There are a lot of stock footage and stock music sites out there. I’ve had a chance to test and review a lot of them, and in this blog post I’m going to sum up my thoughts on all of the ones I’ve tested so far.
Just a quick note before we dive in. I am an affiliate partner with all of these websites / companies. Therefore I may receive a commission through the links in this post. This is at no additional cost to you. In fact, a lot of these offer extended free trials or discounts on their subscription plans. So be sure to check them out!
Artlist
- Price: $9.99 – $39.99 Per Month
- Discount Offer: Get 2 Additional Months Free
- Strengths: High Quality Music Tracks, Easy Music Licensing, Very Good Filter Sections
- Weaknesses: Small Music & Footage Libraries, No Music Stems, Average Video Templates
Overall Artlist is a great subscription option for stock music. Their songs are very authentic and original. They have a universal music license, making it stress free to use their songs on YouTube or any social media platform. It’s very easy to find the right song you’re looking for using their AI powered search bar and filter sections. Compared to their competitors, their library is smaller. They don’t offer stems for their music tracks which may be a downside if you want to mix music in your edit. I also find their video templates average, and a little difficult to use inside Premiere Pro.
If you’d like to see my full review of Artlist, check out my video below!
It is also worth pointing out that Artlist has several plans to choose from. You can select to get music and sound effects only, or footage only, or everything. This is great, because in my personal opinion, I would get their music and sound effects subscription. I think there are better options out there for video and graphics.
Envato Elements
- Price: $16.50 Per Month
- Discount Offer: None Currently
- Strengths: High Quality Graphics, One-Stop-Shop For Everything, Cheapest Plan
- Weaknesses: Bland Music Library, Confusing Licensing, No Free Trial
Envato Elements is a one-stop-shop marketplace for any creative asset you may need. A lot of the other websites in this blog post don’t have everything that Envato has. I think Envato’s biggest strength is its graphics library. They have a lot of high quality motion graphics, graphic icons, and templates. When I need some type of graphic for a project, I often find myself going to Envato Elements first. On the flip side, I think their music library is underwhelming. To me, their songs sound very corporate, produced, and unoriginal.
If you’d like to see my full review of Envato Elements, check out my video below!
It’s important to note that they don’t have a free trial. So if you plan to use Envato Elements, you kind of have to dive right in. That being said they do however run flash sales periodically where you can save up to 30% on a subscription. If you’d like to be notified when those flash sales happen, be sure to subscribe to my email list below!
Motion Array
- Price: $19.99 – $37.50 Per Month
- Discount Offer: Save $50 Off On An Annual Subscription
- Strengths: Lots Of Presets & Templates, High Quality Stock Footage, Freelancer Tools
- Weaknesses: Confusing Website UI, Poor Filter Settings, Average Music Library
If you need a lot of presets and templates to spice up your video project, Motion Array is where you’ll want to go. They offer a lot of presets, LUTs, graphics, transitions, video effects, and so many assets that can enhance your video project. Motion Array would be a great option if you work on creative video projects such as music videos. Their music library is about average. Nothing in there wows me, but one thing to note is that their filter settings aren’t that good. You can’t narrow down songs based on more than one filter. Their website UI is also confusing. You’ll notice that there is a lot of overlap in certain categories.
If you’d like to see my full review of Motion Array, check out my video below!
It is also worth noting that Motion Array provides freelancer tools. These tools include a portfolio builder and a video collaboration tool. They also have a plugin for Premiere Pro. This makes it easy to browse and download assets to use in your project. This way you don’t have to leave your editing software in order to get creative assets for your project.
Track Club
- Price: $12 – $58 Per Month
- Discount Offer: Get 2 Additional Months Free
- Strengths: High Quality Music Tracks, Customizable Music Tracks, Download Stems
- Weaknesses: Clunky Music Licensing, Slow Website, Stock Music Only (No Video)
One of the new players in the stock music arena is Track Club. I wanted to include Track Club in this list because they have a unique offer countering Artlist. If you want a music subscription where you can download stems, Track Club is a great option. But what makes Track Club even better is that you can customize their music tracks using their tool called MixLab. MixLab allows you to mix stems together in realtime to customize the music track for your edit. You can control the volume of each stem as well as the BPM for the entire track.
Track Club uses tracking IDs to clear songs on YouTube and social media platforms. So it is not as easy as other stock music websites. I’ve also noticed that their website is quite slow and laggy compared to other stock music websites. If you’d like to see my full review of Track Club, check out my video below!
Overall I think Track Club is great for solo content creators. But personally, I’d go with Artlist for commercial projects because of easier licensing. But Track Club is a solid option if you are looking for a platform where you can customize music tracks for your edit.
Final Thoughts
Overall if I were to get subscriptions for music and footage, I would start with Envato Elements. I think that they have the most out of all of the different options. And then if I needed better music and sound effects, I’d get Artlist for music and sounds effects only.
But that’s my opinion. Which subscription would you get? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below! If you’d like to see some free resources, check out my other blog post below as well. But otherwise, thank you so much for reading and happy video creating!