Thematic isn’t just refreshed – it’s reimagined. This update celebrates the creators and artists who inspire us and shape our platform every day.

Trending music for content creators 🤝 New fans for music artists.

That’s the heartbeat of Thematic. And this new chapter was built with your feedback at the center. From design to features, every update was shaped by creators and artists who wanted a faster, smarter, and more inspiring way to connect through music.

A Bold New Identity, Powered by Creators

We partnered with the amazing team at Deka Agency to reimagine Thematic’s brand identity and web experience. The result? A bold, music-driven design that reflects the energy, passion, and creativity of our community.

Expect rich purples, neon highlights, playful type, and organic 3D elements woven throughout your experience. From our refreshed logo to the streamlined UI, every detail was crafted to bring Thematic’s spirit to life – fun, modern, and unapologetically creator-first.

This design is more than a fresh coat of paint. It represents how far we’ve come together. From a small collective of creators and artists to a global community of 1M+ members, Thematic has grown into a trusted hub where creativity thrives, friendships form, and careers launch.

Features Built With Your Feedback 💡

When we say this redesign was community-powered, we mean it. We listened to your requests, ran countless creator interviews, and gathered feedback to make Thematic faster, smarter, and easier to use.

Here’s a glimpse at what’s new:

✨ For You Page

Your personalized hub for music discovery. Get tailored song recommendations based on the music you’ve downloaded, your creative style, and your video themes. Plus, quick access to your recent activity means you’ll never lose track of your go-to tracks.

🎶 Improved Search & Discovery

Say goodbye to endless scrolling. With new filters, accurate tags, and live search that updates as you type, you can find exactly what you need – whether that’s a specific vibe, lyric, instrument, or genre. You can now explore songs, artists, and playlists all in one place.

🔎 Find Similar Songs

Love a track? Tap “Find Similar” to unlock a world of related vibes. Perfect for when you need a full playlist of cohesive sounds or just want to explore new music that matches your creative flow.

These features were designed to cut through the noise, reduce creative friction, and give you back more time to do what you do best: create.

For Artists: More Ways to Be Discovered 🌟

Thematic has always been about building bridges between creators and artists – and this update makes those connections stronger than ever.

We’ve redesigned artist profiles to showcase everything about you in one place: your songs, your style, your story. With smarter search, richer tagging, and new discovery features like Find Similar Songs, your music surfaces in more of the right moments.

Plus, our curated genre-specific playlists now highlight trending artists right on the cover, giving your music extra visibility and helping you reach new fans with each release.

That means more opportunities to be discovered by creators who truly connect with your sound. More playlists, more collaborations, more fans.

At Thematic, we believe discovery should feel organic and meaningful. These updates are designed to help you grow your audience authentically – not through ads or algorithms, but through real creative connections.

Smarter, Faster, and More Reliable ⚡

We know it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. Slow load times, clunky filters, outdated UI – yeah, we’ve heard you. That’s why we rebuilt Thematic from the ground up to be faster, smarter, and more reliable.

Now, you can browse without distractions, discover music without delays, and curate playlists without frustration. It’s a smoother, more enjoyable experience from start to finish – so you can stay in the creative flow.

Our Mission, Our Future 💜

This redesign isn’t just about what Thematic looks like. It’s about what we stand for.

Our mission has always been clear:

To build a future where creativity is driven by community, where every voice has the opportunity to create, connect, and thrive in a trusted, collaborative space.

Every decision – from the new color palette to the way search works – was made with that mission in mind. Because at Thematic, your creativity is at the center of everything we do.

And this is only the beginning. With this new foundation, we’ll continue building the tools and experiences you’ve been asking for: easier discovery, deeper connections, and more ways to grow as a creator or artist.

We’re so excited for what’s next – and we can’t wait to see what you create with the new Thematic.

Ready to Explore? 🚀

Jump in, explore the new features, and make yourself at home. Your next favorite song is waiting – and so is your next big creative moment.

In 2018, Thematic’s innovative licensing model disrupted the royalty-free music landscape by providing creators access to trending commercial music to soundtrack their videos, without financial barriers.

Building upon this success, Thematic expanded its services by launching a Premium tier in 2020, designed to give creators additional functionality and features to enhance their video creation experience.

While the free tier assists those just starting out, Thematic offers a solution that caters to creators at every stage, ensuring their growth is nurtured as they evolve into small businesses.

Thematic’s Pro tier provides a host of exclusive benefits, advanced tools, and unparalleled resources including early access to songs, team management features, and clearance for unlimited creator projects. The company is committed to continuously expanding the Pro service to ensure that full-time creators have the necessary tools and support to take their craft to the next level and achieve their professional goals.

Early Access

Thematic has recently launched the “Early Access” feature which grants Pro users exclusive access to all new music drops seven days before the rest of the creator community. 

Additionally, the “Early Access” feature plays a crucial role in the journey of music artists, as they are able to get their songs into the hands of influential content creators who have the power to amplify their music to millions of viewers worldwide. Artists who have benefited from Thematic’s community marketing engine include ODESZA, Lauv, Benee, Dylan Rockoff, Nicky Youre, HOAX, and Fiji Blue.

Thematic’s “Early Access” fosters a symbiotic relationship between content creators and independent music artists, empowering both parties. Pro users gain exclusive access to a treasure trove of emerging talent. By releasing music early to a select group of tastemakers, artists can create excitement and generate demand for their new songs right on release day. This feature transforms content creation and music discovery, shaping the future of creative collaborations.

Community Review

To deliver on its mission to democratize music discovery, Thematic has recently launched “Community Review,” a dynamic and interactive rating system that enables content creators to evaluate a wide range of music for inclusion on the site. Serving as a community-driven hub, the “Community Review” collective decision-making fosters a sense of creative empowerment amongst its users by giving them an active role in choosing which music will be available on the site.

“Community Review” is a game changer for music artists because it offers a unique opportunity to showcase their songs to a highly engaged and influential community of content creators. Through this process, artists gain access to valuable feedback, ratings, and reviews from the community. This feedback helps them gauge the quality and relevance of their music, and provides artists with the insights and predictive analytics necessary to make valuable improvements and optimizations.

Sound Effects and SFX packs

Building upon its success in leveraging matchmaking and community participation to curate music playlists, Thematic is now applying its innovative approach to sound effects. Sound effects play a crucial role in enhancing the narrative and storytelling within a video. The shared familiarity of certain effects within meme culture creates a sense of community and inside jokes amongst users.

As part of this exciting development, Thematic will provide content creators with a comprehensive collection of popular SFX. In addition, Thematic will offer curated playlists that include packs of the most relevant sound effects used by the creators they follow that perfectly complement the themes and moods of their videos.

Support for more creator platforms 

Thematic is thrilled to announce the expansion of its supported social media platforms, catering to the evolving needs of content creators. In addition to YouTube and Instagram, Thematic now allows creators to utilize its vast music library across all major social media platforms and even podcasts.

Whether you’re a free user, Premium user, or Pro user, Thematic ensures creators have the freedom and flexibility to enhance their content with the perfect songs and distribute them worry-free, wherever they’re shared.

This expansion opens up endless possibilities for creators to reach and engage with their audiences on platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, and more. Thematic’s commitment to empowering creators extends across the digital landscape, providing them with the tools and resources they need to unlock their full creative potential and captivate audiences wherever they may be.

Instrumentals

While many royalty-free music platforms focus on instrumental tracks, Thematic is set by its unparalleled offering of lyric-driven songs that match the theme of creators’ videos. At the same time, instrumental tracks do have a place in the realm of content creation.With this latest release, creators on Thematic’s Pro tier now have the ability to access instrumental versions of their favorite songs as well, offering them enormous flexibility in the editing process. 

By providing instrumental tracks alongside their original counterparts, Thematic empowers creators to seamlessly adjust the audio elements of their videos, accommodating diverse storytelling needs and enhancing the overall impact of their content, while at the same time providing additional discovery opportunities for their music artists.

About Thematic

Launched in 2018, Thematic is a peer-to-peer platform built by creators to source and trade assets on-demand, built on proprietary machine learning and community participation.

As an open exchange for creators and music artists, Thematic is now a global community of over 700,000 creators from hobbyists to the biggest accounts on YouTube.

By introducing the Pro tier, Thematic now offers a dynamic and comprehensive platform specifically tailored to cater to the aspirations of creators at any stage of their career. Thematic’s latest release marks another groundbreaking stride in revolutionizing the content creation landscape. 

At Thematic, we’re passionate about bringing digital creatives together and empowering them to achieve their full potential. One of our core beliefs is that ALL creators should have fair access to tools, services, and resources. With most of the creator economy wealth concentrated at the top, our mission is to help build a more equitable ecosystem through community enrichment and nurturing.

To help us deliver on this commitment, we are pleased to team up with our co-founder Michelle Phan to offer the Summer School scholarship. Thematic is awarding three (3) scholarships (valued at $499 USD each) to aspiring creators looking to pursue their own journeys and turn their passions into careers.

Summer School is a 5-week digital boot camp presented by Michelle Phan that teaches creators how to thrive in the creator economy. Through a mix of pre-recorded content and live videos, Summer School covers topics from launching a digital identity to cultivating an audience and developing a sustainable business.

Scholarship Winners

Congrats to the two recipients of the Summer School Scholarship: Diana L. & Mery M. We are excited to support you in your creative pursuits!

Eligibility

To be eligible, the applicant must be:

1. Enrolled in an accredited college or university during the 2022 or 2023 academic year.
2. This scholarship is open to students in all countries 

How to Submit

Applicants can submit a short video (1-3 minutes) or short essay (up to 1,500 words) that explains how their content will tell a unique story. We believe that storytelling has relevance in all areas of life. Be able to clearly state how your content will offer a unique perspective.

Submit your entry here: https://forms.gle/NynzyKeAQYNbed2n9

Application Deadline

The completed Summer School scholarship application must be received by Monday, September 26th, 2022 9:00PM PT. Late applications will not be considered.

Privacy Policy

This scholarship follows our site’s privacy policy. 

Winner Selection / Notification

The Thematic Summer School Scholarship Winner will be selected based on the originality, relevance, and eloquence of the applicant’s video. Winner will be privately notified via the email address provided on the application. The winners first name and application video will be published on our website on September 27th, 2022.

Today we launched an entirely supercharged, community-first experience of Thematic for content creators and music artists, including:

✔️ Weekly Matches & Thematics

✔️ Songs that fit your Aesthetic & Vibe

✔️ Your Artist Drops & Creator Finds

✔️ 100% New Search & Filter experience 

✔️ Artist Dashboard 2.0

All of these features were designed to make it easier and faster for creators to find the right song for their video, while providing more transparency and enhanced analytics to empower the careers of independent artists.

Where to begin?

I suppose it starts with our original vision for Thematic. Our team always intended to create a destination where creatives can discover, connect, and support one another.

The first step in making this a reality was making it incredibly easy for music artists and content creators to collaborate through a first-of-its-kind community licensing model:

Creators find and license music from trending artists in exchange for song promotion. 

And it works. Really well, actually.

To date, Thematic has supported 400k+ creators in sourcing quality music for their videos, while creating 11M+ new fans for music artists.

Now we’re here to take the Thematic experience to the next level with integrated social connections and easier than ever music discovery. Through the feedback of our community and incredibly hard work of our team, we’ve spent the past few months building, testing, and perfecting a set of enhanced features to make this a reality.

And we’re quite excited to share it with you today. Let’s dive into the new experience 👇

Your Weekly Matches & Thematics

Behind the scenes, our team has been carefully studying and mapping the intersection of video themes and songs. We hoped to find a way to perfectly and instantly match songs to types of content. And today we debuted this for all creators on Thematic.

Each Friday, our proprietary curation algorithm will match a set of songs curated specifically to each creator. These Weekly Matches will reflect the creator’s individual video themes and favorite types of music, and each creator will experience their own personalized mix.

On top of that, we’ll provide creators with curated playlists based on their specific video themes. This will be shown on a section on their homepage appropriately titled: Your Thematics.

Your Aesthetic & Vibe

Our goal is to make it as simple and fast as possible for creators to discover songs that best match their personal aesthetic and vibe.

Building off our Weekly Matches section, we’ve added explorable categories of song Aesthetics and Vibes, where creators can dig-in to their personal preferences to discover songs best suited to their content.

Your Artist Drops & Creator Finds

In line with our vision of encouraging creative connections, we’ve added a follow option for all users on Thematic.

Now creators can follow their favorite artists and be the first to discover their latest song drops on Thematic. For artists, this amplifies their week-of-release promotion. Their newest songs are delivered instantly into the hands of their most engaged promoters. 

One of our most-loved features from our community is the featured placement of user videos throughout the site. Many have told us that they get inspiration from these videos on what songs to use or what types of videos to create.

To further these moments of creative inspiration, creators can also now follow other creators on Thematic. When one of their favorite creators features a song in their videos, they’ll be able to see which songs and artists they’re using. This makes it much easier to discover the latest songs trending in their ‘circle of influence.’

And for those users who aren’t quite sure where to begin or who to follow, we’ve got them covered. We’ll always have a personalized selection of like-minded creators & artists ready to discover.

100% New Search & Filter Experience

When building a product, there are always pieces that you don’t quite get right the first time. For us, it was the search and filter experience for creators.

So after studying what works and hearing (loudly) from users that we had room for improvement, we pulled up our sleeves and dove in to create a better experience.

Starting today, creators can Discover not only songs, but curated playlists (from the Thematic team and other community members), similar creators, as well as recommended music artists as they browse the site.

And if they’re looking to dig in deep for something specific, don’t worry, we’ve upgraded that, too. Our enhanced song filtering page (with 5+ new music categories to filter by), will take the creator right to that perfect song, in way less time. Finally.

Artist Dashboard 2.0

This is a big one for us. Our artists have been patiently waiting for an upgraded dashboard experience. We’re thrilled to be making that a reality for them today.

In addition to some basic upgrades of an overall cleaner look and feel, the new artist dashboard includes a ton of top asked-for features.

What we’re really excited about is our new Campaign Performance Stats panel. We’ve always been transparent in providing artists with metrics around how their songs are performing and where they’re being featured. But we knew we could make this even more valuable and actionable.

Each artist will have access to their own Campaign Performance Stats panel. This panel tracks their song campaigns and overall performance on Thematic and includes details such as:

• The number of unique creators promoting their music
• The number of placements of their songs in creator YouTube videos
• The total amount of views from the videos featuring their music
• The amount of new fans who have discovered their music through their Thematic song campaigns
• The Earned Media Value received from Thematic and its creator network

We know that using influencer marketing platforms to promote music on YouTube is traditionally very costly, time-consuming, and many times does not return value for the artist. That’s why we made Thematic a free marketing platform for independent music artists. Earned Media Value (EMV) is one of the metrics that helps us measure the value we are delivering.

This EMV represents an estimated cost that the artist would likely have to spend through paid marketing efforts to achieve the same exposure and engagement they are receiving organically through Thematic.

We’ve also added a full Promotion Stats dashboard for each artist, complete with tracking details of their latest song placements, performance stats on their most engaged-with songs, featured playlists where their songs are being included, the top creators who are promoting their music, and a shelf of their earned achievements and badges on Thematic.

Some other top-requested features that are available today for music artists include: better song management, ability to update their promotional song players instantly, and allowlisting of YouTube channels to prevent copyright claims on any channels where they’ve given direct permission.

Kind of awesome, right?

In addition to all of these new features, we’ve also migrated our front-end framework to Vue. This has allowed us to provide a thoroughly faster and cleaner user experience. It’s feeling good 😎

Now it’s time to get back to creating! We can’t wait to see how our users engage with our new experience, the new creative connections they’ll make from these new features, and what amazing new content they’ll create as a result.

Special thanks and shout out to the Thematic community members who shared their feedback and supported us along the way. 

As always, feel free to tag us @hellothematic to share what you’re creating or your thoughts on the new experience!

That’s why we knew it was time to do a major rehaul and rethink our creator & music artist profiles on Thematic. We wanted to help showcase their personal aesthetic and reward them for just how awesome they are 😎

After weeks of working behind the scenes, we’re excited to drop our brand spankin’ new profile pages, shareable playlists, and Thematic badges. Dig in to all our latest updates below 👇 

Thematic Community Badges

At Thematic, our mission is to build an equitable creator ecosystem through community empowerment, collaboration and exchange. We believe when creators empower each other, they’re able to achieve their full potential.

That’s why we’re super excited to debut Thematic Badges.

Thematic Badges are achievements earned by our community. They are our way of celebrating your success and rewarding you for helping achieve our mission.

Your earned Badges are designed to be shared, because success is meant to be celebrated. You’ve worked hard to achieve status and earn trust within the community.

Earn badges as you use Thematic – from discovering music to creating playlists. Can you find them all? 🕵️

Creator Keywords

Add your keywords to your creator profile so we can start matching songs to your video themes.

Shareable Playlists

Ready to be a tastemaker on Thematic? Introducing shareable playlists!

Inspire the Thematic creator community by sharing your curated song playlists 💫 Toggle them live from your Playlists page to cement your tastemaker status.

Playlist Keywords

Tag your playlists with relevant keywords, and keep an eye out as we start sharing your public playlists around the site 😏

Your selected Playlist Keywords show on your Public Playlists. Add or edit your Playlist Keywords when editing your playlist description.

Creator Profiles

All about you!

• Highlight your best self with a great profile pic, creator keywords, and your latest YouTube videos featuring Thematic music
• Get discovered across the web! Add in your social links and all your YouTube Channels
• Show off your Thematic Achievements (and earn more badges as you keep using the site)
• View your Top Songs and Top Artists to see the music you feature the most
• Inspire the Thematic creator community by sharing your curated song playlists 💫

Discover Similar Creators on Thematic and engage with the community. Maybe give them a follow, too 😉

Artist Profiles

New and improved ways to discover artists and new music on Thematic!

• Get all the deets about a music artist – check out their social links and bio
• Never miss a release! Easily find a music artist’s newest Thematic release by checking out their featured New Song
• Get inspired by other creators! See how they feature the artist’s music in their Videos
• Listen to all of the artist’s Songs and dive into their most popular songs with Top Songs to find a great new vibe for your video
• Find an artist’s most loyal Thematic promoters by checking out their Top Creators
• Discover Playlists featuring the artist to dive in to a curated listening experience
• Explore artists with a similar sound by checking out the Similar Artists tab

🍿 What are Teams?

• Teams allow creators to collaborate on discovering music for projects
• Channel owners can add and remove team members (like editors and assistants) to their Premium channels
• All team members can find, download, and add music for the shared channel

So what are you waiting for? Get started with Teams to supercharge collaboration between your channel’s team members.

You can unlock access to Teams on Thematic when you upgrade to the Premium creator plan. Try it out for free with our 14-day free trial.

But wait, there’s more!

• The Downloads page = the Licenses ✅  page! This will make it easier to find all of your licenses & promo links.
• Projects = Playlists! We updated this based on your feedback 🤓
• Browse Music = Discover! As we continue to grow beyond just music, this just makes a bit more sense!
• New Filter button (so you can actually 👀  it) 
• You can now add channels by adding a Channel ID (instead of verifying by Google Oauth). This was highly, highly requested and we’re excited to provide an additional option for you.

This month we’re celebrating a huge milestone!

Our community has grown to 100k content creators 🥂 (…and counting). We’ve watched you develop as content creators, get married, take on new careers, travel around the world, and we’re honored to have provided part of the soundtrack to your journey. Some of you have even been with us since we first launched our invite-only site at the end of 2016 (we’re looking at you ipsyOS creators 👀) and some of you are still getting to know us. No matter how or when you found Thematic, thank you for believing in us. Your stories inspire us and we are so grateful to have you as part of our community. Thank you for being one of Thematic’s first 100k users!!

At Thematic, our core mission is to create a stronger creative ecosystem that equally supports content creators and music artists. Now more than ever this mission is of paramount importance as we believe in the strength of our community in empowering one another and taking positive action.

We hope that during this time you come together digitally to focus on the good. Our team has always been inspired by your acts of generosity and care for others, and it’s especially important now to keep that spirit alive.

As part of our efforts to ensure a continued thriving creative ecosystem for our community, we have decided to extend our free beta phase until further notice.

It is important for us as a creator-first company to put you, our community first – providing high-quality free resources for your creative process.

Thank you for your continued trust in and support of Thematic. We’re here for you. #ThematicCreatives

Take care,
Marc Schrobilgen
Co-Founder and CEO