When it comes to selling royalty free music online there are a lot of options. In fact there so many stock media sites that it can difficult to know where to start. In this post I will share what I have found out so far.

I think the best way to get started is to use some of the well established media stock sites. For one thing using the established stock sites and their costumer base will give you and idea of which tracks are selling and which are not.

Is building your own stock music web-shop an option?

Going all in from the start and trying to sell your compositions on your own will be tough. Building a site with your own web-shop on it will take some  time. You also need a lot of different tracks right from the start. Having an half empty web-shop is not a god way to get people to buy.

After that you have to start promoting you web-shop and starting from zero with a completely new site will be pretty much up hill right from the start. To get a 100% of the profit from the sales seems tempting but I would rather have 50% of something than 100% of nothing.

“Besides being a musician I am also an affiliate marketer and believe me when I say that on most sites you need quite a lot of visits to get any sales”

I have no doubt at all – the established stock media sites is the way to go.

Top 6 stock media site I will upload my compositions too

Pond5.com. To me pond5.com seems very promising. They have a great site and offer a 50% commission as a non-exclusive contributor. You are also allowed to set the selling price yourself.  They have decent amount of cinematic compositions but not that many that it will be impossible to compete. The quality of some of the cinematic tracks are in my opinion not that great.

RevoStock.com is also one of the sites I have my hopes up for. They are almost as generous with the commission as pond.5com, they give your 45% as a non exclusive. RevoStock.com have been around for quite a while so there are a lot of competition for the top spots. Their site do look great and it seems like a great team running it.

Stockmusic.net. This site is a little different from the others as you have to post an album and not just single tracks. They offer a 50% commission and seem like a decent site.

Audiosparx.com Interesting but I can find no info on their site about how much they pay. So I have to do more research on this one. They also require you to submit a minimum of 20 tracks from the start so I got to have more tracks before I give it a go.

iStockphoto.com is on of the biggest players when it comes to stock photos. A few years back they re-launched the audio section. The commissions starts 15% and goes up to 20% as a non-exclusive contributor. I will also include iStocphoto.com as one of the first sites to upload my compositions to. They have a huge customer base but their pricing is on the low side.

Audiojungle.net. This is probably a good spot for me to be in as the people who comes here, are very much on the look out for tracks with a cinematic sound. However you cannot set the price tag yourself and the prices on the tracks uploaded there seems qute low to me. Seems like $14 is the highest when it comes to music. Also as a non exclusive you only get 33%. They do however have an affiliate program where you can get additional 30% if you refer customers through your own links.

Signing-up to the first two the list – coming up next

This is the sites I have found so far. There are a lot more to choose from but for me to sign up I think they will need to have a decent pricing system. So maybe iStockphoto and AudioJungle is of the list from the start. I guess I will find out later in my process. Pond5.com and Revostock.com will defiantly get a visit from me in the following days.

So did I miss some great stock media sites out there? I probably did, please let me know in the comments below,  thanks 🙂