Free Music for Podcasts

3 min readJun 9, 2021

DMCA takedowns have recently saw an uptick in the podcasting world, with episodes that are years-old being taken down for using music that the producers did not have the proper authorization to use. Navigating this issue can be difficult for the average podcaster who may not be familiar with music rights, which also leaves you wondering where you are supposed to get music for your show.

I’ll give a brief recap on licensing and then provide a list of libraries with music and sound effects that you can consider when looking for a new intro/outro or whatever your needs may be!

Creative Commons

Creative Commons provides free licensing to creators. Individual creators are the one’s who establish how their work can be used though so always do your research here.

Royalty-Free

Royalty-free music is that which can be used without paying a fee. You’ll find that some of the music sources below have some of their music locked behind a royalty wall, it’ll be up to you to decide what’s best for your show and budget. The rules might be different between commercial and non-commercial use, always check the guidelines of the source of the audio.

Attribution-Free

Some of these websites will also have an attribution requirement either for the service or the original creator. This means that you will have to either say “music by...” or put it in the show notes of each episode where the music is used. If it’s attribution-free that means you are not required to do either of the previous actions. The rules might be different between commercial and non-commercial use, always check the guidelines of the source of the audio.

Public Domain

Public Domain music is that which the copyright has been lifted because of its age.

If you would like to learn more about music licensing, I suggest checking out this Wikipedia page.