Searching “free music” online almost always leads down two very different paths: sites that genuinely offer legally downloadable tracks, and sites that actually offer copyrighted music without authorization — which simply isn’t legal. This guide covers only the first category: platforms where the download is authorized by the artist or the track’s license.

Before looking at individual platforms, it’s worth understanding the three situations where a track is legitimately downloadable for free:

  • Creative Commons license: the artist explicitly allows sharing and, depending on the specific license, reuse too (with or without attribution, with or without commercial use). Always check the license details listed for each individual track.
  • Royalty-free music: tracks you can use by paying a one-time license (or for free on some platforms) without owing recurring fees per use — common on platforms built for creators who need to score videos.
  • Public domain: works whose copyright has expired (generally decades after the author’s death) or that were voluntarily released without restrictions.

The best Creative Commons and royalty-free music platforms

Jamendo

Jamendo is one of the largest platforms in this space, with a catalog of hundreds of thousands of tracks from independent artists and labels worldwide, published under Creative Commons licenses. Downloads for personal use are free; for commercial use (corporate videos, ads, products for sale) Jamendo also offers a separate paid licensing service.

ccMixter

ccMixter is a longstanding community built around remixing and sharing music, with tracks, samples, and a cappellas uploaded by the artists themselves under Creative Commons licenses. Every track clearly states its license terms: it’s a favorite especially among podcasters and amateur video creators.

Pixabay Music

The music section of Pixabay has become one of the most convenient sources over the years for anyone looking for background tracks: the catalog can be used for both personal and commercial projects, with no attribution requirement under Pixabay’s license — one of the most permissive terms among free platforms.

Internet Archive

Internet Archive is a nonprofit digital library that, alongside books and archived websites, also holds a huge amount of music recordings that are now in the public domain or freely released by their own creators. It’s the right source if you’re after something specific and older, less so if you need contemporary music for a video or project.

What about streaming services like Spotify or YouTube Music?

An important clarification that often causes confusion: the free tiers of Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music and similar services let you stream (with ads), not download an audio file to keep or move outside the app. Offline downloading is a feature reserved for paid subscriptions, and even then the file stays usable only inside the app as long as the subscription is active — it’s not a real MP3 file you can take anywhere.

If your goal is having music offline inside the app you already use, a premium subscription solves the problem. If you actually need a downloadable file, the platforms in the previous section are the right path.

SoundCloud: a special case

On SoundCloud, downloading is up to the artist: when whoever uploaded a track has enabled the option, you’ll find a free, direct download button under the track. If that button isn’t there, the track isn’t legally downloadable from the platform, regardless of any external tools that claim to bypass this limitation.