Soundstripe is an excellent stock music site for YouTube and social media creators due to its automatic content ID protection, unlimited licensing model, and quality music library created by professional musicians. While it offers some stock footage, creators needing a more extensive video library might want to consider one of the top stock video sites instead.
Soundstripe review summary:
- What’s new with Soundstripe?
- Cost: Tiered plans for different creator needs
- Library: Few music tracks but lots of SFX
- Search tools: Intuitive interface with powerful filtering
- YouTube protection: Content ID claim resolution
- Integrations: Adobe, Frame.io, and Twitch support
- Customer support: Pretty good live chat
- AI Song Editing: Custom tracks in seconds
- Mobile apps: No updates in over 2 years
- Final thoughts: Excellent for YouTube creators who need audio and some video
What’s new with Soundstripe?
I’ve been monitoring Soundstripe closely over the past year, and here are the most notable updates to the platform.
- YouTube protection enhancements: Soundstripe has significantly improved its YouTube content claim resolution system, adding the ability to clear individual videos by URL in addition to channel whitelisting.
- AI Song Editing tool: Following industry trends, Soundstripe added an AI-powered tool that lets you cut and customize tracks to perfectly fit your video timing needs.
- Video library expansion: The platform has continued to grow its stock footage collection, though it remains smaller than dedicated video platforms.
- Updated pricing structure: Soundstripe renamed its plans and adjusted pricing slightly while maintaining core features that users value.
For more coverage, refer to our Soundstripe archive.
Cost: Tiered plans for different creator needs
- From $9.99 per month for the Personal plan to $69.99 per month for the Pro Plus plan.
- No free trial, but a free account to preview watermarked content.
- Payment options: PayPal, credit cards, and debit cards.
- Available on: Web, mobile web.
Soundstripe offers three subscription tiers with up to 50% discounts for annual commitments. The Personal plan costs $9.99 per month with annual billing ($119.88 upfront) or $19.99 month-to-month. This gives you access to unlimited music and sound effects downloads, one YouTube channel clearance, and licenses for personal and social media use. I recommend this plan for individual creators focusing on their own YouTube channels and social media content.
The Pro plan costs $19.99 per month with annual billing ($239 upfront) or $39.99 month-to-month. With this, you get everything with the Personal plan, plus stem files access, commercial use rights, up to 5 YouTube channel clearances, and workflow integrations with Adobe Premiere Pro, Frame.io, and Twitch. This plan is ideal for freelancers creating content for clients and professionals needing more advanced features.
If you also need footage, the Pro Plus video subscription runs $33.99 per month with annual billing ($399 upfront), adding access to Soundstripe’s video library of 100K clips. This plan is best for production companies and agencies needing a complete media solution.
Compared to competitors, Soundstripe’s pricing is competitive but not the cheapest option. The Personal plan matches the Epidemic Sound Creator plan, the Artlist Music & SFX – Personal, and PremiumBeat’s entry plan, all costing $9.99 monthly (annual billing). But Soundstripe has a smaller music library than most competitors.
If you need a broader range of media types beyond just audio and some video, I like Envato ($16.50 monthly) or Motion Array ($24.99 monthly) might provide better value with larger libraries of templates, graphics, and video effects. Artlist Max is also worth a second thought.
With all Soundstripe plans, you maintain perpetual licenses for any content you download during your subscription, but only for the specific projects you license them for. If you cancel, you can’t use previously downloaded tracks in new projects, though existing projects remain covered. To use a track in a new project after cancellation, you’d need to resubscribe or purchase a single-use license. (That’s common to most unlimited subscriptions.)
Library: Few music tracks but lots of SFX
Soundstripe’s library contains approximately 10,000 music tracks, 100,000 sound effects, and 100,000 stock video clips across various categories. The music catalog spans roughly 40 different genres, with a strong focus on electronic, corporate, pop, and holiday styles.
Their library is comprehensive enough that I can almost always find the right and fresh content. Checking Soundstripe weekly, I noticed they add about 200 new songs monthly, which is not a lot compared to Envato’s enormous collection.
But Soundstripe features music created by Grammy award-winning artists. It’s highly curated and often music for films and theatrical productions.
This is a result of Soundstripe’s curated contributor model. They work with selected musicians rather than accepting submissions from anyone, resulting in a smaller but more consistent library than some competitors. This approach ensures quality control but limits variety.
In terms of size, Soundstripe’s audio library is even smaller than Epidemic Sound, which is average, at best. This makes it significantly smaller than massive marketplaces like Shutterstock or Pond5, with millions of music and sound effects.
But the advantage of this more curated approach is that it’s easier to find quality content without scrolling through dozens of pages. And still, some users report finding the electronic music selection overrepresented.
You can download music in both WAV format for professional production and MP3 for standard use. The Pro and Pro Plus plans grant you access to stem files, which allow you to isolate individual instruments or vocal tracks for more precise customization of the music.
The sound effects library covers standard categories like ambient sounds, transitions, and UI elements. The quality is generally good, though not as extensive as dedicated sound effects libraries.
The video clips, available on the Pro Plus plan, offer basic footage across common categories but can’t compete with dedicated stock video platforms in terms of variety or specificity.
Search tools: Intuitive interface with powerful filtering
Soundstripe’s interface is clean and straightforward, focusing on helping you find the right track quickly. The platform aims to help users “find a song in 5 minutes or less,” and in my experience, the search tools consistently deliver on this promise.
You can search by keyword or browse through curated playlists organized by mood, genre, or project type. These playlists are regularly updated and include categories like “Corporate,” “Young and Free,” and “Happy Holidays,” depending on the season and what’s trending. This makes it easy to find appropriate tracks for common video types.
The filtering system is robust and works as it should. It allows you to narrow results by genre, mood, instrument, duration, beats per minute (BPM), and even musical key.
This is great for finding tracks that match your project’s specific requirements or that will work well together in a longer production.
Clicking on a track opens the details as well as shows “similar songs”. This can help when your audio files are close to what you need but want to explore variations on that sound.
The platform recently added an AI Search (similar to Envato’s and Adobe Stock’s recent additions). It better understands natural language queries—you can talk to it as you would to a person (or an LLM). This makes it easier to find tracks that match specific moods or energy levels.
For instance, this worked remarkably well when I searched “Find a track that sounds like interstellar”. I’ve got several melancholic and otherworldly-themed music tracks.
YouTube protection: Content ID claim resolution
Soundstripe’s YouTube content claim protection system works efficiently and solves a common problem for content creators. With copyright claims becoming more strict due to changing international rules, this protection helps keep your videos monetized.
The platform gives you three ways to handle Content ID claims:
- Channel listing: You can add your YouTube channels to Soundstripe (1 channel with Creator plan, 5 with Pro/Pro Plus). Claims on these channels clear automatically within minutes.
- Single-use codes: For videos on other channels (like client projects), you can create single-use codes to put in video descriptions. These codes clear claims automatically.
- URL clearing: For videos that already have claims, you can paste the YouTube URL into your Soundstripe account for automatic clearing.
This system runs smoothly because Soundstripe owns all rights to every track in its library. It’s similar to Artlist’s Clearlist and Epidemic Sound’s proprietary tools.
According to the users I spoke to, this tool typically gets claims cleared in 2-3 minutes. This is much faster than the days or weeks it can take to dispute claims on your own. Soundstripe reports that 99.98% of videos using their licensed music stay claim-free on social platforms.
Integrations: Adobe, Frame.io, and Twitch support
Soundstripe connects with popular content creation tools to help streamline your workflow. These connections save time and make using licensed music easier across your projects.
The Adobe Premiere Pro extension lets you search, preview, and add music directly in your editing timeline. You can work with watermarked preview tracks while editing, then the system automatically replaces them with high-quality licensed versions when you export. This cuts out about 20 minutes of switching between browser tabs and file management.
Soundstripe recently added an Adobe Express add-on too. This helps when creating quick social media content or presentations, as you can browse the full music library without leaving Express.
For team collaboration, there’s Frame.io integration, which allows you to upload watermarked preview tracks to Frame.io projects. Then, teammates can comment on music choices during the review process.
If you’re a Twitch streamer, you’re probably already aware of how careful you need to be with copyrighted music. Soundstripe’s Twitch extension lets you play DMCA-safe background music controlled from your streaming dashboard.
The free version comes with several curated playlists. For exclusive and custom playlists, as well as shuffle features, you need the Twitch Pro extension, which costs $3.99 per month.
Soundstripe includes these integrations in their mid-tier Pro plan ($19/month), which is affordable for most individual creators. Some competitors reserve similar tools for their highest-priced tiers only.
The integrations work reliably most of the time, but I’ve had occasional sync problems after major Adobe updates. When this happens, you’ll need to wait a few days for compatibility patches. This temporarily disrupts workflow compared to built-in options like Adobe Stock, though Soundstripe typically resolves these issues within a few days.
Customer support: Pretty good live chat
If you have a question about Soundstripe that Photutorial doesn’t answer, you can try their Help page. It’s not the most comprehensive and leaves lots of questions unanswered, but you can learn about the basics, such as how the subscription works, licensing, payment, and Twitch.
Beyond that, Soundstripe’s help page falls short. I’ve tried it multiple times and support agents have always been extremely kind and helpful. The only downside is that they’re online only during the weekdays from 9 am to 6 pm CST. (Note: That’s 4 PM to 1 AM CET or 7 AM to 4 PM PT.)
AI Song Editing: Custom tracks in seconds
Soundstripe’s AI Song Editing tool helps video creators adjust stock music to fit specific timeline needs.
The tool analyzes the musical structure of any Soundstripe track and breaks it into color-coded, timestamped segments that match the song’s natural sections. You can rearrange, trim, or extend tracks.
I was skeptical at first, but it works well. Instead of making rough cuts that sound jarring (like when editing manually in Premiere), the AI finds natural entry and exit points that keep musical flow intact. You can jump from intro to chorus, loop specific sections, or create shorter versions without awkward transitions.
The system works for both instrumental tracks and songs with vocals. All edits keep the same copyright protection and Content ID clearance as original tracks.
The tool is only available on desktop for now. Also, while the AI performs well, some complex musical pieces can confuse it, resulting in not-so-natural transition points.
Mobile apps: No updates in over 2 years
Soundstripe offers mobile apps for Android and iOS that bring most of the platform’s features to your smartphone. But to my disappointment, both apps haven’t been updated in over 2 years.
That’s because Soundstripe now works in your mobile browser the same way as on your desktop (notice the URL app.soundstripe.com when browsing even on desktop). In other words, Soundstripe works as a browser-based app.
Unfortunately, this comes with slower performance on mobile. Despite my relatively powerful smartphone and latest browser updates, the app often lags for several seconds and requires a refresh. It doesn’t feel as snappy as, say, Epidemic Sound’s app.
Due to this setup, the mobile version has all the same features as the desktop version, albeit in a vertical orientation. You can browse, find, and license content directly from your phone while away from your desk. And everything is synced up to your desktop account as well (because it’s the same account).
Final thoughts: Excellent for YouTube creators who need audio and some video
Soundstripe provides content creators with a solid collection of royalty-free music, sound effects, and even some video clips. It excels with its automatic YouTube content ID protection and high-quality tracks produced by Grammy-winning engineers. Soundstripe’s intuitive search interface and workflow integrations with Adobe Premiere Pro and Frame.io streamline the creative process. It’s an excellent choice for YouTube and social media creators needing reliable audio licensing. Those requiring larger libraries should consider Envato, Motion Array, or Artlist, which offer larger collections across multiple media types.
