If you are a YouTube creator, you must be aware of the herculean task of searching for royalty-free music that matches your content. On some bad days it can take hours to find the right soundtrack or sound effect to complete your video. And if you regularly upload videos to YouTube, the process can eventually stress you out.
The thing about music for YouTube videos is that if you don’t pay close attention to music licenses, you can get yourself into a conflict. In such a case, YouTube may automatically turn off parts of your video or you may need to share the proceeds with the composer. In worse circumstances, your channel could also receive a copyright strike from YouTube.
There have been cases where fake users copied music from other channels and tried to make it appear as their own. Yes, it will. And it’s not a pleasant experience. Such errors can potentially wipe out hours of effort.
So how do you make sure the music you source for your YouTube videos is royalty-free? Well, that’s what we’re going to explore in this post today.
Lets start.
What is Royalty Free Music?
Royalty-free music means a music license that allows you to use an audio track for as long as you want as long as you pay the composer the required one-time license fee. So, whether you use it in a video or as a background score for an app is entirely up to you.
However, royalty-free music is not the same as royalty-free music. The latter basically happens when artists or composers allow you to use their work for monetary gain, as long as you agree to attribute the musical notes to them.
So how do you find royalty-free music for your YouTube videos? Do not worry, because there are many sources, but only a few of them are reliable.
1. Search Source — YouTube
One of the popular sources of copyright free music is YouTube. To be technically correct, the YouTube Audio Library.
It has a huge library of royalty-free songs, and if you have spare time, you can find some great tracks there. Music is categorized by category and you can search by genre, mood or instruments used.
More importantly, you can also view the music by clicking the Attribution required drop-down menu or otherwise.
Although the library is quite large, you can’t always find the right music for your videos. Also, the interface is a bit bland. While there are many sorting options available, you cannot categorize them as Recent or Most Popular. This limitation can be quite annoying. Popular tracks would have been used multiple times already, as this library is available to every creator.
Moreover, there are not many options when it comes to the format. Music is downloaded in compressed audio format and there is no option to download in other lossless formats such as WAV or FLAC.
2. Browse Other Sources of Royalty Free Music
If the limitations mentioned above bother you the most, you can check out other reliable royalty-free music sources like HookSounds.
One of the highlights of HookSounds is that all tracks are original and royalty-free, meaning they are fully owned by the tracks. So, when you buy a license for a song or subscription, it means you have the legal rights to the song or music piece. In the worst case scenario, even if you run into any copyright issues, HookSounds will take care of it.
Apart from that, the media library is diverse. Although all new and latest releases appear on the front page, you can always search for specific audio file types.
The interface is modern and you can filter your search by type, BPM, length and genre. There is a nifty option to sort the results by publication date and popularity. And naturally this makes your job easier and helps you save time searching for the right sound for your YouTube videos.
Another plus point – when you finalize and download a track, the downloaded zip file combines MP3 and high-quality WAV files.
The free version of HookSounds lets you download songs for personal videos, while the Pro version allows YouTube monetization and commercial use.
3. Sourcing from Other Audio Channels
Finally, you can browse some YouTube audio channels. There are several channels that provide music to creators of multiple genres. Some of these are also home to several new artists in the music world, so you can discover new tracks.
The only limitation is that you don’t know for sure the original source of the parts. For this you only need to take the word of the artist. And as we mentioned above, it can get you into a conflict.
While you can always go ahead and dig a little deeper, you end up wasting more time, thereby lowering your productivity.
Here’s More Creativity
Audio is one of the most important pillars for making a good YouTube video. Some creatives say audio is 50% video. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the background audio track can make or break your videos.
In short, the music track should fit your video perfectly. At the same time, you shouldn’t get into any trouble or force videos to monetize for not paying attention to your music selection.
Royalty-free music sources like HookSounds help your content stand out in the crowd. It also saves you the headache of licensing issues.
