A Detailed Guide to Use Background Music for Videos

There are a lot of things to do if you want to make amazing videos. For example, you need to remove unnecessary parts, adjust volume speed, and insert closed captions. Also, it’s important to spice up your video with music tracks.

Today, I’ll show you a complete guide to use background music for videos. Once you know to do this, your videos will be more impressive and professional.

1. How to Choose the Right Background Music for Videos

Music brings everyone together. And we all love listening to music, no matter what kind of music is.

Today, music becomes more and more important in the field of video production. It not only affects how the audience perceive your video, but also plays a vital role in delivering your message. So, if you don’t ever use background music for videos, consider it.  

But, how to choose the right background music when there are millions of tracks on the Internet? This is a big question for beginners because they have no idea what the right music track is. Thus, they tend to pick up a random one which they feel “perfect” for their videos. This way, those videos will die down sooner or later, unfortunately.

To avoid falling into this category, here are some tips for you to select a good background music:

• Know your video goal: Why do you make that video? Do the video come with any message? Is it a part of your marketing campaign? For example, if you are making an explainer video, you should go with the gentle sound like this. In case it’s a promotion video, the chosen track should be inspirational and a little bit urgent like this.     
• Understand your audience: People have different tastes in music, and their music favorites even vary according to age. Children may like happy and funny music. Meanwhile, puck and metal are popular among teenagers. When they move into the adulthood, they much prefer “contemporary” music like pop. So, you should research your target audience, and create a persona if possible.  
• Choose your video tone: Tone is how your video makes your audience feel. For example, do you want to make them feel educated or inspired? Do you want to make them laugh or happy? There are a lot of tones such as dramatic, conversational, urgent, informative, and entertaining. Picking up the right one will help improve the feeling of your video. Note that it’s better to avoid tracks with a dark or moody energy level unless your audience will certainly relate to them.
• Match background music with your video style: The music track you’ve chosen should fit your video style. Let’s say you opt for hip-hop and rock music to create a video tutorial. Unfortunately, these music types seem to be out of place.
• Try many tracks before committing to a specific one: It’s good to apply the trial and error technique for checking if a soundtrack is suitable for your video or not. To do that, you can create a list of possible choices. Then, insert them into the video one by one and listen until you find a perfect match.   

2. Best Sources to Download Free Background Music for Videos

When it comes to choosing a music background music, you have two options. First, select a track from a royalty-free music library. Second, hire a composer to score your video. If you fix on the latter, you have to pay a considerable amount of money, which probably goes beyond your budget. In this case, I recommend you to choose the former because there are various websites offering royalty-free and high-quality music tracks. Although this method isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to every situation, it deserves a try.

Let’s take a look at some of the best sources to download background music for free.

1. YouTube Audio Library

YouTube Audio Library offers 150 royalty-free tracks, including sound effects and audio clips. The great thing about this library is that all tracks are high quality. They are available as 320kbps MP3 files, making it easier for you to download, remix, or use for any purpose.  

2. AudioJungle

On the website, AudioJungle team claims that they provide top-quality and royalty-free music tracks. And the fact is that most of the tracks are incredible, including various types of music and even sound effects. If you have your own music, you can also sell here. Note that not all tracks on AudioJungle are free.

3. Free Music Archive

Free Music Archive is where you can search music by the type of Creative Commons license, public domain, commercial use, or remix/video. Also, this website has more than 1,500 tracks with several types such as classical, blues, folk, and novelty. Free Music Archive also includes an extensive MP3 library for iOS and Android devices.

4. Bensound

When visiting Bensound, you see a Royalty Free Music category. Click it, and royalty-free music tracks are shown in a matter of second. Bensound allows you to download and use tracks for online videos, websites, animations, and so on. But, it requires a credit with a link to this website. It’s also possible to buy a Bensound Pro license in case you need high-quality music and don’t want to cite the source.

5. Incompetech

Incompetech is a royalty-free music library created by composer Kevin MacLeod. This library gives tons of tracks, and you can view them by feels, tempo, genre, or length. Besides, you are free to download a track as MP3 file, get it from iTunes, listen directly on the website, and watch the video on YouTube.

Note:  

When using a track for your video, you should be sure that it’s absolutely royalty free. If not, you need to get permission or license early on. Whatever you do, don’t steal music.   

3. How to Insert Background Music into Videos with ActivePresenter

ActivePresenter makes it easy for you to use background music for videos. This app gives many advantages of inserting a music track into your videos as shown below:

• Easy to add a soundtrack from file system or the ActivePresenter library. You can create a new audio by using the Recording feature as well.
• Support 4 audio file formats: MP3, OGG, WMA, and WAV.
• Offer the Loop feature to make the audio file seamlessly repeat.
• Offer the Ignore Pausing feature to continue playing the audio while the presentation is paused to wait for user’s input. This function is useful when designing eLearning courses.
• Support a variety of audio editing features: cut/copy/delete/crop range, change playback speed, change audio volume, join/split audio, and insert/remove freeze-frames.

More than that, in the upcoming version of ActivePresenter, you will have a chance to experience advanced audio features: Audio Fade In, Audio Fade Out, and Audio Noise Reduction. See ActivePresenter 7 New Features and Enhancements for Screencasting and Video Editing for more details.

To add background music to videos, refer to How to Add Background Music for Videos for more details. Or, you can watch this video.

And that’s it! Now you’ve learnt everything you need to use background music for videos. Don’t wait anymore! Instead, click the button below to download ActivePresenter today and create a great video with your music track. Don’t forget to contact us if you need any help.