Free Pro-Level Music For Your Podcast In 2025

Summary

Buzzcast Episode Summary

Episode Title: Free Pro-Level Music For Your Podcast In 2025
Release Date: May 2, 2025
Host: Buzzsprout Team
Main Theme:
This episode explores the exciting news that renowned artist Moby has relaunched “Moby Gratis,” making hundreds of his tracks freely available for creators—including podcasters—in 2025. The hosts discuss the implications of this move, the licensing conditions, how Moby’s music can be used, and recommend other high-quality free music resources for podcasts. They also reflect on music’s role in podcasting, best practices for intros, and touch on recent podcast marketing advice.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Moby’s Relaunched Free Music Archive (Moby Gratis)

• Announcement Overview

  • Moby has relaunched his music archive “Moby Gratis,” making 500 tracks free for creators (podcasters, influencers, filmmakers, etc.), with plans to expand to 1,500 songs.
  • Creators can download, remix, and use the music in their content with simple attribution.
  • C (Jordan) summarized:

    “Moby dropped 500 free songs for creators on his website… He included, like, content creators, influencers, rappers, whatever, and you can just get his music remix it if you want and use it in your content.” (02:08)

• Who Is Moby?

  • The hosts joked about their varying familiarity with Moby, and clarified he’s a legendary electronic music figure with major 90s influence.
  • A:

    “He had an album in the 90s that I think every single track on it got licensed for a TV show or. Or a movie at some point. … I think it’s called Play.” (00:45)

2. Licensing Terms and Notable Restrictions

• Permitted Use

  • The music is free for use with attribution: mention “music provided by Moby Gratis,” using the hashtag #MobyGratis for social posts.

• Explicit Limitations

  • Users may not use Moby’s music to:

    1. Advertise right wing politics or causes
    2. Promote meat, dairy, or other animal products

  • B read from the license:

    “There are only two things you can’t do with the music here. Use it to advertise right wing politics or causes. Or use it to promote meat, dairy or other animal products.” (03:14)

• Rationale & Context

  • The hosts discussed whether these limits equate to censorship.

  • A provided context:

    “He has giant tattoos down his arms that say animal rights. I think he’s been vegan, like, his whole life. … the two animal rights arms are the ones that made it at my computer.” (05:11)

  • On the licensing approach:

    “I like the fact that it’s your stuff. … especially if you’re giving it out for free, like, you should be able to put some guidelines around that.” — B (05:43)

3. Alternative Free and Premium Music Resources for Podcasting

• Other Free Music Options

  • Pixabay and YouTube Audio Library: both mentioned as reliable sources (06:41)
  • Blue Dot Sessions: quality Creative Commons tracks, some used by “99% Invisible” and “The Daily”. Licensing may be required for podcasts but often affordable (07:04, 07:46)
  • Breakmaster Cylinder: known for work with Gimlet’s Reply All, also offers free tracks (07:04)

• Jordan’s Tip (C):

  “What I really love about seeing these new music archive and databases coming out is that they have it organized by like feeling or mood or instrument or beats or genre of music. And just makes it so much easier to find the free music that you’re looking for.” (08:14)

• Paid Options

  • Epidemic Sound, Art List, Storyblocks, and Audio Jungle cited as quality but potentially expensive (08:14)

4. Music Best Practices in Podcast Production

• Purposeful Music Use:

  • B stressed using music intentionally to enhance stories—not as lengthy intros or outros:

    “When we talk about music for podcasts, I think about it in terms of using music to enhance your podcast through storytelling… We’re not talking about doing a big intro theme song or a big ending theme song.” (09:02)

• Skip Long Intros:

  • Discussed frustration with podcasts with long, loud intros; praised podcast apps that allow automatic skipping.
    • “I don’t know why they mix it so the music is too loud… it’s 40 seconds of like, intro. It’s not even an ad. … No one wants to hear this song again.” — A (10:24)

• Matching Mood & Content:

  • Jordan notes his own show’s intro is 21 seconds for mood-setting:

    “I would point out that my dreamful intro is 21 seconds long before I start talking.” (10:43)

    • “If you use it correctly, it’s fine.” — C
    • “It’s a vibe shift. You’re going to try to help people relax and get into a calm state.” — B (10:53)

• YouTube Parallels:

  • Noted that long intros/outros are disappearing in both podcasting and YouTube due to evolving audience expectations and “algorithmic content” filtering out disliked trends. (11:20–12:03)

5. Recent Podcasting Advice and Community Engagement

• Podcast Growth Tips (from Steven Robles’ video)

  • Featured Albin; advice summarized as:
    • Market your show proactively
    • Know your audience and find them where they already are

    “If you want to grow your show, you should do some marketing. … You need to know who is your audience and what is the show about, and then where does that audience hang out? Because you need to be able to present them your show at the right time, like where they already are.” — A (12:18)

• Call for Listener Stories

  • The hosts invited listeners to share the “strangest marketing tactic you’ve used on your podcast that worked.” (13:03)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Moby’s Licensing Terms:

  “There are only two things you can’t do with the music here. Use it to advertise right wing politics or causes. Or use it to promote meat, dairy or other animal products.” — B (03:14)

• On Fairness and Artistic Choice:

  “If it’s your stuff, you can say, hey, you can use it and you can’t.” — B (04:03)

• On Moby’s Identity:

  “He has giant tattoos down his arms that say animal rights.” — A (05:11) “He literally has a neck tattoo that says vegan in, like, big block letters.” — C (05:20)

• On Free Music Search Improvements:

  “What I really love about seeing these new music archive and databases coming out is that they have it organized by like feeling or mood or instrument or beats or genre of music.” — C (08:14)

• On Using Music in Podcasts:

  “I think about it in terms of using music to enhance your podcast through storytelling… We’re not talking about doing a DJ show.” — B (09:02)

• On Long Intros:

  “There’s a lot of shows I’m like, I don’t know why they mix it so the music is too loud.” — A (10:24) “It’s a vibe shift. You’re going to try to help people relax and get into a calm state.” — B (10:53)

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Resource Timestamps

• 00:03 – Moby relaunches Moby Gratis; what it is and why it matters
• 02:08 – Details of Moby’s offering and plans for more tracks
• 03:14 – Reading and discussing Moby’s license restrictions
• 05:11 – Moby’s animal rights activism background
• 06:41 – Alternative free music sources for podcasters
• 07:04 – Blue Dot Sessions, Breakmaster Cylinder recommendations
• 08:14 – Tips for finding the right music in archives
• 09:02 – Best practices for music in podcasts (intentional use)
• 10:43 – How long intros affect listener experience
• 12:16 – Summary of podcast growth advice from Steven Robles’ video

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Takeaways for Podcasters

• Moby’s generous music donation is a major win for podcasters—as long as they avoid animal product promotion and right-wing politics.
• Attribution is simple, and the music library will continue to grow.
• Consider the purpose of music in your show—be intentional, keep intros brief, and focus on enhancing, not distracting from, your content.
• There are quality free alternatives (Pixabay, Blue Dot Sessions, etc.)—don’t default to expensive libraries.
• Stay engaged with evolving podcasting best practices and keep an ear to listener preferences and new resources.

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Links to discussed resources and more info are in the episode’s show notes.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, guys. Hey, Jordan. Hey.

[B]

Happy Friday.

[C]

Happy Friday. This week, I saw on social media that Moby had posted a video where he announced a relaunch of his, like, music archive. He calls it Moby Gratis.

[B]

Moby the electronic music guy?

[C]

Yeah. Singer, songwriter, Grammy nominated artist, like, MTV award winner, I'm sure.

[A]

Bald guy.

[C]

Famous bald guy. Famous bald guy.

[B]

All right, confession. I know who Moby is.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't think I've ever listened to any Moby music.

[A]

Oh, no, you have. You've listened.

[B]

Have I?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Cause he's super famous. Like, everybody knows who he is, but I don't know that. Like, I've never gone onto a music app and searched for Moby.

[A]

This is a good way to get our show banned, if to actually play some for you. But he had an album in the 90s that I think every single track on it got licensed for a TV show or. Or a movie at some point.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

Oh, wow.

[A]

And so it's. I think it's called Play, but then, like, everything on it got picked up, and it was on all sorts of TV shows, so you'd recognize it.

[B]

So you're hearing Moby stuff. I'm hearing Moby stuff probably all the time and not even realizing it's Moby.

[A]

Right. And I think that's the case for a lot of music that we. You'd be like, I have no idea who this person is until you listen. You're like, oh, that's that really famous song from, like, the commercial.

[B]

Okay, so is he, like, the composer for, like, the Raiders march from, like, Raiders of the Lost Ark?

[A]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was movie.

[B]

That was Moby.

[C]

What?

[B]

Thinking of famous music scores from movies.

[A]

He wasn't scoring it. He.

[B]

I'm just kidding.

[A]

Oh, man. It's. It's different if you get picked up in a Zach Braff, you know, movie, and then, you know, it's like, oh, okay, so now you're in this. You're in a movie versus.

[B]

I got you.

[A]

What. What's John Williams is scoring music?

[B]

I have no idea. So if you need background music for somebody who's solving a tough math equation, Moby might be somebody you go to Beautiful Mind.

[A]

Subject. All right, so what did Moby do, Jordan? Sorry, we've derailed this.

[C]

Well, Moby dropped 500 free songs for creators on his website, and he said that, you know, he's just putting these out there for people to make stuff. He included, like, content creators, influencers, rappers, whatever, and you can just get his music remix. It if you want and use it in your content. So I thought that was really cool because podcasters are going to be in that content creator group.

[B]

So basically a huge royalty free library of music.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

That podcasters can now use. Do you need to do attribution or anything like that?

[C]

Yeah. He asked you to just mention that the music was provided by Moby Gratis and he said you can even use the hashtag MobyGratis if you're using it for social media. But yeah, it's 500 songs. He said that he's going to add 500 more in the future and then 500 after that because he said he has. I think he has like 1500 songs just kind of like laying around his studio or something.

[B]

But yeah, that's how he works. I'm just gonna go, what are you doing today? I'm gonna crank out 500 more.

[C]

Seriously?

[B]

Okay, that's good. I did click on the site when you dropped the link in. I clicked on it.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I noticed that in order, like to preview a track, I had to accept the license terms. And it says, I'm going to read this verbatim off the website. There are only two things you can't do with the music here. Use it to advertise right wing politics or causes.

[C]

Oh.

[B]

Or use it to promote meat, dairy or other animal products.

[C]

So we can't use it on buzzcast because we talked about the. What was it? The deer jerky or whatever it was.

[B]

We weren't promoting. Were we promoting it? I think I said I liked it. I don't know if that means I'm promoting.

[C]

I mean, is not promotion.

[A]

This is so all the crypto carnivore podcasts. You're out.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

They're just totally not accepted.

[C]

You're done.

[B]

We don't use. We don't advertise right wing politics or causes. That's. That's safe. But it does make me feel like we are. It does feel like this is like censorship a little bit.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Right now I think I'm cool with it because it's like it's his stuff. Right. So he could say like, I think I like the idea that if it's your stuff, you can say, hey, you can use it and you can't. Right? You can, you can't. But there have been some, I don't know, like famous cases of, you know, bakeries that refuse to create a cake for somebody because they don't like.

[C]

Oh, like refusal of service.

[B]

That's happening.

[A]

Cake shop.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so does this fall into that same category, Alvin, like, legally, do you think, or do you think it's totally fine?

[A]

No, I think he's just giving it away. I'd imagine there's probably. I don't know, there. There's also sometimes, like, is it legally defensible or is it just. I'm throwing it out there and, you know, I'd rather not have my music used in, like, a Trump rally in the future.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I should have explained this more when I was describing Moby to you, Kevin. Moby is an artist from the 90s who's got to be in his 60s. He's bald, but he also has.

[B]

Wait, why? Why is that a big deal that he's bald?

[A]

Because I'm. I'm just describing him.

[B]

I'm bald.

[A]

All right. I'm just describing.

[B]

That's bald discrimination.

[A]

But there is another thing you need to know about Moby.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

He has giant tattoos down his arms that say animal rights. Okay. I think he's been vegan, like, his whole life.

[C]

He literally has a neck tattoo that says vegan in, like, big block letters.

[A]

Yeah. So him saying, I'm just throwing this cool music out there, I want to give it as a gift to the world. But, like, the two animal rights arms are the ones that made it at my computer. Like, you don't get to use it for your commercial chicken plant or something. Yeah. So I. I think that's fair.

[B]

So there are two things very important to him. One is he loves, like, the protection of animals. Doesn't like the, like, using animals for food and dairy and all that kind of stuff. Get that? And then they. I guess he doesn't like right wing political stuff that's important to him. I mean, I like. I said I like the fact that it's your stuff. You can say, especially if you're giving it out for free. Like, you should be able to put some guidelines around that. I don't know if it's legally defendable or not. Who cares? I feel like it's a little bit of censorship, but it's like, type of censorship that, like, I'm cool with. It's like, type is somebody just saying, yeah, don't do this. Like, it's my stuff, and here's things that are important to me.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And if you don't fall into those two camps, I mean, the music's really good.

[A]

Is it really?

[C]

Oh, it's so good. Yeah. Pretty solid free music that you can use. So. Yeah, if you don't fall in those two camps and you don't care about that licensing agreement, then go for it.

[A]

Do we have any, any recommendations for the meat podcasts of the world?

[C]

Yes, we do the right wing meat podcasts.

[A]

Right. I mean there's, there's a lot out there. We've done videos and we've written blog posts of this, but like Pixabay and YouTube audio library.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Jordan, I think you said you sent this over. Blue Dot Sessions has some of their stuff. You can actually license it if it's like for personal products for free.

[C]

Yeah. I was pulling some of the free music resources that we had for the show notes and then I noticed, yeah, Blue Dot Sessions, which has done music for 99% invisible in the daily. They have loads of Creative Commons music on their website and I'll link to that in the show notes as well. But that's really cool. And then I remember we talked about Breakmaster Cylinder, who does the music for Gimlet's Reply all also has a ton of like free music. So I just, I love that there's all this high quality music coming in for like content creators that's just like free to use in your creative way and it helps you make your projects like just so cool.

[A]

I would say for Blue Dot Sessions, I think if you use them for your podcast, it looks like you need to have kind of like the basic licensing. So you're getting really good music though. So I think this is a little bit of a nicer alternative for lots of people. I mean, it's why this American Life and Spotify and Wall Street Journal and all sorts of people use it because it's really good music and you can use it in your podcast probably for pretty cheap.

[C]

Yeah. And for my podcast, I mean I have music licensing that is recurring for Epidemic Sound and Art List and I've used storyblocks, which I think has been renamed as something else. And then there's like Audio Jungle and that can get so expensive so fast. And there are really great like free music archives. There is one specifically called Free Music Archive, but a lot of these are really hard to comb through. And what I really love about seeing these new music archive and databases coming out is that they have it organized by like feeling or mood or instrument or beats or genre of music. And just makes it so much easier to find the free music that you're looking for. Because it used to be a nightmare to search for free music.

[B]

Yeah, it makes me think of this point, Jordan, is that my sensibilities and I'd like to hear your thoughts, but when we talk about music for podcasts, I think about it in terms of using music to enhance your podcast through storytelling. Are we building drama or is there a big reveal or is there something inquisitive or whatever's happening? If you're doing storytelling or if you're interviewing somebody and they're. They're telling a story or something like, that's the right time to sort of use background music to enhance the mood. We're not talking about doing a DJ show. Yeah, a DJ show. We're not talking about doing a big intro theme song or a big ending theme song. I mean, ending theme songs are better than intro theme songs, but any theme song in general is typically not something that I'm super into. I know on a full buzzcast episode, we still have the. What is it? Here we go.

[C]

Yeah, that deal.

[B]

It's what, three seconds when you drop that in? Yeah, like, and it's just kind of a transition piece for us in between, like our cold open segment and then getting into the topics of the day. But I do still stumble upon podcasts from time to time that anytime I click play on that podcast, it's like 30 seconds of music. And I don't know about you guys, but I'm reaching for that, like, advanced fast forward button right away.

[A]

Well, one of the features I really like, I think Pocket Cast has this. I know Overcast has it is by podcast. You can set skip the beginning of this much of the show.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And there's a lot of shows I'm like, I don't know why they mix it so the music is too loud.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

I mean, it's kind of embarrassing sometimes when you're like, wow, it's 40 seconds of like, intro. It's not even an ad. It's just like, you know, one song you liked one time, and I throw it in at the beginning every time. I'm like, no one wants to hear this song again.

[C]

I would point out that my dreamful intro is 21 seconds long before I start talking.

[B]

Is it like setting the mood, though, right? Like, it's setting the mood.

[A]

It is.

[C]

I think if you use it correctly, it's fine.

[B]

It's a vibe shift. You're going to try to help people relax and get into a calm state. This was a big thing in YouTube videos. I think it's phasing out over the last year or two. But like, five years ago, like, any big YouTube channel that you went to to click on, they usually would hit you with a 15 or 20 second cold open. Like, here's what we're talking about today. We're about to dig in. Here we go. And then there's like some big title sequence created by some, you know, after effects guru with a spinning logo.

[A]

Do perfect.

[B]

Like, it's 30 seconds of 3D art and loud music before you get into the content. Luckily, that's starting to go away from YouTube and hopefully it is going away from podcasting as well, I think.

[A]

So we really should try to focus more on what's really good about algorithmic content sometimes is that you start seeing pretty quickly, like, some of these dumb trends that nobody liked do kind of get filtered out. The really long song, the really big intro you see on TV all the time, the constant end cap and then recap surrounding commercials. All that stuff got weeded out in YouTube because they realized, like, nobody liked this, nobody really wanted this, and now it's gone.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. All right. And speaking of YouTube, Stephen Robles posted a video saying, I asked podcast experts how to grow your audience. And right on the thumbnail photo is Albin.

[B]

Oh, look at that.

[A]

Jordan sent this to me a few minutes ago, and I did not know what I said, so I had to go watch it. Steven and I met up at Podcast Movement Evolutions, and I thought the advice on there actually is pretty good. Yeah, but it's not going to be unique for anybody who listens to this show. The advice is, if you want to grow your show, you should do some marketing. And a lot of shows do zero marketing. And then the other is to do that marketing, you need to know who is your audience and what is the show about, and then where does that audience hang out? Because you need to be able to present them your show at the right time, like where they already are. You can't just hope that magically they will find it. So, yes, maybe a little bit more boring, but I think still applicable advice.

[C]

Yeah, it's. Of course it's Steven. So it's a well produced video. It's a great watch. He has everything paced out perfectly and visually interesting. So, yeah, there's. There's quite a few people on there that I think have good points about podcast marketing. So if you want to watch that, I will drop a link to that in the show notes as well. All right. And we're still looking for submissions for our last Sound off question asking you what is the strangest marketing tactic you've used on your podcast? That worked. So make sure to tap the Texas show link in the show notes, and until next time, keep podcasting.