Is Epidemic Sound or Envato Elements the best music provider for your video content? When creating videos for commercial or editorial projects, you need to choose a music provider. Many details will determine the best solution, such as your budget, timeline, and publishing or broadcasting platform. If you are looking for affordable options for your personal use or small business, you should continue reading.
This post will look at two music provider options, Epidemic Sound at $144 a year and Envato Elements at $198 a year. Both of these services provide music, but the terms are not the same—some of the things you need to consider when looking for royalty-free music are in these two case examples. The sample videos below are similar. They both have music and imagery, but there are substantial differences.
Will You Be Live Streaming?
Live streaming, on platforms like Twitch, need a royalty-free background music provider. Epidemic Sound is the fitting solution because it covers the Twitch platform and YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and podcasts. Because of creating live video, and they do not need to purchase any video content. Sound quality for live video is a bit tricky with multiple inputs and sound mixing is another topic on its own. Epidemic Sound allows you to create playlists and provides premade theme playlists. This feature makes it easy to curate hours of music for your live events.
Envato Elements expressly prohibit broadcasting in terms of their service. Live streaming is not part of the WAVES video example. Their YouTube channel features relaxing music videos and imagery. Envato Elements is an excellent solution for WAVES. With this content subscription, they will be able to access music and videos. Epidemic Sound does not provide any visual content. I created the WAVES example video with Envato Element music, video edited it in Adobe Premiere and uploaded it to YouTube. The video also has a logo introduction video from Adobe After Effects.
Will you need content for more than one account?
Is your brand a single identity across Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, and YouTube? The single-channel restriction is not a problem for a single brand project. The platforms link the channels on the backend to verify and manage the approved social media accounts. Essentially licensing you all the available music at once. I’ve noticed that this means I never have to deal with proving copyrights for every song after uploading new content. If you upload content regularly and use many songs in your long live videos, this kind of service saves you time.
With WAVES, each video triggered copyright music and image claims to dispute after uploading to YouTube. The song titles from YoutTube and the song titles from Envato Elements did not always add up. Fortunately, YouTube provides a timestamp for each dispute. I matched the timestamp with the source file in Adobe Premiere to verify the song title. Then I downloaded a copyright license for each song from the Envato Elements account to copy and paste into YouTube.
What’s your budget and timeline?
Envato Elements only offers a yearly subscription, so you are in for about 200. Epidemic Sound is a month-to-month about $15 fee that you can cancel at any time. Both services have licenses that last, meaning that if you upload content during the active subscription, it will remain valid after it’s expired. Depending on your project’s specifics, one or the other type of service would be the best fit.
In conclusion, it pays to do a little research on the terms and conditions before you purchase a digital content subscription. Both of these services are fantastic solutions, in my opinion, for entry to mid-level creative projects that require music. The quality of the digital assets is professional, and the websites are intuitive and easy to use. If you have any suggestions for music providers, please let us know in the comments below.
