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How to sell music on stock sites: a practical start

Stock sites sell licenses for your music to people who make videos, ads and games. Here is how it works, where to start, and what to prepare before the first upload.

By , a composer with 300+ tracks on audio stock and 12 years in production. Updated 10 October 2026. 3 min read.

In short. A stock site sells a license to use your track in a video, an ad or a game. You keep the rights; the site shares each sale with you. Start with two or three sites, read their rules, and prepare files and descriptions once. Then upload in batches, record every status, and keep going: a stock catalog grows by volume and time.

How it works

A buyer makes a video. They need music for it. On a stock site they search, listen, and buy a license: the right to use your track in their project. You keep the rights to the music, and the site pays you a share of the sale.

Buyers search for what they are making, not for genres: "corporate presentation", "travel vlog", "epic trailer". That is why descriptions and tags matter as much as the music. See How to tag stock music.

Kinds of places

  • Marketplaces. You upload, the site reviews, and buyers pay per license. On some you set the price yourself.
  • Subscription libraries. Buyers pay a monthly fee and download what they want. Authors are paid from a shared pool. Many of these choose authors and tracks more strictly.
  • Music libraries. A publisher takes your tracks, pitches them to TV and film, and often keeps the publisher's share of royalties. These deals are often exclusive.

Read what each place asks before you upload. Some take a track only if it is nowhere else. See Exclusive or non-exclusive.

Start with two or three sites

Every site has its own upload form, its own rules and its own review. Learning them takes time. Start with two or three, learn how they work, and add more later.

Check before you choose:

  • Is it exclusive? Can the same track be on other sites?
  • What files does it want? Format, length, versions.
  • Does it allow music registered with a performing rights society? Some sites ask, and some buyers filter by it.
  • How does it pay, and does it need a tax form before it does?
  • Does it take music made with AI? Most stock sites don't. See Can you sell AI music?

Prepare before the first upload

  1. Finished files. Usually WAV. Many sites also want short edits and a loop. See Versions, cutdowns and stems.
  2. A title that is not taken in your own catalog.
  3. The words for each track: genre, mood, use case, instruments, a short description, and tags. Write them once and keep them with the track. See the metadata checklist.
  4. Your details: your name as composer, your society and IPI number if you have one.

Upload in batches

Upload several tracks at a time to one site, then the same tracks to the next. Reviews take days, sometimes weeks. Some tracks will be rejected. Read the reason, fix what you can, and send the track again or send it somewhere else.

Write down the status of every track on every site as you go: Live, Review, Reject, To upload. With 50 tracks on four sites, that is 200 statuses. Nobody keeps that in memory. See How to keep track of where your music is uploaded.

Content ID: read the rules

You can register stock music in YouTube Content ID through a Content ID service. Then a buyer's video may get a claim. The buyer clears it with the license. Some sites allow this. Some allow it only through certain Content ID companies. Motion Array, for example, takes only tracks registered with AdRev, Artlist, CD Baby, EpicElite, HAAWK or Identifyy. Read each site's rules before you register a track. How Content ID works and which tracks qualify: YouTube Content ID.

Keep going

A stock catalog grows slowly. Each track adds a small chance of a sale. So a catalog earns through the number of tracks and through time, not through one hit. Upload regularly, a few tracks every week or month, and keep the record current as you go.

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