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If you ever have wondered what the best copyright-free music for YouTube videos is then you have come to the right place. You could even use this copyright-free music for streaming.

We have our own YouTube channel—five years and counting—and we have struggled to find good music because let’s face it, most copyright-free music is pretty trash. What do you expect when it’s free (not always the case)?

Don’t get me wrong, we are grateful to the people who create music for creators for free; they put time and energy into their music…for free. However, that doesn’t make it the best or even good for that matter. A lot of the music is quite unbearable.

While sifting through literally hundreds of songs in YouTube’s Audio Library via YouTube Studio (very tiring), we have found around 60 songs that fit our videos. That’s right, 60 songs out of five years.

This list is going to be based on music in YouTube’s Audio Library as well as very popular music distributions that are reputable. You probably have already heard of them. We will rank each one based on our experience instead of popularity, however, that will be included as a note for each rank.

Things to Note

The YouTube Audio Library just wasn’t cutting it for us so we looked elsewhere. From paid licensing, copyright-free music from websites, and YouTube.

YouTube is where we ended up, so we looked up copyright and royalty-free music and found channels, large and small, that provide just that.

One of the music channels put out a community post stating that one of their songs will create a copyright strike or claim on your videos. This was scary and concerning. That was the end of our music run, I thought.

Then we found NoCopyrightSounds (NCS). There were no issues using them. They’re very transparent, straightforward, and simple. NCS is very popular and massive at over 32 million subscribers.

NCS has great music but it was pretty repetitive and had too many vocals and not enough instrumentals.

When putting music in your YouTube videos, you need to find the right balance of decibels for your music and your voice. You do not want the music to be a distraction, rather, you want it to be more like a ride for your audience. The music I use when editing our videos is around -38 to -45 decibels (play around with it) and Doddery’s voice is about -18 to -12 decibels.

That being said, do not just use music on YouTube that claims to be copyright-free and royalty-free. There have been and still are cases where the music has been claimed later in the future. Using NCS is safe to use, just make sure to follow their guidelines and check out their FAQ.

Just be cautious, music isn’t worth a copyright claim/strike. This process can be stressful and it will take a long time. Having to worry about copyright strikes is not fun, so don’t do it.

Best No-Copyright Music for YouTube:

#1 NEFFEX

NEFFEX is a very popular music creator and for good reason too. He has over 5.7 million subscribers on YouTube and has had music go viral across all platforms, such as YouTube, TikTok, and Spotify.

Unfortunately, I found NEFFEX on YouTube’s Audio Library not that long ago and I was shocked. I was literally blown away by the high-quality music being copyright-free.

Since I stopped looking for copyright-free music due to scares of copyright strikes or claims, I have shut out that world and stuck with YouTube’s Audio Library.

If you have never heard of him you need to check him out and make NEFFEX a part of your YouTube videos. We listen to NEFFEX on the regular now and he easily made it on our #1 spot.

I emailed NEFFEX to find out if he planned on releasing instrumentals in the future and he replied, “Instrumentals will be available soon on the youtube audio library!”.

Less than a week later, NEFFEX now has instrumentals in the YouTube Audio Library! This is exciting. A boat load of instrumentals are up that you need to check out.

NEFFEX’s copyright-free music is something you would never think would be copyright-free.

One of NEFFEX’s most popular songs that we use:

#2 YouTube’s Audio Library

YouTube’s Audio Library has plentiful of music, most are pretty bad, but some are actually great. I will make a list of some of the tracks we use in our YouTube videos.

Some of the better songs are in the genres Hip-Hop & Rap, Cinematic, and Jazz & Blues. Those are my picks for the best genres in the Audio Library.

The following are music artist’s we use for our videos:

• NEFFEX (Both instrumentals and vocals)
• Kevin MacLeod
• Cxdy
• DJ Freedem
• DivKid
• Cheel (we use “Soft Feeling” quite a bit)
• Anno Domini Beats
• E’s Jammy Jams
• RAGE (“Stranger In the Way” is the best)
• Audio Hertz
• Ramzoid (“Wonton” is the Best)
• LATASHÁ – Whitefish Salad
• Dyalla – Songs: “Patience”, “Homer Said”, and “The Good Old Days”
• Rachel K Collier – The Lone Woodlouse
• Emmit Fenn – Tangled

Those are our top music artists in the Audio Library. Just type their name in the search via YouTube Studio>Audio Library.

#3 NoCopyrightSounds (NCS)

We were with NCS from pretty much the beginning. They have always been legit and reliable. NCS is probably the most popular music distribution out there.

However, we stopped using their music due to it being pretty much the same tone, from their trap music to their house music. Another reason we went away from NCS is because they have a lot of vocals and using vocals in videos is tough, as I stated above.

Don’t get it mistaken, NCS is still very popular and you can find great music, however, for us it is just not our style.

Check out our favorite song:

#4 Bensound

We have used only two songs from Bensound but they have plenty of free music that you could use in your videos without worrying about it being copyrighted. Just follow their guidelines and you’re good.

It is pretty popular amongst the YouTube community and worth checking out.

If you have any questions or reliable and legit additions for anyone reading this then leave it in the comments below!

I hope this has helped you in your journey to create content with great quality videos.

Tug-Talks

I love everything there is about gaming. That is just about what I always do because that is my true passion. When you don’t find me indulging myself in gaming content, you can find me coding or somewhere outside where all you can hear and see is nature.

www.tips4gamers.com