Including music in your videos is a must in today’s content world. What does your audience like? Do you have the rights? Choosing the right music genre can be tricky to maneuver so let’s lay out some key factors to consider.

Start With a Great Music Library

There are many music libraries to choose from these days. Even YouTube offers a selection of (somewhat limited) royalty-free music to use with your videos. However, that same limited library is available to its 2 billion plus users. 

Loudly offers thousands of custom royalty-free songs to choose from. Like most platforms, you can sort by music genre, mood, BPM, or even energy levels. What sets Loudly apart is the eclectic producers that carefully curate and craft each song. The catalog is updated weekly with fresh selections that keep up with current trends and offer users plenty of choice.

Another distinguishing factor is the ability to preview your video along with your selection of music while you’re searching! Any editor knows the painstaking process of downloading tracks, then importing into your editing software, only to have to repeat the process. In the near future, you’ll be able to customize your tracks even further down to the stem level, all directly on the platform.

Decide What Style Matches Your Brand

Your brand identity plays a huge role in the type of music you will use. Choose genres that are both relevant and elevate your content. This is also an opportunity to inject some more of your personality into your videos. Finding the right music genre that speaks to you, will also potentially connect with your audience. 

Popular YouTubers like Peter McKinnon or MKBHD have a distinct style that matches their brand and lifestyle. McKinnon goes for a grungy rock aesthetic, matching his coffee-loving, tattooed, outdoorsy lifestyle. While MKBHD often features smooth electronic and indie tunes, matching his city / tech vibe.

What Does Your Audience Like?

This one is an extension of what music genre matches your brand. Your audience subscribes to you and the brand that you portray. Using songs that your audience identifies with adds another layer of engagement that can help captivate their attention. It’s become commonplace to find viewers asking “what song is this?” in the comments section. So much so that artist and track names are often mentioned in the description or directly in videos.

Don’t Go Overboard

While you may be tempted to use the newest and hottest track you can find, paying attention to things like vocals and lyrics are important to keeping your videos distraction-free. Having a high-energy song for your intro segment is great for setting the tone, but using it for your whole video may detract from your actual message or content. 

Know Your Rights

Maybe you’re loving the new Lizzo song and it would be a perfect fit for your newest video. She’s relevant and you want your content to pop, so why not use it? The simple answer is that you technically can but you will most certainly face a copyright claim and thus lose your ability to monetize.

Ensuring that you use royalty-free music protects your content from copyright strikes, and respects the hard work of other artists. While these days, a copyright claim doesn’t often result in your video being taken down (and consequently losing the views you accrued), all the potential money you could make from ads will now go to the artist instead. 

Save yourself the headache and stick with Loudly for all of your music needs.