When it comes to creating engaging films one of the most important elements is building a great audio track. Without the right music and matching sound effects, the experience for the audience can degrade to the point of utter disinterest. Therefore, I am always on the lookout for great new audio pieces to use for my own short films.
The Audio Elite Royalty Free Music Pack
I was recently approached by Connor Berge from CreatingFilm to review their brand new Audio Elite Royalty Free Music Pack. It contains 250+ songs across 13 different genres and costs $99, currently reduced to $50 if you use their promotional code ‘FALL’ at check out.
If, like me, you have been around the internet a couple of times in search of quality music for your film projects, you will notice that bang-for-buck wise this is actually a pretty solid deal. I’ve seen individual songs being sold for over $25 a piece online and with the Audio Elite music pack you come in at around $.40 per song. Not bad at all.
Audio Elite sits in a similar price range to Pro Scores by Video Copilot which costs $99.95 and Cinema Crunch Scores from Triune Films which will set you back $120.
There are quite a few choices available and I recommend checking out all these packs to see what you’re getting for your money.
Both Pro Scores and Cinema Crunch are very targeted at the action/thriller/horror genre whereas the Audio Elite pack aims to cover all genres. Let’s have a look at what you’re getting with the Audio Elite royalty free music pack from CreatingFilm!
Audio Elite Music Pack Contents
After you purchase the Audio Elite music pack, you will be given download links to 13 separate .zip files. Each of these files contains a different category of music. After downloading and unzipping all of them, you will have the following folders:
- Action
- Adventure
- Background
- Chase
- Dark
- Dramatic
- Exciting
- HipHop
- Inspiration
- Joyful
- Relaxed
- Sorrowful
- Unique
Each of these folders contains between 5-30 songs each and each song is around 1 to 5 minutes long, suitable for a short film or at least an individual scene within your feature length movie.
Let’s have a listen to some of the tracks from the Audio Elite music pack. Here is a fat action movie theme:
Check out this desert sounding adventure music:
Or if you want something more upbeat. I could imagine this being used in a Lord of The Rings scene:
Finally, let’s check out something rather dark and sad:
I was pretty impressed with the quality of the audio, especially given the large number of songs in the pack. There are a few songs in the pack that are a little simpler and more synthetic sounding, but all audio tracks are very well composed, arranged, recorded and mixed.
To me however, the biggest selling point for Audio Elite is the sheer number of songs it contains as well as the diversity.
I absolutely love Pro Scores from Video Copilot, but when it comes to anything that is not an action, thriller or horror movie I know I’ll be hard strung to find something in the pack. The same goes for the excellent Cinema Crunch from Trinue Films. Both are amazing music packs but all the tracks they contain are hard action themes, dark thriller tracks or creepy sounds.
For example, for our Fight Short Film ‘You Took My Credit’ I needed a happy, bouncy track that would fit the office scene at the start of the movie. I ended up finding something suitable in the Audio Elite Pack called ‘Cool Beans’ under the ‘Relaxed’ category. Have a listen for yourself – it’s the piece at the start of the video.
Here are a couple of other examples from the Audio Elite pack to give you an idea of how varied the songs in the pack are.
Why Pay When I Can Get Free Music?
One question that you might be asking is: why pay for music when you can find free music to online? Yes, there are some great resources online that offer you free music to use. Some places worth checking out are Incompetech, MachinimaSound or even the YouTube audio library. So what are the downsides?
Personally I prefer not having to include a large number of credits for audio in my video and purchasing royalty free music absolves me from that responsibility. I also find that the music sold in music packs tends to be of a higher quality and is better organised and prepared to be used in my short films.
Also, while there are many great free pieces available online, it takes a long time of sifting through bad music to find a few good ones that will fit and make your video stand out. Having well organised, dedicated music packs at my disposal simply saves me the time and, having a full time job, time is very hard to come by for me.
Lastly, and this might be a petty one, less people use paid music so it’s less likely that your viewers will get bored because they heard the same song on a million other videos already.
To me those reasons are enough to justify spending a little bit of money on some dedicated sound packs and the great thing is that these packs are all available at reasonable prices that are well within the reach for low budget film makers like myself.
Verdict
The Audio Elite music pack from CreatingFilm is a great music library to have and I guarantee that you will find something in the pack for almost any situation or style of film or scene. Some songs are a bit on the simpler side, but there are so many great cinematic pieces in there that I love that it’s hard to hold that against the pack.
Unlike Pro Scores or Cinema Crunch, the songs in the Audio Elite pack are not split up into separate layers, but if you want a wide selection of easy-to-pick, great sounding music tracks to take your next film project to the next level, Audio Elite from CreatingFilm is definitely an option worth considering.
