The archive · Business Models · Strategic decision · 2009–2021
Epidemic Sound owns 100% of its library — flat-fee licensing with no takedowns
A Stockholm startup buys every track outright, then sells worry-free licensing as a flat subscription — scaling from 2009 to $1.4B and 1B hours played a month.
Epidemic Sound
What it had to solve
In 2009 digital music was mostly illegal — IFPI said 95% of downloads were pirated — and video producers had no easy way to license music without tangled rights management. Epidemic Sound's founders built a production-music library the company would wholly own.
How it works
Epidemic Sound was founded in Stockholm in 2009 by Oscar Höglund and Jan Zachrisson around a simple inversion: instead of licensing music from rights holders, buy the music outright. The company pays composers for their tracks — an average of $500 per track when TechCrunch covered it in 2014, later an upfront fee plus a share of streaming revenue — and in return owns 100% of the rights in its library.
That ownership made the customer promise simple. Broadcasters pay a monthly subscription ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars for unlimited use; individual creators get unlimited-use subscriptions from $15 a month (personal) or $49 (commercial), or buy single tracks. Because there is no third-party rights holder, there are no surprise takedown claims — the subscription's core feature is 'you're covered.'
The model scaled with the creator economy. Plays of Epidemic tracks on YouTube grew from 250 million hours a month in 2019 to over 1 billion by 2021, music was streamed 1.5 billion times a day, and more than 5 million people used the platform. In March 2021 Blackstone Growth and EQT Growth invested $450 million at a $1.4 billion valuation, with Epidemic's catalog integrated into Adobe, Canva and Getty workflows.
Why it lands
- Owning 100% of the rights removed the entire clearance chain, so licensing became a product feature instead of a legal department task.
- Paying composers up front created a supply of exclusive music competitors could not copy — the catalog itself was the moat.
- Flat unlimited subscriptions matched creators' unpredictable output: pay once, use anything, and keep published content cleared forever.
- It rode the creator-economy wave: as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram video exploded, 'soundtrack the internet' became a $1.4 billion thesis.
What it did
YouTube plays of Epidemic music grew from 250 million hours a month in 2019 to more than 1 billion by 2021, with 1.5 billion streams a day and over 5 million users; Blackstone and EQT invested $450 million at a $1.4 billion valuation in March 2021.
What you can take
If the middlemen and clearance rights are the customer's pain, buy the rights instead of renting them: owning 100% of the catalog turns 'is this legal?' from a risk into a subscription feature.
Since then
Epidemic kept expanding — localizing its service, adding sound effects, building search and AI-assisted matching tools — and its own-rights model became the template for a crowded field of subscription music services for creators, including Artlist and others named in the same TechCrunch coverage. The company's website still leads with the promise that content published during an active subscription stays cleared forever, and partners such as Adobe, Canva and Getty embed its catalog in their own products.
Sources
- Epidemic Sound Takes In $5M To Grow Its Rights-Streamlined Production Music Library
- Epidemic Sound raises $450M at a $1.4B valuation to 'soundtrack the internet'
- YouTube Video Soundtracker Epidemic Sound Raises $450 Million At $1.4 Billion Valuation
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card