20 Sources for Free Photos, Videos, Graphics and Music

These days, when you are running online marketing for fairs, conferences and events, you need a large amount of audio-visual content. It isn’t always so easy to find. Here are 20 sources where you can find (free) music, video material, pictures and graphics.

 The competition for attention is merciless. Your customers are inundated with an enormous amount of content. Per day, roughly 300 million photos are uploaded to Facebook, and roughly 300 hours of video material is uploaded to YouTube per minute!

In order to get your message across here, you don’t just need relevant content for your target groups, rather also good audio-visual material to transport your story.

That’s easier said than done, as often the existing material from your own events is good, but somehow expendable. Or it is too expensive to have attractive content produced.

There is a large amount of material that is available (almost) free of charge. In the following section you will find several good sources for music, videos, photos and graphics that you can use in your online marketing.

One more tip: make sure you definitely pay attention to the rights and licenses. It is recommendable to take a screenshot of the picture and the licenses in order to prove in case of doubt that the content at the time of download was license-free. You’ll find important Copyright info here.

Setting the tone – create the atmosphere with sound

Regardless of whether you add music to a slideshow and add it to your website or you want to show an image clip from your last event, you won’t be able to get by without music! 

• At Freemusicarchive.org you’ll be able to find music completely free of charge. Have a look through the charts or genres to find the suitable soundtrack. The license you need to keep an eye out for is Creative Commons BY. This license allows you to use audio content for commercial projects as long as you name the author of the music piece.
• It’s a similar setup at Noisetrade. You can also search this musician platform for CC BY Licenses, and if you like, the musicians appreciate any donation you would like to make.
• Not completely free of charge, however still very cheap is Audiojungle. You can get soundtracks already as of 1 US Dollar that can be used for your online marketing projects. The quality is very high. The pieces are mostly especially produced for commercial use and the search feature is excellent. On average you should calculate costs somewhere between 15 and 20 US Dollars per music title, depending on how the song is intended to be implemented.
• Further useful sources to try out once: ccMixter, Jamendo, Magnatune or Beatpick.

Nothing’s possible without pictures – sources for free stock pictures

The algorithms of social networks are trimmed to prioritize posts with pictures and many studies show that good pictures are shared more often. Searching for pictures can however sometimes take a lot of effort. Have a look here: 

Man with small head, transporting parcels on his bike. If that is what you’ve been looking for, then Gratisography will be your choice!

• At Pixabay you’ll find over 770,000 free pictures, vector graphics and illustrations. This type of content depends on the Creative Commons License CC0 . If the pictures were published with this license, they can be used in your creative project and can be changed without having to name the photographer.
• The photos at Gratisography are a bit strange, but perhaps that is sometimes exactly what you are looking for your project!
• Very stylish photos include those on Death to the Stock Photo – as the name already suggests. When you sign up to the newsletter, you’ll receive a monthly free selection of high quality photos with CC0 licensing.
• The photos at Unsplash are very attractive, as they offer themselves well for use on blogs or online magazines.
• Canva is actually an online graphics service, but Canva can also be used for picture research. For 1 US Dollar you can add pictures directly to your creative projects. You’ll find the advantages and disadvantages of Canva listed here on the Converve blog. 
• A further graphics tool that integrates a direct search for free pictures is Adobe Spark. Initially, it was only available as an app, however Adobe now also offers the freemium service as a web application. Similar to Canva, this allows free pictures to be included directly in graphics projects without even having to leave the program. 

Say it with signs – free icons and vector graphics

The simpler the symbol, the better the message is transported. Something that icons and graphics convey well. If you don’t want to get an agency involved every time you need to do so, it’s worth having a look at these online resources: 

Donald Trump as a Mexican? Such graphics (and many more) can be found at Vector4Free

• You’ll find over 1000,000 icons and vector graphics at Flaticon.  Many of these are free of charge, for others there are cheap flat rates for project use.  
• There are considerably less graphics available at Vectors4free, however the quality of them is really good. 
• Vector.me is a type of search machine for graphics and symbols. With over 200,000 elements, there’s a lot of junk, however it is definitely still worth a look.  

Moving moving images – sources for free video material

Yes, this also exists: sources for high quality video material that you can use for your online marketing. A story cannot be told more emotionally than through good video content!

A sample clip from Coverr, can be used without name mention and totally free, e.g. as a backdrop for animated graphics

• A good source for stock videos is Dissolve. There is a free downloadable clip every month, so it’s worth following the site. 
• Mazwai offers video clips in HD quality that can be downloaded straight away without having to sign up. The clips are licensed with Creative Commons CC 3.0 , meaning that they can be used for commercial projects, as long as the name of the author is stated.
• The video portal Videohive is from the makers of Audiojungle. Similar to Audiojungle, you can pay to download video material, but there are also free clips every month here.
• You’ll find some great material on Coverr – completely free of charge, even without naming the author (Creative Commons 1.0). 

Bottom line

If you know what you’re looking for, the search for attractive audio-visual content isn’t that hard at all. The quality of your online content is noticeably improved and you can better reach your online marketing targets!