PremiumBeat – Flexible, Unlimited Music For Creators
Back in November of 2024, PremiumBeat made a bold move that was hailed as their best offer to date; subscription plans went from a limited set of 5 tracks per month to unlimited royalty free downloads from the music library. PremiumBeat called this “all you can eat” music, and editors everywhere were thrilled. One of the biggest web music libraries, boasting a curated catalog of 42,527 studio-quality tracks, is now more accessible than ever.
Standing Out Among Stock Music Providers
In addition to PremiumBeat’s unlimited music, the site’s structure will also help you save time in several ways.
PremiumBeat’s search function, for example, is a preferred filtering system for video editors, with 5 different ways to cross-section the library of assets: genre, mood, instrument, BPM duration, or keyword.
To begin, the easiest search method is to choose either a “Genre” or “Mood”, then press the “Show Filters” button on the top left to get a fly-out panel that will narrow your results further.
If you’re in Moods, for example, you can click a sub-genre or two within that category. You can even cross categories to choose a specific genre within that mood for more determined results.
For our project, we looked within Mood for “Underscores” that would make good background music for our video, but only wanted the “New Age” genre of Underscores, and more specifically the “Ambient” sub-genre. We clicked, and the page instantly loaded with pertinent results.
Next, we typed “cheerful” into the keyword search bar at the top of the screen, adding this dimension to our search parameters of “Underscores” and “New Age: Ambient”, all of which get listed at the top of the screen so you don’t get lost. The site is very responsive, and we were instantly presented with distinct results, having narrowed 42,000 possibilities down to just two.
The ability to download a preview track from PremiumBeat is another site perk that makes the process of selecting stock music very hassle free. Instead of finding out too late that your music piece isn’t a good fit against your footage, users can get a preview track with an audio watermark to test against the footage ahead of time. Loops and Stems will not be available until after a purchase, however.
For creators looking for a stock music plan that will consistently yield good matches to their projects, PremiumBeat’s library has a legendary reputation. The large, reputable collection contains some 297 genres, 28 moods, 211 curated playlists, 16,187 sound effects, plus endless keyword tagging to focus the search! There are sounds here for every project, and also some surprising tracks that can inspire creators in new directions.
With a big project on your hands and yet so many stock music possibilities at your disposal, you’ll want a plan for quickly determining which track is right for your composition.
Getting Started
The first thing that you need to do is to create a playlist or two into which you can direct prospective tracks as you come across them. Click on the profile symbol in the top right corner of the screen to get a menu, and select the box with a music note that says “No Playlists Yet”. If there is already a numbered amount of playlists in that box, of course, click it and add a new playlist for this project.
With a playlist created, it’s time to browse for that perfect music clip. Navigate to either a genre or a mood on the top menu and employ your search skills to locate the best music for your project.
Most tracks on PremiumBeat are several minutes long, so if you only listen to 10 music pieces, half an hour can easily fly by. Depending on how much time you have on your hands to listen to music, you may need to skip around to different points in each track to just get a feel for it and move on if you determine the track is not for you.
So before you go much further, take note of the keyboard shortcuts that, as you browse, will help you quickly navigate through the tracks and direct potential music picks right into the playlist with fewer clicks and keystrokes.
Even if you narrow down your search results with the 5 different methods of search, you’ll still have a long list of search results to go through. After selecting the first track, you can instantly skip to the next track on the page by simply pressing the down arrow button on your keyboard. Within any given track, you may want to skip past slow intros by jumping ahead 15 seconds at a time with the right arrow button (and backwards 15 seconds with the left arrow button). Pause and unpause with the spacebar.
If you are currently listening to a track that you’d like to put in your playlist, you only need to push the “P” button to pull up your playlists, then select the correct one to file your music into. Or, even faster, you can simply press the “L” button to add it to the latest playlist.
The option to add to a playlist is also available under the three-dot menu to the right hand side of every music track.
Once you think you have plenty of potential tracks in the list, navigate to that playlist to give everything one more listen, then select the winning track.
Now it’s time to pay. You’ll see that a single track can be quite pricey, $999 for a single Business Licensed track! This is where you will want to pick up a subscription instead so that you can save an incredible amount of money.
Understanding PremiumBeat’s Subscription Plans
Perhaps you aren’t sure if you will need more than a few music tracks right now, and you would like to simply pay one month at a time, until the need arises for a bigger plan. If you only pay month to month to begin, you can feel the site out and make a commitment later.
Creator Plan month-to-month: $14.99 per month
Standard Plan month-to-month: $59.99 per month
Using month-to-month plans, you can download as many tracks as you’d like for just a single month, and then move on if you wish. Whenever you determine that you are done downloading unlimited music, you can navigate to your profile and choose “Your Plans” in the menu to cancel this month-to-month plan and be on your way. Note that if you do not cancel at the end of the month, the next month PremiumBeat will charge your card and start the cycle anew.
But perhaps, thanks to the outstanding music placed in your compositions, you find that your videos are becoming successful, or that your company has landed more and more upcoming contracts, and now it’s time to have access to stock music on a regular basis. At this point, you’ll want to look at a yearly subscription plan.
These plans are listed for the 12 month breakdown amount, but they are all charged in full, on the day that you sign up, for the entire year. You can see that compared to the month-to-month plans, a year-long subscription saves you a good amount of money, and compared to the individual purchase prices, a year-long subscription saves you a remarkable amount of money.
Creator Plan: $9.99 per month for 12 months, paid up front for a full year at $119.88
Standard Plan: $24.99 per month for 12 months, paid up front for a full year at $299.88
Larger businesses, agencies, and production houses will want to look at an Enterprise Plan, and these are obtained by requesting a quote. We will cover more on Enterprise pricing in a future article, which will be linked to the bottom of this page.
With your music track picked and a subscription in hand it’s time to head to the cart checkout and explore the features that come with every PremiumBeat download.
In your playlist, next to each track is the option to see what is included with your download. If this download doesn’t include things you’d like, such as Stems, perhaps it’s not the track for you. It’s good to check first.
Otherwise, next to the preferred track press “Download”.
You’ll see the item arrive in your cart, and you can proceed to checkout.
Next, you’ll be asked to choose your license, and you’ll choose depending upon the subscription that you’ve opted into. Otherwise, if paying per track (which we do not recommend) your next screen might look like this:
Licenses and Downloads
During the checkout, you will then be prompted to enter the name of the project that this track will be used in, your name, and the address of your business. This will be included on the license, so make sure it will reflect the necessary information if you need to demonstrate that you have the right to be using that music somewhere in the future. When the music is purchased, you should download this license and put it in a memorable place on your computer.
Now you’re presented with the Download screen. You can get the full track in a .wav or an .mp3 file, plus your license, YouTube ID, and your receipt. This screen will always be available in your profile under “Orders”, should you need to retrieve any of it again.
In the coming weeks, we will continue to dive into PremiumBeat’s most practical features, such as Stems and Loops, playing with watermarked sample downloads, YouTube IDs, audio logos, Enterprise licensing for larger facilities, and much more!
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