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Every successful music producer eventually learns a hard truth. You can spend years perfecting your craft, but if you ignore what the market actually wants, your best tracks will gather dust while weaker tracks outperform them simply because they aim at the right demand curve. That is the difference between composing for creativity alone and composing for licensing. When the goal is to license music on platforms like Pond5, you cannot compose blindly. You need data. You need trends. And you need to understand what editors, marketers, and content creators are searching for right now.
The good news is that Pond5 provides a powerful, often-overlooked tool for this: the Pond5 Contributor Music Trends Dashboard. This page gives you real-time marketplace intelligence. It shows the most searched keywords, the trending directions, the median price buyers expect to pay, and the demand signals that separate profitable producers from frustrated ones. If you know how to read this data, you can reverse-engineer what sells, create tracks that editors immediately recognize as usable, and dramatically increase your licensing income.
This article breaks down the actual data from the Pond5 Trends dashboard (November 2025). We will identify what kinds of music buyers want, why they want it, how much they pay, and how you can compose strategically to position your tracks for the highest probability of licensing success. You will also receive production formulas, chord progressions, tempo ranges, and instrument suggestions tailored to the demand categories. If you want practical, actionable instructions instead of generic advice, this is your playbook.
Understanding the Pond5 Data Trends Dashboard
If you have not visited the dashboard, you can find it at: Pond5 Contributor Music Trends. This page updates regularly and gives you four critical pieces of information:
- Top searched music keywords
- Trending upward and trending downward search terms
- The median sold price for music
- Recent featured top-selling or curated tracks
Most composers scroll past this and upload whatever they feel like. The profitable composers study it and tailor their catalog accordingly. Here is what the current dataset actually shows.
Top Searched Terms (High-Demand Keywords)
These nine keywords are the most searched categories for November 2025 on Pond5:
- happy
- epic
- cinematic
- Christmas
- dramatic
- meditation
- ambient
- classical
- documentary
These are not suggestions. These are the categories that buyers actively hunt for. If your catalog does not include at least several tracks covering these terms, you are choosing to miss out on high-volume demand.
Median Sold Price
The screenshot shows a very simple number, but it is incredibly important: $19. That is the median price buyers pay for a single music license. Some tracks sell for more, some for less, but this is the industry expectation. If you dramatically underprice or overprice your music, you immediately reduce your chances of licensing.
Trending Searches: What is Hot and What is Not
This is the most valuable piece of information on the entire dashboard. It shows percentage spikes compared to the previous four weeks. These spikes tell you what producers should be composing right now.
Trending Upward
- future +388.89 percent
- Christmas +336.36 percent
- hockey organ +236.84 percent
- Holiday music +128.57 percent
- choral +69.23 percent
- meditation music +37.31 percent
When a keyword jumps three hundred percent in a single month, you do not ignore it. You build for it immediately. These spikes indicate massive buyer interest. Smart producers position themselves to ride the wave instead of chasing it after it collapses.
Trending Downward
- jazz -11.66 percent
- fun -20.00 percent
- orchestral -36.23 percent
- horror -39.53 percent
- energetic -42.31 percent
- pop -52.00 percent
This does not mean these genres never sell. It means they sell less right now. If you upload a dozen pop tracks during a fifty percent drop in search demand, you are not composing strategically; you are composing for yourself, not the market.
How to Use This Data to Build Sellable Music
Composers who succeed in licensing learn to think like editors. Editors do not browse your music hoping to discover your creativity. They search for something specific, typed directly into the Pond5 search bar. When your tracks align with the market’s top demand categories, your visibility and licensing potential increase dramatically.
The goal is not to change your artistic identity. It is to understand why certain chord progressions, tempi, and instrument palettes consistently get licensed. Below is a clean, organized breakdown of the highest-demand categories from the current Pond5 dataset, formatted for fast study and quick production reference.
| Chord Progressions | Tempo Range | Instrument Palette |
|---|---|---|
|
C – G – Am – F G – D – Em – C D – A – Bm – G |
90–120 BPM |
Ukulele Clean electric guitars Bouncy pianos Hand claps Light percussion |
| Chord Progressions | Tempo Range | Instrument Palette |
|---|---|---|
|
Cm – Ab – Eb – Bb Am – F – C – G Dm – A – C – G |
70–120 BPM |
Heavy percussion Braams Wide strings Brass stabs Hybrid sound design |
| Chord Progressions | Tempo Range | Instrument Palette |
|---|---|---|
|
Em – C – G – D Am – F – C – G Bm – G – D – A |
70–110 BPM |
Soft pianos Warm strings Ambient textures Subtle percussion |
| Chord Progressions | Tempo Range | Instrument Palette |
|---|---|---|
|
C – G – Am – F F – C – G – C G – Em – C – D |
Varies |
Glockenspiel Sleigh bells Soft choirs Warm strings |
| Chord Progressions | Tempo Range | Instrument Palette |
|---|---|---|
|
Am – G – F – E Cm – Ab – Eb – Bb Em – Bm – Am – D |
50–80 BPM |
Heavy low piano Cellos Trailer percussion Dark pads |
| Chord Progressions | Tempo Range | Instrument Palette |
|---|---|---|
|
Cmaj7 – Amaj7 – Dmaj7 – Gmaj7 Fmaj9 – Cmaj9 – Gmaj9 Em7 – A7sus4 – Dmaj7 |
40–60 BPM |
Soft pads Ethereal synths Light bells Airy textures |
| Chord Progressions | Tempo Range | Instrument Palette |
|---|---|---|
|
A – E – F#m – D Cmaj7 – Gmaj7 – Am7 – Fmaj7 Dsus2 – Asus2 – Esus2 |
40–60 BPM |
Reverb-heavy pads Sustained strings Slow ambient textures |
| Chord Progressions | Tempo Range | Instrument Palette |
|---|---|---|
|
G – Bm – Am – D C – E7 – Am – G7 F – A7 – Dm – Gm |
Varies |
String quartets Piano Light orchestral sections |
| Chord Progressions | Tempo Range | Instrument Palette |
|---|---|---|
|
Am – Em – F – C Dm – G – C – Am C – G/B – Am – G |
60–90 BPM |
Soft pianos Subtle strings Light percussion |
What to Avoid Right Now
The current dataset shows a significant decline in demand for:
- jazz
- fun
- orchestral
- horror
- energetic
- pop
These genres still have value, but they are not trending upward. If your goal is maximizing licensing income, focus your time on high-demand categories first.
Conclusion
The Pond5 Trends dashboard is not a curiosity. It is a blueprint for profitable music production. When you know what buyers are searching for, what is trending upward, what is falling off, and how much buyers are paying, you stop guessing and start building strategically.
If you want more licensing income, do not create randomly. Create intentionally. Use the keywords above. Use the chord progressions. Use the tempos. Deliver what the marketplace is asking for. That is how you turn your catalog into a revenue engine instead of a collection of forgotten files.
Check the trend data regularly, adjust your composition plan, and stay ahead of the curve. This is how serious producers win in the world of stock music licensing.