Probably the best way to choose your royalty free music is to find a website that allows you to listen to music samples.

These will give you a flavor of the music you're about to buy, although bear in mind that most sites will either reduce the quality of the samples or they will put some kind of regular "watermark" on the track so that you can't use it until you've paid for it.

Whilst this may seem annoying, it's actually being fair to the author.

Think about it for a minute: when you listen to the latest Kylie track on the radio or MTV, the station will pay a royalty each and every time it's played. This royalty carries on for years and years and years - it's only now that early Cliff Richard tracks are coming out of copyright.

With royalty free stock music, the author only gets paid once. It's sometimes called "buyout" music because you're actually buying out the author's right to claim copyright or royalty payments once you've made your purchase.

If you can find the right genres, you may be lucky and come across cheap royalty free music on sites like eBay.

More specialist music can take a bit more effort to find, although the various links on this page should help you to locate the kind of tracks you're after quickly and easily.

It really is important to make sure that you listen to the tracks before you buy them if at all possible. You want the music you're buying to sound good and to be appropriate for your needs. Hip Hop and R'n'B, New Age or World music or even music on hold for your telephone system. The choice available is wide and quite affordable.

So long as your connection is fast enough, you may find that a site that lets you download your royalty free music is best. There's often a discount for doing this as the retailer doesn't have to go to the trouble of producing and shipping a CD.

Once you get your download, be safe and make a backup. Keep the backup CD somewhere safe, in case something nasty happens to your computer's hard disk.

The other advantage with downloading tracks is that you can compile your own album by buying selected tracks. Instead of buying a whole CD just because you want a couple tracks and then another, different, CD because you want a couple tracks from that as well, think about downloading just the tracks you want from each selection.

Of course, if you regularly produce videos and other productions in one particular genre, it may work out easier to buy a themed CD. Ultimately, it's your decision!