tracks. See the track description for details on how to properly credit their work.
