Music stems are fantastic tools for remixing tracks by other artists, sampling, and performing live too.

Stems were only introduced back in 2015 by Native Instruments. Now typical stem tracks include separate drums, bass, vocal, and instrument tracks. A stem file is, essentially, a multi-channel audio file with groupings of instruments. Before we talk about where to download music stems, let’s talk about what music stems actually are.

Typically, stems break a track down into four different sections:

  • Vocals
  • Bass
  • Drums
  • Instruments
WMusic stems offer creative control over a mixdown. Usually, stem files consist of a vocal track, drums, bass and instruments (synths, guitars, etc.) With their rise in popularity, there are places you can find music stems for free and at low prices too.
Music stems offer creative control over a mixdown. Usually, stem files consist of a vocal track, drums, bass and instruments (synths, guitars, etc.) With their rise in popularity, there are places you can find music stems for free and at low prices too. Source: Audionamix

Stems offer flexible creative control in the mixdown process. In essence, you can control each element independently of the others, and this opens doors for more in-depth mixdowns. On top of mixing down your own music, stems are fantastic tools for remixing other artists’ music, creating acapellas, instrumentals, and mash-ups too.

If there’s an element of a song you don’t like, you can just cut it out of your version with just one click. Music stems allow you to easily choose what you want to keep, what you want to chop up, and what you want to resample – the list goes on, really.

So, let’s talk bout three places where you can find music stems to download right now!

Best Place to Find Free Music Stems: Native Instruments

If you’re looking to download free music stems, look no further than Native Instruments. NI are a keen peddler of sampling, so to encourage wider use of stems they have given 65 stem tracks away for free!

All of the stems have come from selected Machine expansion packs, so you know they’re great. Also, a huge range of tempos and genres are available, including techno, house, trap, drum and bass, and dubstep.

Best Place to Buy Music Stems: Beatport

Beatport is the go-to site for so many music producers looking for remix songs. As well as full beats, their store has the biggest variation of music stems that you can browse and download. Due to the success that many bet makers have in selling their beats on Beatport, it’s become the most likely place that those same producers will release their stems.

Tools such as the filter search allow you to be specific about the stems you’re looking for. You can filter through the different music stems by genre, key, BPM, artist, label and even release date! The size of the stem library continues to grow, so jump on the train now!

Juno Download

Juno Download is brimming with music stems that you can download. Music made for huge rooms

Similar to Beatport, you’ll find all types of genres, tempos, and keys. A great place to check if Beatport doesn’t have what you’re looking for.

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