Best Royalty-Free Stock Library for Business (2022) – High-Quality Video, Photo, and Music

Stock images, videos, and music are invaluable resources for your business's marketing activities. Whether you want to create product catalogs, YouTube videos, social media posts, or website content, these audio and visual elements are necessary to establish a professional image and convey value.

However, many business owners and marketers run into the same problem when sourcing stock media—not many sites offer royalty-free, high-quality videos, photos, and music clips all in one place. That can mean not only wasted time, but extra costs, as you may have to subscribe to multiple services.

Some businesses consider free stock-asset libraries, but that comes with problems as well, primarily in the difference between Creative Commons content and royalty-free content. When a creator uploads content such as free stock music, videos, or photos to a creative hosting platform, they have the option to apply a Creative Commons license to their creation. This content is copyrighted under a Creative Commons license, but it is available to the public for free use.

Various restrictions may apply to Creative Commons content, with the most common restriction being that users don't have the right to use the content for commercial purposes. In other words, these stock assets are free to use, but you don't have the right to use them for marketing. You should avoid free stock asset sites to avoid copyright infringement claims.

Royalty-free stock assets are licenses you can use for monetizable content. The term "royalty-free" means free of future payments to the original owner on a per-view basis. Various websites and other platforms offer curated libraries of royalty-free content, but you need to make monthly payments to access these libraries.

Let's take an in-depth look at the best royalty-free stock libraries you can use for your business's marketing efforts.

• 5 Best Stock Music, Photos, and Videos Libraries for Businesses
• The Best Source for Stock Libraries is PowerDirector
• iStock
• Shutterstock
• Getty Images
• Depositphotos
• Storyblocks
• Consider PowerDirector 365 Business
• Get the Best Royalty-Free Stock Photos, Videos, and Music

5 Best Stock Music, Photos, and Videos Libraries for Businesses

The Best Source for Stock Libraries is PowerDirector

If you are looking for an all-in-one marketing video creator, we recommend Power 365 Business from CyberLink. You can create high-quality and persuasive marketing content using this responsive video editor, even if you have no design skills or previous video content creation experience.

Creating marketing videos with PowerDirector is a simple three-step process that involves selecting a video template, personalizing your text, logo, and free stock video, and uploading the final result to the relevant platform.

A PowerDirector 365 Business subscription costs $25 per month and unlocks access to millions of stock videos and photos from iStock by GettyImages. Get this great deal today if you are looking for a user-friendly video editor, stock content, and hundreds of video templates at the best possible price.

PowerDirector 365 Business

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For Windows 7 (64-bit) or later Secure Download

1. iStock

Reasons to Buy

• High-quality stock media
• Extensive library of stock footage
• AI-powered search function

iStock is among the top royalty-free stock media platforms for good reason. The iStock content library features hand-picked photos, HD video clips, and 4K stock footage you can use for your marketing project. Hundreds of artists worldwide work exclusively with iStock, which means the royalty-free stock video clips and photos you find on this platform are unique and not available anywhere else.

iStock features a search function that uses your previous searches to provide the most relevant results, saving you valuable time. The free stock photos and videos on this platform are all available for commercial use through industry-leading coverage.

Browsing for royalty-free video clips and photos on iStock is a relatively straightforward process. You can choose from 20 categories to find stock media that meets your needs.

iStock prices are relatively affordable. However, if you want to save on your stock media costs and double your options, subscribe to PowerDirector 365 Business for $25 per month. This subscription is the least expensive way to access iStock content and includes a responsive and powerful video editor.

2. Shutterstock

Reasons to Buy

• Comprehensive image, footage, and video collections
• Various image categories
• New and unique images every week

Shutterstock offers a massive range of stock media, including images, high-definition footage, music, video templates, and even 3D models. All the media from this library is royalty-free with a music license, allowing you to use the content for commercial purposes.

The platform itself is also intuitive and easy to use. Shutterstock offers a robust search function that lets you search media by frames per second, resolutions, length, and more. Browsing media by category is also a quick way to find the best stock assets for your marketing project.

As a single user, you can choose from two pricing plans: subscription and on-demand packs. The 10-image subscription plan costs $49 per month, and the 50-image plan costs $125 per month. The video subscription plans are more expensive and start from $99 per month.

3. Getty Images

Reasons to Buy

• Extensive image, video, and audio libraries
• Exclusive media purchases
• Over 35 million pictures available

Getty Images is a media licensing platform that owns the rights to images, videos, music, and other media types. The site offers royalty-free images, videos, and editorial content in packs instead of subscriptions. When buying these packs, Getty Images will make the rights to the content available to you to use commercially.

With the Getty images stock library, you get access to media from the world's best video content creators, photographers, and artists. The royalty-free media Getty Images offers includes conceptual and high-design pieces, such as photographs, illustrations, and vectors. The platform also holds exclusive licensees with artists, so you can find and use unique media.

Getty Images' user-friendly search feature lets you filter your searches by license type, media type, or purpose (editorial or creative), making it easy to find the media you need. You can fine-tune your search further to find content that fits your project requirements with the advanced search options.

4. Depositphoto

Reasons to Buy

• Unique media collections
• Cost-effective pricing plans
• Extensive collection of stock videos, music, and images

Depositphotos is a relatively affordable stock asset platform featuring files in various categories, including professional stock images, vector art, backgrounds, paintings, and illustrations. You can also browse editorial and news images, high-definition videos, sound effects, and royalty-free music tracks.

Under the ready-made templates category, you can find layouts for Instagram and Facebook posts, YouTube channel art, paid ads, logos, Facebook covers, eBook covers, and blog headers.

Depositphotos offers subscription and on-demand pricing plans for images. The downloads under these plans are available for print, digital, marketing, and advertising use. According to the printing rights, you can produce up to 500,000 copies, and you have life-long rights to use the media.

Image subscription plans with limited downloads start at $29.

5. StoryBlocks

Reasons to Buy

• Unlimited subscription plan with $30 per month membership
• Royalty-free licensing with unlimited usage
• Affordable pricing

StoryBlocks is a subscription-based stock photo, audio, and video service offering access to over 1.5 million royalty-free media assets. As a subscriber, you can download all these files for personal and commercial use.

The StoryBlocks Unlimited subscription plans include unlimited downloads, as the name suggests, provided that your subscription is active. They also offer a lower cost basic plan.

Under the basic plan, you can download up to five high-definition clips per month. This plan doesn't include after-effect templates, audio, images, or 4K videos.

The StoryBlocks library features various media categories, and each category includes thousands of files.

The stock video collections include stock footage, motion backgrounds, and after-effects templates. Stock audio collections include royalty-free music, loops, and sound effects. Under stock images, you can also search photos, vectors, and illustrations.

Consider PowerDirector 365 Business

PowerDirector 365 Business is a multi-functional and user-friendly video editor with various toolsets and templates, making it the perfect solution for creating marketing content.

This powerful video creator provides access to royalty-free footage and images from iStock. You also get a professional ad designer and 450 video templates that are ad-optimized. These high-end features are not available with the standard version.

The integrated editing workflow allows you to download and edit stock media directly inside the software, saving you valuable time and money. This software features frame-by-frame motion tracking, picture-in-picture design, high-end correction tools, and more.

You even get 1:1 square video editing, 360-degree editing, and vertical editing for social media content creation, screen recording capabilities for tutorial creation, and green screen editing that lets you replace backgrounds.

Whether you want to create promotions, discount or sales ads, social media videos, Instagram stories, or product demos, PowerDirector 365 Business is the perfect option.

PowerDirector 365 Business

Learn More

Free Download
For Windows 7 (64-bit) or later Secure Download

Get the Best Royalty-Free Stock Photos, Videos, and Music

Finding stock media, such as images, video, and audio, and downloading it for legal, commercial use is integral to creating high-quality marketing content. When creating ads or other marketing videos, you should also look for titles, transitions, and templates.

Royalty-free websites provide a platform where business owners and content creators meet. These sites also make the commercial rights of this media available to people like you, allowing commercial use in marketing projects.

After subscribing to these platforms and downloading the media you need, you need to incorporate the stock assets into your content. If you regularly create commercial or marketing content, an all-in-one solution that streamlines the entire video creation and editing process is ideal.

PowerDirector 365 Business is a marketing video editor that provides access to stock media from top royalty-free platforms. It also offers video templates and professional video editing tools.

PowerDirector has a user-friendly interface, and you will be able to create high-converting content, even if you have no video editing skills.

Download PowerDirector 365 Business today.