The State of Royalty Free Music Providers: Who's Winning, Who's Losing, and What It Means for You
Edited 2026-01-23 - Updated with 2025-2026 industry context and current market leaders.
Last updated on January 23, 2026
When it comes to royalty free music providers, there are a lot of them to choose from. But which one is the best for your needs? And more importantly, which ones are growing the fastest and who is losing market share?
Our editorial team has used both Artlist and Epidemic Sound daily for 3+ years. This analysis combines industry data with our hands-on experience.
Why is it important to know which royalty free music provider is the biggest, fastest growing etc?
You might want to use that service if you like to conform to the majority, but you might also want to know so that you can avoid it so that you get truly unique music.
The data might also help you understand which providers are growing the fastest and where the industry is heading.
Which was the biggest royalty free music site in 2019?
So, without further ado, let's take a look at the data on royalty free music providers. As of 2019, here are the biggest players in the industry:
- Getty Images Music: 38% market share
- Pond5: 23% market share
- Shutterstock Music: 17% market share
- AudioJungle: 11% market share
As you can see, Getty Images Music was by far the largest player in the royalty free music provider industry with 38% of the market. This was followed by Pond5 with 23%, Shutterstock Music with 17%, and finally AudioJungle and Artlist with 11% each.
What about the fastest growing royalty free music site?
In terms of growth (according to 2019 data), these were the fastest growing royalty free music providers:
- Artlist: 20% year-over-year growth
- Getty Images Music: 14% year-over-year growth
- Shutterstock Music: 11% year-over-year growth
As you can see, Artlist is the fastest growing royalty free music provider with 20% year-over-year growth. This is followed by Getty Images Music with 14% growth, and Shutterstock Music with 11% growth.
How is the growth and market share data looking right now?
I'm going to show you a graph for Artlist, Getty Images Music and Shutterstock Music from google trends, which might make your jaw drop to the floor:
But first: What is google trends?
Google Trends is a public web facility of Google Inc., based on Google Search, that shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages.
Alright, now show me the graph of the growth of the music licensing providers:
trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("TIMESERIES", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":"Artlist","geo":"","time":"today 5-y"},{"keyword":"GettyImages Music","geo":"","time":"today 5-y"},{"keyword":"Shutterstock Music","geo":"","time":"today 5-y"}],"category":0,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"date=today%205-y&q=Artlist,GettyImages%20Music,Shutterstock%20Music","guestPath":"https://trends.google.com:443/trends/embed/"});
As you can see, things have changed quite a lot, and it's not even a fair comparison anymore.
What we can extract from this is a couple of things:
1. Getty Images Music & Shutterstock Music probably got most of their growth from existing customers from their royalty-free images division. Where they offer a diverse collection of resources for:
- video marketing
- corporate videos
- video projects
- personal social channels
- Social media
- Video themes
- Online videos
- Youtube videos
- Banners & more..
..As a subscription service under a creative commons license.
So, if you have a video project and already are a client of theirs, it's not unlikely that you clicked on the navigation menu to see the entire collection of copyright free music for your next video.
- Licensing music is a lucrative industry with high growth.
- Allowing an unlimited license or unlimited downloads of music tracks and sound effects is a pre-requisite. If we [the team at cchound.com] remember correctly, neither getty images nor shutterstock music had unlimited access to royalty free tracks.
- Talented musicians is key. Services like artlist employ indie artists in different music genres to produce all the music and sound effects. You need to keep a close ear to the music industry to produce the right music in the right music genre.
- Even though you have customers in royalty free stock photography or video, it doesn't mean that they will use your stock music site.
What about the other royalty free music sites?
There are too many to compare, but let's see how Artlist stacks up against:
- Uppbeat.io
- Soundstripe
- Hooksounds
- Audiio
That's how that looks:
trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("TIMESERIES", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":"Artlist","geo":"","time":"today 5-y"},{"keyword":"Uppbeat","geo":"","time":"today 5-y"},{"keyword":"Hooksounds","geo":"","time":"today 5-y"},{"keyword":"Soundstripe","geo":"","time":"today 5-y"},{"keyword":"Audiio","geo":"","time":"today 5-y"}],"category":0,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"date=today%205-y&q=Artlist,Uppbeat,Hooksounds,Soundstripe,Audiio","guestPath":"https://trends.google.com:443/trends/embed/"});
2025-2026 Update: The Market Has Evolved
Since our original 2019 analysis, the royalty-free music landscape has transformed dramatically:
The Clear Winners:
- Artlist - Now offers 30,000+ tracks, AI video generation tools (Sora 2, Seedance, Kling 2.5), and has become a full creative platform
- Epidemic Sound - Grown to 40,000+ tracks with industry-leading YouTube integration and stem access
What's Changed:
- Subscription models have become the standard
- AI-powered features are now differentiators
- YouTube Content ID integration is essential
- Universal licensing is increasingly expected
Our Recommendation for 2026
After 3+ years of daily use, our editorial team recommends:
Choose Artlist if you:
- Want universal licensing with no restrictions
- Need AI video generation tools
- Prefer an all-in-one creative platform
Choose Epidemic Sound if you:
- Need stem track access for custom edits
- Prioritize YouTube Content ID integration
- Want the largest music library
Ready to get started? Get exclusive discounts:
Do you want more data on royalty free music?
Tag us on your favorite social media and let us know, and we'll invest more time into digging into the data!