Art-list — The Affordable Licensing Subscription Service — Public Beta Opens

Stock Audio News

by Tom PriceMarch 6^th, 2016

Regular readers may remember Fabian’s recent post regarding Art-list.io, a music licensing startup out of Israel that looks set to make big waves in the industry. Today, I’m happy to tell you that the public beta has been opened!

Art-list Pricing and Overview

For an affordable annual subscription of $199, filmmakers will get access to Art-list’s continuously growing library of high-quality, pre-licensed audio. As Fabian mentioned in his post at the end of January, regardless of where you’re currently sourcing the music for your productions, tracks for commercial use with large audiences can run you into the $300-400 range—that’s as much as double the price of an unlimited subscription with Art-list!

What’s more, it seems that the annual subscription covers everything. No additional licences will need to be purchased, thanks to Art-list’s universal license which covers personal and commercial uses—one can only hope that the service retains this format as it garners more attention!

According to their recent press release, Art-list source their library materials from a global network of independent musicians. The quality on offer, they say, is enough to rival any of the current go-to music sourcing platforms. Fortunately, their press release team provided a few samples of what’s to be expected from the Art-list library and I have to say, I am impressed. High-quality music at an unbelievably low price is going to ideal for independent filmmakers and small crews on a tight budget.

Discovering new Artists & Music on Art-list

Luckily, it seems as though the low price of the subscription hasn’t affected the functionality of Art-list’s platform. Using the ‘newest’ and ‘spotlight’ features highlighted below should help to keep the audio used in subscribers’ productions fresh and relevant.

Signing up for Art-list

Getting access to the Art-list catalogue seems extremely simple. You can preview all of the audio that you’d like, without paying a dime, and then pay the subscription fee if you like what you’ve heard and want to make use of the library for your own projects. The video below unequivocally states that there will be no hidden fees or charges involved so I can only assume that this will remain true for a significant period of time.

Affordable and High-Quality, but is there a Catch?

As a kid, I was always taught that if something sounds too good to be true then it probably is. That’s what made me initially dubious about Art-list after reading Fabian’s article a month ago. I figured there’d be issues with the service, the audio quality, or there’d be hidden fees associated.

After browsing the platform for myself irregularly between then and now, I’d say that I am a little more confident that the startup will deliver on its promising. However, I do feel that it is early days and the untested licensing startup has a long way to go before success is guaranteed. Somewhere down the line, they may realize that they have to increase their prices or that they’re struggling to find new, high-quality content to add.

For now, however, I think that an Art-list subscription is a win for filmmakers who are trying to get by on a budget and I think that—at least for the foreseeable future—the annual subscription (which works out at $17 per month) is set to be an absolute bargain!

If you’d like to get involved with the Art-list public beta or you just want to browse the library for yourself, which is open for anybody to take a look at, then head over to art-list.io and take a look for yourself.

After spending quite a while snooping around (ie. trying to break something) in the beta, I have to say that I am impressed with the experience I’ve had at this early stage in the development. Have you subscribed already? How have you found the platform thus far? Let us know in the comments!