Podcast Intro Music: Best Free Sites in 2023

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Podcast Intro Music: Best Free Sites in 2023

December 27, 2022 β€’ About 14 min. read

Podcast Intro Music: Best Free Sites in 2023

There are few better feelings in the world than when you hear the first few notes of the podcast intro music for your favorite show. Its a rush of nostalgia and anticipation. Pure magic. 🀩

You want your listeners to feel those same effects when they listen to your own podcast, right?

But at the same time you’re a little short on money. In fact, you have exactly $0 budgeted for intro podcast music at this point. 😬

8 best podcast intro music sites for 2024

Never fear! We are going to tell you about some of the best sites where you can get free intro music for your podcasts in 2023.

Now, chances are, you have already tried to search “free music” on the interwebs and found a ton of results, but they are confusing and/or sketchy. We’re glad you found us. We have already checked out these sites and reviewed them. πŸ€“

For each site we cover three categories so you can make an informed decision when choosing the site and song that best fits you and your podcast:

  • Type of Music: What genres you can expect to find on the website
  • How it is Free: What the license situation is, if you need to credit them, etc.
  • Benefits: What makes this site uniquely helpful

If you do not want all this information and just want to check out the sites immediately, no problem! Here is our list:

  • MusOpen.org: Classical Music
  • OpenMusicArchive.org: Music from around the 1920s
  • Pixabay.com: Music library arm of stock footage site
  • Studio.YouTube.com: Free music for use on YouTube only
  • ccMixter.org: Global music from global artists
  • FreeBeats.io: Hip Hop and other beats
  • Incompetech.com: Wide variety by one artist
  • AudioAutix.com: Free production music by one artist
  • Purple-Planet.com: Free music by two artists
  • Ausha: Our members get free access to over 500+ tracks πŸ§‘β€πŸš€

After the review, we will give you five tips about how you can maximize your use of the free intro music, so be sure to stick around for that!

Ok, ready to dive into the details of the best places to get free podcast intro music in 2023? Here is our review! πŸš€

MusOpen.org

To kick us off, we are going to start way back in time…

Type of Music

Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, and Schubert. Preludes, concertos, sonatas, and symphonies. If you want music by the famous old white guys, this is the library for you. πŸ’‚

The most popular categories, according to the site, are: Romantic, Happy, Sad, Relaxing, Energetic, and Fun.

You can search by: Composer, Performer, Instrument, Tag, Form, or Time Period.

How it is Free

The songs are free because they are so old. Once content gets to be around 100 years old, it generally becomes public domain and anyone can use it for free. In other words, the copyright expires.

Benefits

You may be thinking there is no way this kind of music would go with your podcast. But don’t hate on it before you try it! Since your intro should be pretty short, there may be a perfect nugget in one of the tracks. 😻

OpenMusicArchive.org

This is technically a UK project, but is helpful for the whole world!

Type of Music

These tracks are awesome. If you are looking for blues or bluegrass, this is the library for you! πŸͺ•

Their most popular tags include: Folk, Crackling Piano Music Upbeat, Music Hall, and yes, even British Songs about Dogs.

You can search by Track Title, Artist, Songwriter/Composer, Performer, Record Date, and Catalogue Number.

How it is Free

This site is similar to MusOpen.org, but rather than pulling from the 1700s, its music is from the 1920s. So these tracks are new (to the public domain) because they are old. Keep up with us here! Remember, a copyright typically expires after 100 years.

Benefits

The best part may be the white noise in the recording of many of the songs. The hisses and pops make you feel like you are listening to it on old timey record player!

If your podcast theme lends itself to this kind of music, look for your intro here– your listeners will love it. 🀟

Pixabay.com

You might know this site better for its stock images, but its music library is impressive too!

Type of Music

This library has every genre of music you could search for: rock and roll, corporate sounding tracks, acoustic guitar with piano… Whatever your podcast theme is, you’ll be able to find something great here.

It has over 120,000+ songs. The site also has a library of podcast sound effects.

You can order your search results by three categories: Editor’s Choice, Trending, and Latest.

How it is Free

Ok, now we are up to the present. These audio tracks aren’t free because they are old. They are free because Pixaby has a blanket license on their website that says you have permission to use the music for free. You don’t even have to credit the creator when you use an item– but please do! It is best practice. πŸ™

Benefits

Pixaby even has a specific category called “Podcast Music.” You may even be able to find some tracks that are intentionally created to be an intro (or outro, or background). 🎧

Studio.YouTube.com

Big note here at the very beginning: We are talking about YouTube Studio here, not regular Youtube. You can’t just pull a song off of YouTube and make it your intro. πŸš«πŸ™…

Type of Music

YouTube Studio’s collection of free, good music for podcasting is vast. It has tons of options from high BPM pump up songs, to low BPM chill music.

You can use the search bar and type in a Track Title, Artist, or Keyword. Also, you can filter your results by Track Title, Genre, Mood, Artist Name, Attribution, and Duration. It library also offers you the option to star any songs you are interested in, then it will save those songs under a tab called “Starred.” ⭐

How it is Free

The reason the songs in YouTube Studio are free, is the same as Pixaby– there is a license on the site that covers all the tracks, giving permission to anyone to use the audio without having to pay. However, you do need to read each track’s details because some of them say that you must credit the creator if you use the music.

There’s catch with this option though: The license details say that you have to use the music as part of a video you are creating in YouTube Studio and posting to YouTube. In other words, your payment to them is to create video content to put on their own platform.

Benefits

If you do video podcasts, this might be perfect for you! If not, you might want to find your free podcast intro music elsewhere. πŸ“Ή

ccMixter.org

Technically you need to go to digg.ccMixter.org to do the actual search function for songs, but start on its main page, ccMixter.org.

Type of Music

This is another high quality library to use if you are on a mission to search for free tunes. πŸ‘©β€πŸŽ€

It has pieces from over 45,000 artists around the world. There are helpful lists like “Editors’ Picks” and “Highest Rated.” Also, you can search by tags under the categories Genre, Instrument, and Style.

How it is Free

To explain how ccMixter.org music is free to download for podcasts, we need to first introduce you to Creative Commons.

Creative Commons is a nonprofit that writes template licenses to help facilitate the fair sharing of works of art like photography and, of course, music. So if you see a Creative Commons license, you need to read the full details to determine the exact kind of permission given, but chances are it is going to be some version of ‘free.’ πŸ˜€

ccMister.org has three different kinds of Creative Commons licenses that include the right to use the track at no cost, or at least no royalties.

No Cost Usage, Just Credit the Creator

The first type of Creative Commons license on ccMixter is free usage as long as you credit the creator, even on commercial projects. Commercial projects are projects you plan to make to make money on. For example, if you sell ads or if people purchase a subscription to hear special content, your podcast is a commercial project. So just keep this in mind as you read licenses and figure out details for the item. πŸ’°

No Cost Usage, Just Credit the Creator, But No Commercial Projects

The second type of Creative Commons license on this site free usage as long as you credit the creator, but NOT for commercial projects. Again, commercial projects are projects you plan to make to make money on.

No Royalties, Sliding Scale

The third license you’ll see on ccMixter is one that gives permission to use an audio track, but you have to pay on a sliding scale (more if you are a big business, less if you are just using for personal reasons). While this is not free, it is pretty cheap because they don’t make you pay royalties.

Royalties are when you pay a certain amount every time you use the song. So if you use a song as your podcast intro music, and you have 65 episodes, you are going to have to pay a royalty 65 times. πŸ‘‘πŸ‘‘πŸ‘‘πŸ‘‘πŸ‘‘

Benefits

ccMixter.org is a sound choice for podcasters (sorry, we could not resist the pun πŸ˜…). It is a global community of music creators. You will find a ton of intro music for your podcast and you can support artists who might not otherwise get heard.

FreeBeats.io

This site is for all kinds of content creators: Social media influencers, artists, and yes, podcasters.

Type of Music

This website has awesome hip hop and rap beats… which is probably why the name includes the word “Beats.” 😎

In the footer of the website, music is divided into categories: Rap Beats, R&B Beats, Hip-Hop Beats, Club Beats, Trap Beats, Drill Beats, Chill Beats, Country Beats, Electronic Beats, Rock Beats, Pop Beats, East Coast Beats, West Coast Beats, as well as New Beats and Exclusive Beats.

How it is Free

The other word in the website title is “Free.” This site does not waste words, does it!

The site makes it clear that in order to add one of its tracks to your project at no cost, you must credit the artist and the website. Plus you will have to follow them on social media.

Benefits

If you are looking for a great library of royalty-free music that has high quality recording, you need to check out this one. What makes it unique is that you can download tracks in a wav format. Most sites that we have talked about here only have mp3 downloads available. Wav files are usually of higher quality than mp3 files because wav files can hold more detailed data. πŸ‘ˆ

Another big benefit of using this site is that the tracks you download will not contain producer tags. You can think of a producer tag like a vocal logo. You will be listening along with the song and then you will hear a voice kind of out of nowhere saying the producer’s name or company. Obviously this is not ideally for podcast intro music. So the fact that this site offers free tracks without producer tags is priceless.

Incompetech.com & AudioAutix.com & Purple-Planet.com

We are listing these three libraries together because they are somewhat similar. Each one was made by a guy who just wanted to make free music for the world (you all rock!). 🀘

What Type of Music

What genre, you ask? Really just about anything: world/international, holiday, house, techno, ambient. πŸͺ

For example, Purple Planet lists these as categories: Upbeat, Energy, Hope, Atmospheric, Cinematic, Playful, Emotional, Cute, Creepy, Tense, Dreamy, Kids, International, Chilled, Gentle.

How it is Free

The creators do ask that you credit them for their work. Keep in mind that you will only get an MP3 version of the track– you have to pay for a higher quality WAV file.

Benefits

It is nice to know that these aren’t big corporate entities that may change their rights’ policies overnight and suddenly put you in bad position. And they don’t have some kind of strategy to up-sell you or anything. It is just them and the beauty of the world wide web. πŸŒŽπŸ”—πŸŒŽ

On to the last, but not least…

Ausha

You’ll didn’t think we were going to leave ourselves off the 2023 list, did you? 😎

Thanks to our partnership with Universal, our users can pick their perfect tune out of 500+ jingles, music, and sound bites.

Ok, technically you need to have a subscription to our platform in order for the music to be free, but hey house rules for blog posts, right?

Our library has got intro music, outro music, background music, sound effects, everything you would ever need for your podcasts, plus a wonderful help team that can guide you through everything. No need to even spare one thought to usage rights, royalties, or anything! πŸ’†

Five Tips on Free Podcast Intro Music

We hope this list and its reviews will help you make 2023 the year you nailed your podcast intro game. But before we leave, we want to give you just a couple of things to keep in mind as you go on your journey. πŸ§™

Switching Up Intro Songs

You don’t have to pick just one intro song. You can have a different one for each episode. We typically advise against this though. It just adds to your workload. Plus, you don’t get to build up that magical feeling for your listeners when you use a different song each time. 😞

Branding is Important

Be on brand. Yes, there is a lot of great music options out there. You may even have a favorite royalty-free song. But that doesn’t mean it is the right song for your podcast theme. What is important is that the song goes seamlessly with your content and overall vibe.

Use for Social Media Contet

You can use this as an opportunity to create social media content. Why not pick your top few short audio tracks and do a poll asking your listeners which they like best? Once you have one chosen the intro, then you can make another post that shows your audience the full song. Even better, do an appreciation post for the artist who created the recording! πŸ“£

Do Your Research and Take Notes

The thing about websites and online services is that they are always changing, and they can do so very, very quickly. What a free music library says about who can use their tunes for what, can change in the blink of an eye.

That is why you always need to do your research before you make any decisions. Plus, it is a good idea to take screen shots and write down any important information. That way you can refer back to them both during your search and if your use of the music ever comes into question.

Enjoy the Process

Searching for free podcast intro music is a chance to have fun and be creative. It can be a really helpful process in figuring out what your podcast’s identity and brand is. Plus, it is a great excuse to listen to some tunes. 🎢

Enjoy the sound waves! 🌊

Final Word

Thank you for joining us as we reviewed some of the best free intro music sites on the world wide web! We hope our research and tips are helpful to you on your podcasting journey.

If you think we missed any major sites in this category, or even if you just want to say hello, feel free to email us at [email protected] or find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. We love hearing from our podcasting community!

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December 27, 2022

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