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 🙂
i have a dozen or so tracks on productiontrax.com.ive sold one track and you can set the price too.Also they have an excellent help system in place.
Hi Mark, thanks. I will definitely have a look at them. For how long have you been with productiontrax.com? I’m also looking at yookamusic.com, musicloops.com and musicsupervisor.com.
Hi Anders
StockAudio.net is fairly new to the marketplace, but is quickly growing its catalogue and offers composers 60% commissions – non-exclusive, so you can still sell your music elsewhere.
Andy D
I have decided only to sign-up to libraries that let’s me set the price of the tracks myself. This way I can keep control and experiment with the pricing. If I could set the price myself I would definitely upload my tracks to your service as your 60% commission is quite generous.
Hi,
It’s important to be careful with which websites you signing to. A guy posted some tips on a forum about Royalty free music websites and said that it’s important to ask the companies if they are using services like Godigital or any other to track music. Here’s what he said about it :
“2) NEVER deal with RF sites that fingerprint or trace your music.
here is a lil story . A good friend of mine , a composer that also sells the same tracks all over the place was banned from a pretty profitable site 2 weeks ago , because a client bought a track from that site , put it under his youtube video and his youtube account was blocked for a few days because of copyright infringement ..
this is what happened .. my friend uploaded his 100 tracks to a whole bunch of royaltyfree sites (non exclusively) .. and one company called audiomicro (without his consent) fingerprinted his tracks through a company called “go digital” in order to make extra royalties from plays on youtube .. but since my friend is selling the same tracks all over the place it created problems , cuz people that bought the same track from any other place other than audiomicro were told that they are using the music illegally and that its copyrighted by audiomicro. Basically he was kicked out and threatened to get sued from a couple of good sites . thank god he figured out that by pitching the tracks up or down a semitone bypasses the godigital system , im any case YOUR FIRST Question to RF companies should be to you use Godigtal or similar services to track music .. if yes , avoid them”
Sorry I can’t seem to post the link of the topic. It’s really interesting though.
Hi Nadege, thanks for the heads up. It’s just unbelievable that a company like audiomicro would claim royalties though GoDigtal Media Group without your consent. It seems that GoDigtal Media Group has gone out of business, at least their website (godigitalmg.com) is no longer active.
I actually had a couple of tracks on audiomicro for testing fixed pricing services, but I have now closed my account (had not made a single sale anyway). I sure don’t want to be excluded from other sites because of their bad practices.
I will probably make a blog post about this tracking topic as it is highly relevant to all interested in selling royalty free music online. GoDigtal Media Group is not the only shark out there. Thanks again 🙂
Hi 🙂
Great site.
I’m also a bit worried about this Content ID situation because it will block you from a lot of the libraries. But AudioMicro support emailed me back and told me that they don’t put Content ID on the tracks. I also see that GoDigital is out of sevice.
I’m not sure what to believe here.