Apr 10, 2024
Finding the right music for your project can be intimidating when creating content for your channels and brands. Of course, you’ll need to make a whole host of decisions based on the types of licenses you’ll need to secure.
(If you’re unfamiliar with music licensing and copyrights, here’s a great primer on royalty free music and why it’s most likely the best option for you.)
But besides the types of music you want, there are some major decisions in front of you regarding who has the best music for you and your projects’ needs.
Let’s look two of the more popular music licensing services online these days, as we compare and contrast Soundstripe vs Uppbeat.io to see which has the better music for you.
What Soundstripe has to offer
Simply put, Soundstripe offers the best royalty free music for video available to content creators of all types. With Soundstripe, you’ll have unlimited music, sound effects, and video downloads. Plus, you’ll be able to connect your channels and monetize your videos without worrying about having your channels blocked or taken down for copyright violations.
You’ll also have access to over 200K premium music, SFX, and video assets, which will all be available on social platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitch, and X, as well as for any live events or even broadcast TV.
What’s extra cool about Soundstripe is that, as a Nashville-based company, all of our tracks are curated by our in-house music experts. So you’ll be able to download full songs, including stems by Grammy-winning artists, all composed, recorded, mixed, and mastered to take your projects to the next level.
Here’s some of what Soundstripe has to offer:
- Unlimited music, sound effects, and video downloads
- The ability to connect your channels and monetize your videos
- Over 200K premium music, SFX, and video assets
What Uppbeat.io has to offer
Uppbeat.io is a bit of a newcomer on the music licensing scene, but It is another solid option in what has become a crowded scene of royalty free music providers. Uppbeat.io is similar to many competitors in this space, like Audiio, Tunetank, and Lickd, in that they’re all newer but still provide diverse and solid catalogs to explore.
There are also older, larger competitors in the space, like Artlist, Epidemic, and PremiumBeat. However, these offer different licensing models that can sometimes be more complex. They are better suited if you’re looking for one provider for all your stock audio, video, and editing assets.
Uppbeat.io, similar to Soundstripe, provides royalty free music that is free to use in videos, podcasts, and livestreams. It can be promised that users will be free from copyright issues when using their audio on social platforms, with selections that range across diverse genres and for different use types.
Who has the better music?
While there’s a lot that we could cover in comparing and contrasting these two music licensing platforms, we know that you most likely care about two things the most: Who has the better music, and who has the better prices? We’ll discuss pricing options below, but let’s quickly look at the music.
With Soundstripe, you’ll get over 9,000 tracks hand-selected by our curation team and mixed by Grammy-award-winning artists to ensure that every track meets the highest music and recording quality standards. But don’t let us just tell you about our music; check out Soundstripe’s royalty free music offerings yourself.
As for Uppbeat.io, we’re happy to report that they also offer great, high-quality music. It's worth exploring whether any of their tracks will work well for your videos or projects. They have a clean interface and some cool features, like an AI playlist generator (similar to Soundstripe’s AI-integrated music search tool), that should make exploring their library easy as well.
Honestly, we’ll let you compare them yourself and see which is better quality and, more importantly, which sounds better for your channel, brand, or overall vibe.
Comparing Soundstripe vs Uppbeat.io
Alright, now let’s get to the important stuff for deciding between Soundstripe vs Uppbeat.io. While each library is about the same size (over 9,000 tracks for Soundstripe and around 10,000 tracks for Uppbeat.io), the real question on everyone’s minds is pricing.
Both brands offer a free account option to let potential users get started with the apps and assemble playlists and track selections. However, Uppbeat.io free accounts are only available to individual creators, who are only given access to 30% of their catalog and only three downloads per month.
With Soundstripe, you can get started for free and have access to the full library. You can preview tracks, create playlists, and even download watermarked versions to try out songs for your videos (or to get client approval first).
As far as actual pricing goes, Soundstripe offers the following options:
Creator Plan — for personal and organic social use
- Unlimited access to Music & Sound Effects, including Curated Playlists
- Soundstripe mobile app
- Discover, save, and download music on iOS & Android
- New Music Released Weekly
- Unlimited Personal Use
- Covered for web, social media, and podcast use
- Clear & Monetize 1 YouTube channel
Price: $9.99 a month
Pro Plan — for Individual & Freelance Commercial use
- Stems for all songs
- Unlimited Individual Commercial and Client Use
- Including paid ads, commercial & broadcast use
- Clear & Monetize up to 5 YouTube channels
- Unlimited video clearance by YouTube URLs and codes
- Post-production Features & Tools
- Projects, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Frame.io
Price: $19.99 a month
Whereas Uppbeat.io offers the following:
Premium Plan — unlimited downloads, premium tracks & sound effects
- Unlimited downloads
- 100% catalog access
- Whitelist up to 3 YouTube channels
- Premium tracks & sound effects
- Ad-free
- For individual creators & micro organizations (Micro organizations are classified as having five employees or less.)
Price: $5.95 a month
Business Plan
- License for organizations of any scale
- Covers digital ads & client content
- Whitelist up to 10 YouTube channels
Price: $14.99 a month
As you can see, the plan options are quite similar, but Soundstripe offers more plugins and extensions, stems and variations, and whitelisting and clearance options than some lower-priced plans from Uppbeat.
What creators online are saying
But don’t just listen to us about who has the best royalty free music libraries and licensing plans! Let’s check in with some online content creators to hear what they think about each service and what they’d recommend for aspiring film or video pros (or up-and-coming content creators) looking to try either for the first time.
Soundstripe reviews:
Uppbeat.io reviews:
Ultimately, this choice will come down to you and your preferences. It never hurts to shop around and try different options, especially in a space as crowded as the royalty-free music industry.
However, we’re confident that you’ll find that Soundstripe is one of the best sources for real music by real musicians who love their craft and greatly respect the needs and careers of filmmakers, video professionals, and content creators of all types.