Royalty-Free to be UGC: AudioMicro Connects Composers and Creators for Awesome, Affordable Music-for-Image

Online video has grown up in the past decade, and royalty-free production music source AudioMicro has grown with it. Founded in 2007 to support the efforts of video creators, the library launched to connect the work of production-oriented composers with the video makers who needed them.

AudioMicro keeps fees low and quality strong, focusing on creators and gathering a wide range of music and sounds representing all genres and approaches. From sound effects to uptempo electronic loops to ambient scores, AudioMicro offers the right music for every image and project, with more than 265,000 tracks--some from GRAMMY-winning composers.

AudioMicro’s President Noah Becker came to the business from the creative side. A seasoned composer and producer as well as music business insider, formerly at Brooklyn Music Ltd, Sony Music Entertainment, and Ultra Records, Becker wanted to create a space where music creators could easily license their works directly to video creators. “We wanted a user-generated content library where people could find awesome music and sounds for their videos at an affordable price point,” say Becker.

Since then, the video ecosystem has grown by leaps and bounds, and everyone from YouTubers to OTT video music supervisors need the right soundtrack. To empower them, AudioMicro has focused on constantly refining search, to deliver the right potential tracks efficiently. “We're constantly working on our search and discovery algorithms and methodology,” Becker explains. “Our player is custom and proprietary. It allows you to scroll through search results, and jump to different pages of the results, while simple forward and back arrow cues allow you to move through the songs in your search results. It makes for a more seamless search and discovery process.”

The tech features are coupled with human curation, thanks to the ears of Joshua Priest. A veteran of NBCUniversal and Syfy projects, Priest homes in on the best tracks to feature based on overall general user preferences and sales. “We find uplifting, happy music to be among our popular tracks,” Becker notes, “followed closely by high-energy genres like Dubstep and epic and cinematic pieces, especially tracks designed for trailers."

These tracks and sounds can be licensed for a small, one-time fee, or via a reasonably priced subscription plan, some of the best prices in the industry. Licensing and check out are swift and painless. A select catalog of music and sound effects are available for free.

In all its tech and content management approaches, AudioMicro and its sister company AdRev, which works to claim and monetize audio on platforms like YouTube, keep artists and creators at the center of what they do. “We are all creatives ourselves, and that constantly inspires the way we seek to help others in music and creative industries,” Becker reflects. “We’ve built a company culture around care and empathy, and that’s created incredible employee loyalty, a 96% retention rate over our last ten years. That speaks a lot to our vibe, and that vibe is mirrored in our platforms and products, the way we treat our users.”