Audio - Do you know how to find the best audio track for your video?

Last updated by Tiago Araújo [SSW] over 1 year ago.See history

Finding the right song or music for your video is exciting, but you should never use any copyrighted work without permission. This is because copyright is designed to protect musicians and creators, so using unlicensed music negatively affects artists.

In addition to this, if you have unlicensed or copyrighted music or songs on your YouTube videos they might be removed from the site or and revenue will instead be distributed to the artist. To avoid this, use licensed or royalty-free music.

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Figure: Bad example - Ripping someone's song can result in your video being taken down by YouTube

Royalty-Free Music

There are many options available for purchasing high-quality music that you can use in both commercial or personal videos.

Some of the top music libraries are:

Audio Network

Audio Network is the best option for editing because it provides a very large range of very high quality music, and even offers variations on instrumentation and durations. The user interface is good, and customer service is great too, with an Account Manager available to assist. This library is used by major production companies and broadcasters around the world (UK based).

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Figure: Good example - Scanning Audionetwork song descriptions can be faster than listening to each song - you can listen and jump forward along the waveform to quickly get the gist of it, then find the perfect powerful crescendo to finish off your video

Artlist

Artlist have a regularly updated library with new songs, and is a very cost-effective solution. While the library of music is more limited than Audio Network, they also provide a subscription to sound effects which is very useful. The style sounds more like professional music created by bands and artists but is still designed for corporate, making it a solid choice as a music library.

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Figure: Good example - Artlist - for a low annual subscription cost you get unlimited access to really awesome quality music.

Audio Jungle

Audio Jungle is great for finding sound effects and Foley sounds. You can also find many great full-length songs that suit corporate video. The music style is typically geared toward a "corporate" market (e.g. online ads and marketing videos), so there is not as much range in selections as you would find in some of the bigger libraries.

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Figure: Good example - AudioJungle.net - you can pay $1 for a laugh track

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