Our history
By providing unlimited access to world-class music with all rights included and next-generation soundtracking tools, Epidemic Sound has transformed the soundtracking experience for global brands and professional creators — empowering them to unlock more feeling in everything they create and publish their content worry-free, worldwide.
Read on to hear how it all started.
Our founding story
Epidemic Sound was founded in 2009 by five Swedish entrepreneurs with roots in the TV and music industries. In their work, they identified two problems. One, it was complicated to license music for use in audiovisual productions as it involved many different parties, limitations, payment streams, and intermediaries. And two, it was difficult for artists and musicians to make a living through music.
Back then, the traditional music industry was characterized by lagging, and often low, royalties, and it was hard to predict if a track would be successful or not. From this frustration grew a vision of an alternative music licensing system. A system with fewer intermediaries, one that benefits those who create the music, those who use it, and everyone who consumes it.
Fast forward to 2024 and Epidemic Sound is the industry-leading soundtracking platform for content creation, offering an expansive catalog of world-class music and sound effects, seen and heard over 2.5 billion times a day around the globe.
Creators, brands, agencies, broadcasters, and many others enjoy unlimited access to over 40,000 tracks, feeling secure that all rights are included and empowered to find the perfect soundtrack with the help of fast, intuitive search and discovery tools.
We continuously enrich our catalog by teaming up with artists, composers, and producers to create tracks spanning 160 genres while supporting them financially and creatively. We provide unlimited access to over 40,000 original tracks by Grammy-winning artists and up-and-coming talent, with new tracks added daily.
Headquartered in Stockholm, the company operates across the globe, with offices in eight major cities: Stockholm, New York, Los Angeles, Seoul, Oslo, Amsterdam, Berlin, and London. Epidemic Sound is backed by EQT, Blackstone, Creandum, Atwater Capital, Alecta, AMF, and TIN Fonder, and its Chairperson is Andrew Fisher, former CEO and Chairman of Shazam.
