How to Use PremiumBeat Music and Sound Effects
A comprehensive guide to PremiumBeat’s music and sound effects, available licenses, and how creators can use them on any platform.

So, you’re working on a short film. Or maybe it’s a video for your YouTube channel. Or maybe it’s a podcast or commercial — whatever you’re creating, it’s gonna need a great soundtrack to attract, entertain, and inform your audience.
But where can you get your hands on assets that are 1.) high-quality, 2.) inexpensive, and 3.) won’t tie you up in copyright issues? The answer is PremiumBeat, a massive curated library of royalty-free music and sound effects.
Let’s take a look at everything you need to know about using PremiumBeat, from finding the perfect song to choosing the right license for your projects.
What Is PremiumBeat?
PremiumBeat is a popular choice amongst content creators, but in case you’re unfamiliar with the platform, let’s get you acquainted.
PremiumBeat is a royalty-free music and sound effects library that carries thousands of studio-quality tracks that can be used for commercial purposes through its many licensing options.
What Kinds of Assets Does PremiumBeat Offer?
- Music Tracks: Whether you’re looking for something cinematic, melancholic, cheerful, or if you need music in a specific genre, like electronica, hip-hop, or jazz, you can find it on PremiumBeat.
- Sound Effects (SFX): If you need ambient sounds, whooshes, foley, or transitions, they’re there in the library.
Exploring the PremiumBeat Library
One thing that is truly great about PremiumBeat is its navigation. Finding what you’re looking for in the library is straightforward and intuitive because you can browse by genre, mood, instrument, BPM (beats per minute), duration, and even track type. So, for example, if you know the mood you’re trying to create for a scene, you can search PremiumBeat’s library based on moods. Or, if you know you’re going to need a lot of jazz music for your short film about a struggling jazz musician, you can search based on genre. (The jazz music options on PremiumBeat are…chef’s kiss.)
These Features Make Searching Easy
Now, what good is having thousands of great tracks to choose from when you can’t find what you’re looking for? This is one of the biggest strengths PremiumBeat has, because finding the right track is so easy. Here’s why
- Easy Search: Again, all tracks are discoverable based on genre, mood, instrument, etc., so if you know what you’re looking for, you’ll find it.
- Curated Playlists: If you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, the themed collections and playlists introduce you to tracks you might’ve looked past.
- Preview Options: How do you know if you found the right track if you can’t listen to the entire thing? PremiumBeat lets you do that, and offers multiple versions and stems for every track.
Understanding the Licenses
This is a biggie, right? The whole reason you probably went the “royalty-free music” route is because you didn’t want to risk getting your YouTube videos demonetized (or worse…getting sued for copyright infringement). The problem is that licensing can be really confusing. PremiumBeat keeps things simple by offering two types of licenses:
1. Standard License
- Use in web-based content, corporate videos, social media, and non-broadcast projects.
- Ideal for YouTube creators, podcast producers, and indie filmmakers.
- Unlimited projects and perpetual use.
2. Premium License
- Use in TV, theatrical releases, and other high-budget commercial or broadcast content.
- Includes everything in the Standard License, plus additional rights.
- Required for wide distribution platforms like Hulu, Netflix, and broadcast networks.
What You Can Do:
- Monetize your YouTube content
- Use across multiple platforms
- Edit and remix tracks (as long as they’re part of a larger project)
What You Can’t Do:
- Resell or redistribute the music on its own
- Claim ownership of tracks
- Add vocals to tracks and sell or distribute the song as your own
CREDIT: Shutterstock
How to Use PremiumBeat Tracks in Your Projects
Chances are, you’re already at least somewhat familiar with adding music and sound effects to a project. Once you’ve downloaded a track on PremiumBeat, it’s as easy as dropping it into your timeline.
Here are a few ideas on what you can do with your tracks once you download them:
- Download the Full Track and Stems: PremiumBeat doesn’t just offer full tracks. You get access to loops, shortened versions, and stems, too. So, be sure to download them all and organize them for future use.
- Fine-Tune Your Edit: Know why loops and stems are important? Because you can fine-tune your timing and transitions.
- Match the Moment: Audio is meant to produce emotions in your audience. When editing, make sure that your track matches the moment and sets the tone you’re going for.
- Layer with Sound Effects: Give your audience a more dynamic experience by adding cinematic SFX to your edit.
Pro Tip: Build a temp track using watermarked audio during the editing phase, then replace it with the licensed version when locked.
Tips for Getting the Most Out of PremiumBeat
PremiumBeat has a lot of great features for finding the right tracks, but that’s not all it provides. It has features that give you more flexibility, organization, and control over your project. Let’s go over a few:
- Create a Project Playlist: You’ve probably created a playlist for your film projects before, but I bet you haven’t done it on the platform where you get all of your music tracks. Seriously, this is one of the coolest features on PremiumBeat.
- Try Stems for Flexibility: Unless you hire a musician to write a song specifically for your scene, it’s not going to fit perfectly into your edit. That’s why PremiumBeat lets you download stems, so you can isolate parts of a track that work and get rid of what doesn’t. More flexibility is good!
- Build a Personal Library: It’s bound to happen — you’re searching around PremiumBeat’s library for a track and you come across a song that you love but isn’t right for your current project. Well, you can create your own personal library on PremiumBeat by “favoriting” it. Save that gem for later.
Making movies and videos is hard enough — why not make the process of finding music easier? With PremiumBeat, you can search for the tracks you want, manage the ones you love, and use them worry-free.
There are a lot of royalty-free music platforms out there, but PremiumBeat stands out for the quality of the songs, streamlined integration with YouTube, and price point, so definitely check out its library and see if it’s right for you. If you want to give PremiumBeat a try, you can use the exclusive code NFSPB to get a 15% discount on individual tracks and Unlimited Subscriptions.