One the most crucial elements of a movie is the soundtrack. To get the soundtracks for the movie projects you are working on, you don’t always have to make a commercial contract with a musician or buy a song license. Especially if you are working on a non-commercial movie project. There are some resources that provide audio files which you can download for free.

The first thing you need to do before using an audio file for a movie soundtrack is read the applied licence. If the file is licensed under Creative Commons Zero (CC0), for instance, it means that you can use it for free for any purpose. All websites I am going to mention below provide free audio files, but they might use different licenses.

Following are 7 websites you can refer to if you are looking for free audio files for your movie project.

1. HookSounds

HookSounds‘s home to a huge collection of royalty free music. Every track is curated, of the highest quality and composed by hand-picked artists. HookSounds differentiates from other royalty free music web sites due to its exclusivity and originality, considering HookSounds posses lots of original tracks that you won’t find anywhere else: HookSounds has its own sound

2. Bensound

Bensound is one of the best websites to download free audio files for your movie projects. The audio files provided by this website are very well organized and you can discover them by category. You can find categories like acoustic, cinematic, pop, jazz and so on. There are two kind of licenses used by this site: Creative Commons License and Pro License. The Creative Commons License allows you to use the audio files for free as movie soundtracks, but with some restrictions. You should give the credit to Bensound. If you can’t give a credit to Bensound, you can use the Pro License. The website of Bensound has a great interface and you can preview the audio files right away from the front page.

3. Incompetech

The interface of Incompetech is not as fancy as Bensound. So is the audio file collections. Not as rich as Bensound. But, this website also provides free audio files in case you need ones for your movie projects. Same as Bensound, Incompetech also enforces two licence types: Standard Licence and Creative Commons. Standard Licence in aimed at projects where attribution is not wanted or is otherwise impossible (like video ads) while the Creative Commons is aimed at other projects where it is possible to give credit for the music provider (Incompetech in this case). Incompetech will let you know how to give the credit on a detail page of each sound.

4. Freesoundtrackmusic.com

Again, the interface of Freesoundtrackmusic.com is not as fancy as Bensound. The audio collection isn’t also as rich as Bensound. But who knows you will find the suited audio on this website. There are two kind of files offered by this site. The ones labeled as “FREE” and the ones labeled as “1 credit”. If you download an audio file labeled as “FREE”, you can use it for free, you need to credit the music author. Conversely, if you download an audo file labeled as “1 credit”, you need to buy the license before you can use it.

5. Digccmixter

You can also try visiting Digccmixter every time you need a song for your movie soundtrack. The interface of this tent tends to simple, but the audio collection is rich enough. There three license types offered by this site, which you can read on this page. To see the license of the song you want to download, you can visit the detail page of the associated song.

6. Freemusicarchive.org

Another website you can refer to every time you need a audio files for your movie project is Freemusicarchive.org. This website has an abundance music collections and you can filters them by genre. There is also a search box you can make use of. The vast majority of audio files on this site are licensed under Creative Commons, but there are also some audio files that might require you to buy the license before you can use them. Make sure to see the applied license of the audio file you want to use by visiting the detail page of the associated audio before you download it.

7. Audionautix

All musics available on Audionautix are composed by a single man and he releases all of his works under Creative Commons License 3.0. This license allows you to use a certain work for any purpose, including commercial. But, giving credit to the author is required. The audio collection available on Audionautix is rich enough. Thankfully, you can filter them by genre to make it easy for you to the suited audio files according to your need. You can find audio files in categories like acoustic, blues, country, rock and so on.

8. Cctrax

Cctrax also offers audio files which you can download for free. This website has an abundance audio collections and has a good navigation to make it easy for you to discover and download the files you need. Same as some websites above, Cctrax also has several license types so you need to read the detail page of the audio file you want to download the find out the rule of use. Cctrax allows you to filter the audio files by license type.

9. Icons8

Icons8 is a great resource you can refer to for finding the supporting materials for the creative projects you are working, including movies. One of the content types offered by Icons8 is music. The music contents available on this site are very well-organized. You can preview each music before you download it. The interface of this website on the music section is pretty similar to SoundCloud. There are lots of categories you can explore. The musics on this website can be used for free, be it for commercial or non-commercial use. But, you are required to give a credit to Icons8 by mentioning its website. This website uses the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license. If you want to use the music from Icons8 without needing to giving a credit, you can buy the paid licence.