Articles / Royalty-free music vs making your own
Royalty-free music vs making your own
Epidemic Sound is $120 to $216 a year, and you own nothing when you stop paying. A cue you write stays yours. Mozarella is ours, and the prices below are the libraries' published rates.
What a subscription costs
Epidemic Sound's personal plan is $9.99 a month billed yearly, or $17.99 billed monthly. That is $120 to $216 a year for as long as the channel runs, so three years costs $360 to $648 and you still own nothing. Artlist shows its prices only after you log in. Uppbeat's free tier is three downloads a month from a quarter of the catalog, and every description needs a written credit.
What the license is
Read the cancellation clause before you subscribe. Epidemic and Artlist both keep clearing videos you published while the subscription was active. Epidemic says videos you publish after it ends, if they use Epidemic's music, will be claimed and monetized by Epidemic. Artlist's license stops covering new projects. The subscription rents permission for a term.
Content ID claims
YouTube requires exclusive rights before a track can sit in Content ID, so non-exclusive royalty-free music should not generate claims. It still does. Bad registrations and fraud have claimed a composer's own song on his own channel, and a ten-hour white noise video. A dispute works, and it takes days to weeks. If you composed the music, you hold the rights, and a claim on your own track is wrong on its face.
What making your own costs
A library track had a producer, a mix engineer, and a mastering pass. Your first cue will not sound like that. You pay the library for that polish per minute. A browser tool can take a short cue from an idea to an export in an afternoon. Theory help keeps the harmony coherent, and AI covers the sung vocal, sounds outside your sample folder, and stems for the edit. For background use, sixteen bars that fit the scene matter more than a longer track that does not.
A cue you wrote can run on every video, ship in a game with no per-channel license cap, and be revised next year, with nothing to renew. Mozarella is built for that. Composing is free, and premium is $19 a month, under Epidemic's month-to-month rate. Cancel it the month you stop writing.
When to rent, when to write
Rent from a library when
- You publish every week and need many different tracks
- The music is background, and you need it today
- A client job needs a finished genre cue now
Make your own when
- A few cues get reused across the channel or the game
- You want the license to outlast the subscription
- The cue has to match the scene, and you will reuse it
A subscription rents the catalog while you pay, and a cue you wrote stays yours with no renewal date.
Common questions
If I cancel Epidemic Sound, are my old videos safe?
Videos published while your subscription was active stay cleared, by Epidemic's own terms. Videos you publish after you cancel, if they still use Epidemic's music, get claimed and monetized by Epidemic.
Can properly licensed royalty-free music still get claimed?
Yes. Someone registers a track in Content ID without exclusive rights, or a library claims by design. You can dispute with your license in hand, the claimant has 30 days to respond, and the video sits claimed while you do the paperwork.
Is AI-generated background music the cheap way out?
The render is cheap. Free tiers of generators usually bar commercial use, purely generated audio has no copyright owner in the US, and the platform terms move when a label settles. A cue you composed keeps the copyright, and the license does not expire when a subscription does.
When is a library subscription clearly the right call?
A library costs less per minute when you publish every week and need several finished tracks per video. Writing the cues costs less when you reuse a few of them for years, which is most games and most channel branding.
Who owns which part when AI is in the session: Who owns a song made with AI? Every source ranked by what its license does when you cancel: Best royalty-free music sources in 2026
Related
- Best royalty-free music sources in 2026Nineteen sources by license type: what happens when you cancel, and how claims get cleared.
- Who owns a song made with AI?A melody and lyrics you wrote stay yours. A prompt-only track is not copyrightable.
- The best online music makers in 2026Ten browser tools, matched to the job each one does.
All articles. Mozarella is a song sketch pad in the browser, free to start. Open the app or read the FAQ.