The thing with music for YouTube videos is that if you are not too careful with the music licenses, you may land yourself in a dispute. If that happens, YouTube may automatically mute parts of your video, or you may have to share the revenue with the composer. In worse circumstances, your channel may also face a copyright strike from YouTube. There have been instances where bogus users have copied music from other channels and tried to pass it off as theirs. Yes, it happens. And it’s not a pleasant experience. Such mistakes could potentially wipe out hours of your effort. So, how do you make sure that the music you are sourcing for your YouTube videos is royalty-free? Well, that’s what we are going to explore in this post today. Let’s get started.
What Is Royalty-Free Music
Royalty-free music refers to a music license that lets you use an audio track as many times you want, as long as you have paid the required one-time licensing fee to the composer. So, whether you use it in a video or as a background score of an app, it’s entirely up to you. However, royalty-free music is not the same as copyright-free music. The latter is basically when artists or composers let you use their creations for monetary gain as long as you agree to attribute the music score to them. So, how do you find royalty-free music for your YouTube videos? Well, worry not, for there are plenty of sources, but only a few of them are reliable.
1. Search in the Source — YouTube
One of the popular sources of royalty-free music is YouTube. To be technically correct, the YouTube Audio Library. It has a huge library of copyright-free tracks, and if you have time to spare, you can find some amazing tracks in there. The music is classified by categories and you can search by the genre, mood, or the instruments used. More importantly, you can also view the music by clicking on Attribution required drop-down or otherwise. Though the library is quite huge, you don’t always get the right music for your videos. Moreover, the interface is a bit bland. While there are many sorting options available, you can’t categorize them by Recent or Most Popular. That limitation can be quite irksome. Since this library is available to every content creator, the popular tracks would’ve been used several times already. On top of that, there are not many options when it comes to the format. The music is downloaded in a compressed audio format, and there’s no option to download in other lossless formats such as WAV or FLAC.
2. Check out Other Sources of Royalty-Free Music
If the limitations mentioned above bother you the most, you can check out the other reliable sources of royalty-free music such as HookSounds. One of the highlights of HookSounds is that all the tracks are original and royalty-free, meaning they fully own the tracks. So, when you purchase the license for a song or a subscription, it means you have the legal rights to the song or music track. In the worst-case scenario, even if you face any copyright issues, HookSounds will take care of it. Aside from that, the media library is diverse. While all the new and recent releases appear on the front page, you can always search for specific types of audio files. The interface is modern, and you can filter your search as per the type, BPM, length, and genre. There is a nifty option to sort the results by release date and popularity. And naturally, this eases your work and helps you save time in looking for the right audio for your YouTube videos. Another plus point — when you finalize on a track and download it, the downloaded zip file bundles MP3 and high-quality WAV files. The free version of HookSounds lets you download songs for personal videos, while the Pro version allows for YouTube monetization and commercial use.
3. Sourcing From Other Audio Channels
Lastly, you can surf through some YouTube audio channels. There are quite a few channels that provide music for content creators across multiple genres. Some of these also host several new artists in the music world, meaning you can discover some new tracks. The only limitation is that you do not know for certain the original source of the tracks. You solely have to take the artist’s word for it. And as we’ve mentioned above, it may land you in a dispute. While you can always go ahead and dig a little deeper, you’ll eventually end up wasting more time, thus reducing your efficiency.
Here’s to More Creativity
Audio is one of the most important pillars for making a good YouTube video. Some creative folks say that the audio is 50% video. I am not exaggerating when I say that the background audio track can make or break your videos. In short, the music track must fit your video completely. At the same time, you shouldn’t land in any trouble or be forced to demonetize videos because you were not careful with your music selection. Royalty-free music sources like HookSounds help your content stand out in the crowd. At the same time, it saves you from the headache of licensing issues.
