Finding music that sounds good is the easy part. The hard part is finding music you can legally leave running for months without a Content ID claim, a regional block, or a takedown killing your broadcast at three in the morning.
That's the difference between a 24/7 channel and an ordinary upload. A claim on a video you posted last Tuesday is annoying. A claim on a stream that's been running continuously since March can take the whole thing down, and the viewers who find dead air don't always come back.
This guide covers where to find music that's genuinely safe to use, what the licences actually say (including one clause almost nobody mentions), how to check a track before it goes into rotation, and what to do when something gets flagged anyway.
Why copyright hits 24/7 streams harder
On live platforms, a copyright problem can mean muted audio mid-broadcast, a claim landing after the stream ends, regional blocking, a full takedown, or — if it keeps happening — trouble with your channel's standing.
The risk compounds in a way it doesn't for uploads. Your playlist might hold three hundred tracks. Every one of them is a chance for something to go wrong, and they're all playing on a loop, forever. One track with murky licensing, a disputed sample, or a beat that trips an automated matcher is enough.
And the thing that makes 24/7 valuable is exactly what makes it fragile. People come back because you're always there. Drop offline for a day and you don't just lose a day of watch time — you lose the habit you spent months building.
Setting up your channel from scratch? Our guide on how to stream 24/7 on YouTube handles the technical side. This one is purely about the music.
Claims and strikes are not the same thing
Almost everyone uses these interchangeably. They're completely different, and confusing them means worrying about the wrong one.
A Content ID claim is a robot. YouTube matches your audio against reference files that rights holders have uploaded. When it finds a match, the rights holder picks what happens next: block the content, take the ad money, or just quietly track how many people watched.
That's it. A claim isn't a punishment, it doesn't touch your channel standing, and you can rack up as many as you like without consequence. Hold a valid licence and you can dispute it.
A copyright strike is a lawyer. Someone has filed a formal takedown demanding YouTube remove your content. It comes down, and the strike goes on your record.
Strikes stack, and the consequences get ugly fast. Under YouTube's policy, three within 90 days and your account — plus every channel attached to it — is up for termination. Strikes do expire after 90 days, but only if you sit through Copyright School.
Here's the part that should worry you most, and it's specific to always-on channels: if a live stream gets removed for copyright, you get the strike and your live streaming access is cut off for seven days. Pick up a second one and that becomes fourteen.
Seven days dark. For a channel whose entire proposition is being there whenever someone opens the tab, that's not a slap on the wrist — it's most of a month's momentum gone, and a chunk of your regulars quietly finding someone else's stream to fall asleep to.
| Content ID claim | Copyright strike | |
|---|---|---|
| Triggered by | Automated audio matching | A rights holder filing a takedown |
| Effect on channel standing | None | Goes on your record |
| Typical outcome | Blocked, monetised by the claimant, or tracked | Content removed |
| How many can you get | Unlimited | Three in 90 days risks termination |
| Effect on live streaming | Usually none | Cut off for 7 days, 14 on a second |
Most of this guide is about avoiding claims, because that's what you'll actually run into. Claims are common and usually fixable. Strikes are rare if you source music properly — and genuinely dangerous when they land.
Where to find free music for 24/7 streams
Two warnings before the list. Not all royalty-free music is free, and not all free music is safe to stream. Plenty of libraries let you download without paying, then restrict commercial use, or monetisation, or specific platforms, buried three clicks into the terms.
StreamBeats
Probably the best-known free option for streamers, and a sensible place to start because it was built for exactly this. Free for streams and videos, a decent spread of lofi, EDM, synthwave, hip hop and ambient, and it's already all over YouTube and Twitch.
One thing to know before you build an entire playlist on it, though. The catalogue also gets distributed to consumer streaming services, which means tracks can end up sitting in Content ID databases. Creators do occasionally report automated claims on StreamBeats music despite holding a perfectly valid licence.
Don't let that put you off using it. Let it change what you think a licence does for you. A licence doesn't stop an automated system matching your audio — nothing does. What it gives you is the evidence to kill the claim quickly. Save the terms when you add the track and a claim becomes paperwork instead of a crisis.
Check the current terms on the official site before committing to it long term. Licensing changes.
YouTube Audio Library
Strong option, particularly if YouTube is your main platform. It's free, it's built into a place you're already logged into, attribution requirements are labelled clearly, and the filtering by genre, mood, instrument and duration is genuinely useful when you're building a long playlist.
Watch two things. First, the licence conditions aren't uniform — some tracks want attribution, some don't, and you have to check per track rather than assuming.
Second, and this catches multistreamers constantly: the library is part of YouTube, and its terms are written with YouTube in mind. Whether a given track is cleared for Twitch, Kick or Facebook is a separate question, and the library won't answer it for you. Free on YouTube doesn't mean free everywhere. Check before you multistream with it.
Other sources worth a look
These all get used by streamers, but they work very differently from each other — so treat this as a research list, not a list of approvals. Run every one through the checking process further down.
- Pixabay Music — its own content licence, not Creative Commons.
- Uppbeat — creator-focused, free tier usually wants attribution, paid tier drops it.
- Free Music Archive — a range of different Creative Commons licences, varying track by track rather than site-wide. Check each one.
- Incompetech — Kevin MacLeod's library, around for years, historically Creative Commons Attribution.
- NoCopyrightSounds — big with gaming and electronic channels, has its own attribution rules. The name is marketing. The music is copyrighted and licensed to you on terms, like everything else here.
- Chosic and Jamendo — aggregators, so again it varies per track.
- Musopen — public domain classical recordings, if that suits your channel.
Notice the pattern. "Free" always describes the price and never the permissions.
Epidemic Sound and Artlist
Both paid, both worth knowing about because they're where most channels end up eventually.
Epidemic Sound has the bigger name, a large catalogue, consistent production quality and licensing designed around how creators actually work. Artlist leans more cinematic and polished, and covers both livestreams and edited content well.
The trade-off is obvious enough. If money's tight, neither is where you start. If you're building something you want to sound professional, they're the two to compare.
Paid doesn't mean unlimited, though, and there are two things people get wrong here.
Register your channel with them. These services normally want you to connect or whitelist the specific channels you publish on, so their own Content ID references don't fire at you. Skip it and you can get claimed for music you're paying for. It happens a lot.
Work out what happens when the subscription lapses. For uploads, most services let published content stay covered. A 24/7 stream isn't published once and forgotten — it's broadcasting right now. If your card gets declined while the stream is running, you may be streaming music you're no longer licensed for. Ask specifically about continuous live use, not just video uploads.
Royalty-free doesn't mean copyright-free
This is the one that catches most new streamers.
"Royalty-free" describes how you pay. No ongoing per-play royalties. It says nothing about who owns the music, and in almost every case the answer is: somebody does, and they're giving you permission on conditions.
So a track can easily be royalty-free and still restricted to personal use. Or royalty-free but not cleared for livestreaming. Or royalty-free with mandatory attribution. Or royalty-free only while you keep paying.
Genuine public domain music is different — no copyright, no conditions — but there's less of it about than people assume. And there's a trap worth knowing: a composition can be public domain while a specific recording of it is still very much owned by whoever made it. Beethoven is free. The Berlin Philharmonic playing Beethoven is not.
For 24/7 use, assume every track is restricted until you've checked.
Creative Commons, properly explained
Creative Commons licences turn up constantly in free music libraries. Most guides give you a table of what the letters mean and leave it there. That table is usually wrong for streaming, because of one clause.
The sync clause nobody mentions
Every Creative Commons licence since version 3.0 has a provision written specifically for music. The 4.0 legal code says:
For purposes of this Public License, where the Licensed Material is a musical work, performance, or sound recording, Adapted Material is always produced where the Licensed Material is synched in timed relation with a moving image.
Read it twice, because that sentence quietly rules out two licences people use all the time.
Putting music together with moving images always produces adapted material. Not sometimes. Not only if you chop the track up. Always. You can play something completely untouched — no trimming, no effects, not even a volume adjustment — and you're still producing adapted material as far as the licence is concerned, purely because there's video alongside it.
Which matters, because two Creative Commons conditions are entirely about adaptations. ND forbids sharing them. SA demands they carry the same licence. If your output is a moving image, both of those wake up.
The exception, if you want to argue it: a genuinely static single image with no motion at all. But most 24/7 channels run an animation, a looping clip, or a visualiser, and every one of those is a moving image. Assume it applies.
What each licence means for your stream
| Licence | Usable on a 24/7 stream? | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| CC0 | Yes | Nothing required; effectively public domain |
| CC BY | Yes | Attribution required, and you need somewhere to put it |
| CC BY-SA | Careful | Sync makes adapted material, so ShareAlike lands on your stream |
| CC BY-NC | Not if monetised | Non-commercial only |
| CC BY-ND | No | Sync makes adapted material, which ND won't let you share |
| CC BY-NC-SA | Not if monetised | Non-commercial, plus the ShareAlike problem |
| CC BY-NC-ND | No | Both problems at once |
For streaming there are two clean options: CC0 and CC BY. CC0 asks nothing at all. CC BY asks for credit, which is easy enough to handle on a 24/7 channel once you've decided where it goes.
Everything else brings a condition that fights with continuous streaming.
Why ND is a flat no
People get this one wrong for a reasonable-sounding reason. You're playing the track exactly as released. You haven't derived anything from anything.
The licence disagrees, because of the sync clause above. Run that track over video and you've made adapted material, and ND says you may not share adapted material. Your stream shares it continuously, to everyone, forever.
So ND music is off the table for streaming. That isn't caution or a risk judgement — it's what the text says.
Why ShareAlike is worse than it looks
SA is sneakier, and in some ways more dangerous, because nothing visibly breaks.
If sync produces adapted material, ShareAlike requires you to release that adapted material under CC BY-SA too. The adapted material is your stream. Taken literally, one SA track could oblige you to license your entire broadcast under CC BY-SA — visuals, branding, original content and all.
Realistically? Nobody's going to notice, and no automated system will flag it. But if you're building a channel you actually want to own, you don't want a licence term sitting there arguing that your output belongs to everybody.
Skip SA tracks unless you've thought it through and you're fine with it.
Why non-commercial is a problem waiting to happen
If a track is tagged NC, be careful. The usual assumption is that a stream isn't commercial because you're not charging anyone to watch. Rights holders and platforms frequently disagree.
Your stream may well count as commercial if it runs ads, takes donations, offers memberships or subscriptions, promotes a business, or simply builds an audience that eventually earns you something.
That last one is the killer, because it means NC tracks are a problem you're storing up for the moment things start working. If you're aiming at making money from a 24/7 stream, keep NC music out of the library from the start. Retro-fitting a clean playlist across three hundred tracks is not a job you want.
How to check a track before it goes live
The only reliable defence is a process you follow every time. Not memory, not a comment section, not what someone said in a Discord two years ago.
Find the original source. Trace every track back to the publisher, the artist, or the library page it came from. Reuploads, playlist sites, download mirrors and social posts without licence details are all worthless as evidence — you need the actual terms attached to the actual track.
Read the terms properly. You're looking for explicit permission covering livestreaming, the specific platforms you broadcast to, monetisation, commercial use, and use without a time limit. If any of those is ambiguous, the track waits until you've clarified it.
Note the attribution requirements. If credit is required, write down exactly what's being asked for — artist, title, source link, licence type, licence link. Then work out where it's going to live: stream description, channel about page, or a linked credits doc. Decide this once, up front, rather than per track.
Search for known Content ID problems. Some tracks are perfectly licensed and still get claimed, because they're registered in Content ID or several parties assert ownership. Searching the track name plus "Content ID", or the library name plus "claim", takes a minute and occasionally saves you a fortnight. It's not foolproof, but it catches the notorious ones.
Test it privately first. Run a short unlisted or private broadcast before anything new goes into the public rotation. You'll see immediate matches, muting, or blocked playback right away, and post-stream claims within a day. A few minutes here beats a public outage later.
Keep a record. For every track: title, artist, source URL, date downloaded, a screenshot or PDF of the terms as they stood that day, plus any permission emails or receipts.
That last one feels like overkill right up until the day it isn't. Claims can surface months after you added a track, and licences get quietly rewritten. What matters is proving what the terms said when you started using it.
Building a library people can listen to for hours
Safe music is one problem. Music that survives a six-hour listening session is another, and it's the one that actually decides whether people stay.
The classic mistake is a playlist that's too short. Anyone who leaves your stream on while they work will spot the loop far faster than you'd think, and a stream that feels repetitive reads as low effort.
Pick a lane, then vary within it
The channels that work have an obvious identity — lofi study beats, ambient sleep, jazz café, synthwave night drive, piano and focus. That identity is what gets you the right audience in the first place.
But identity isn't the same as sameness. A lofi stream can move through mellow daytime tracks, slower and rainier evening ones, jazz-leaning beats, warmer acoustic textures, and slightly brighter study material without ever leaving its lane. Energy should rise and fall across the day. Mix tempos, alternate instrumental textures with more melodic pieces, and keep a few familiar anchor tracks in rotation alongside deeper cuts people won't hear as often.
Going the lofi route specifically? Our guide to running a 24/7 lofi hip hop stream goes further into programming that genre.
Spread the risk across artists
Leaning too hard on one artist makes a stream feel narrow, and it concentrates your risk. If there's ever a dispute over that catalogue, it takes out a big chunk of your playlist at once. Spread across multiple artists, multiple releases, and where you can, multiple licence sources.
Keep it moving
A 24/7 playlist shouldn't be a thing you build once. Add and retire tracks based on what retention data tells you, what chat reacts to, anything that's attracted a claim, and the time of year.
We run our own 24/7 music channel, and the practical difficulty is almost always the same: making changes without taking the stream down to do it. Through a platform like Stream View you manage playlists from a web dashboard, adding, removing and reordering tracks while the broadcast keeps running. Streams sit on dedicated cloud servers too, so none of it depends on a machine at home staying awake.
What to do when something gets flagged
It happens to careful people. Matching systems are imperfect and licensing databases are a mess. What you do about it depends entirely on which platform you're on, because YouTube and Twitch work nothing alike.
On YouTube
YouTube runs Content ID, so what you'll usually be dealing with is an automated claim rather than a strike.
If the stream's still live, work out the damage first. Has audio been muted? Is it blocked in some regions? Has the broadcast been ended outright? Can you tie it to one specific track? Once you've identified the track, pull it from rotation immediately.
Whether that's easy or impossible comes down to how you've set the channel up. Managing your playlist from a browser means you pull the track and carry on broadcasting. If everything lives in files on a PC at home, your only real option is stopping the stream.
Then be honest about whether the claim is right. If you used something you didn't have permission for, remove it for good, go through the rest of your library for anything from the same source, and tighten your checking. One valid claim is information about your process, not bad luck.
If you do hold a licence, gather everything — terms as they stood when you added the track, source URL, screenshots, receipts, permission emails — and dispute it. Keep it short and factual: track name, source, the licence that permits your use, and where those terms can be verified.
Don't dispute on principle or out of irritation. A dispute you can't back up can turn a minor claim into something considerably worse.
Worth reading alongside this: our guide to YouTube's 24/7 streaming rules, which covers the platform's wider expectations for always-on channels.
On Twitch
Twitch has no Content ID, and this is the point where YouTube advice stops being useful.
Recorded VODs and clips get scanned for matched audio and muted in place. Live broadcasts work differently — infringement comes through formal takedown notices from rights holders, producing strikes under Twitch's DMCA guidelines, and enough of those means permanent suspension.
The difference that really matters is what "disputing" involves. On YouTube it's a form inside the platform. On Twitch the equivalent is a DMCA counter-notification, which is a legal document. You're stating under penalty of perjury that the material was removed in error, and consenting to the jurisdiction of a court.
Not something to fire off while annoyed. With a clear licence and your documentation in order it's a perfectly legitimate step. Without them, get advice first rather than afterwards.
Twitch's own position is refreshingly blunt: don't play recorded music unless you hold the rights. Which is precisely why the record-keeping above is worth the effort — a documented licence from a reputable library is what turns that from a risk into an administrative task.
If a stream gets taken down
Stop using the flagged track before anything else. Gather your licence evidence while it's fresh. Read the platform's notice carefully, because it will tell you whether you're looking at an automated claim or a formal takedown, and those need completely different responses. Dispute only if you're confident of your rights and you understand what disputing means on that platform. Then replace the track with something verified before you restart.
The pre-flight checklist
Before any track joins the rotation:
- Did this come from the original source?
- Does the licence clearly allow livestreaming?
- Does it allow monetisation, if that's relevant to you?
- If it's Creative Commons, is it free of ND and SA?
- Are the attribution requirements clear, and have you got somewhere to put them?
- Have you saved proof of the terms?
- Have you tested it privately?
- Is it part of a varied playlist rather than a four-track loop?
Any "no" means it waits.
Free or paid?
Free sources are usually enough to get going, and they let you find out whether your channel concept works before you start paying monthly for anything. They suit you if you're launching, working to a tight budget, happy to spend the extra time on licence checks, and content with a smaller catalogue.
Paid libraries earn their keep once you want broader genre coverage, more polished production, faster discovery, or you're building something you intend to treat as a real brand.
There's no correct answer. Plenty of channels start free and add a subscription once there's revenue to justify it.
Frequently asked questions
Is royalty-free music really free?
Not necessarily. "Royalty-free" describes how you pay — no ongoing per-play royalties — not whether it costs nothing or comes without restrictions. Plenty of royalty-free music is sold on subscription, and nearly all of it is still copyrighted and licensed to you on terms.
Can I use YouTube Audio Library music on Twitch?
Don't assume it. The library is part of YouTube and its terms are written with YouTube in mind. If you multistream, check each track's terms before broadcasting it elsewhere rather than treating availability on YouTube as clearance everywhere.
Does a Content ID claim give me a copyright strike?
No — they're separate systems. A claim is automated, doesn't affect your channel standing, and you can get any number of them. A strike is a formal legal takedown, and three inside 90 days puts your account at risk of termination.
What happens to my 24/7 stream if I get a claim while it's live?
Depends what the rights holder chose. Audio might be muted, the stream might be blocked in certain regions, or the broadcast might be ended. Either way the priority is identifying the track and pulling it without taking the whole stream down — much easier if your playlist is managed from a dashboard rather than from files on a machine at home.
Can I use Creative Commons music on a 24/7 stream?
CC0 and CC BY are generally fine, with credit for the latter. Avoid ND entirely — syncing music to moving images creates adapted material, which ND prohibits. Treat SA with the same caution, since ShareAlike would then attach to your own stream output.
Final thoughts
Safe beats convenient, every time. The right track isn't the one that sounds good on first listen — it's the one still playing in four months with nobody complaining about it.
Start with StreamBeats and the YouTube Audio Library. Learn what the Creative Commons letters actually mean, and pay particular attention to ND and SA. Keep records for everything. Test before it goes public. And build enough variety that someone can leave your stream on all afternoon without hearing the same three moods circle back round.
Then the problem becomes reliability, which is a different job entirely. Stream View handles the 24/7 side — cloud infrastructure, automatic reconnection, playlist management, multi-platform output, all controlled from a browser — so your attention goes on programming and music instead of on whether the machine in the spare room is still running.