How Your VA Can Source Music The Right Way

Video has several advantages over other formats of communication. But most times, videos aren’t complete without music. You need music to bring your video to life. 

Good music may be the difference between people watching your video to the end or skipping it after a couple of seconds.

As you may or may not know, you can’t just use any music in your video. Most music is copyrighted making it illegal to use them without licensing.

Many creators overlook the importance of securing legal rights for intellectual property when using music. It’s crucial to acknowledge how laws surrounding intellectual property are enforced. Firms like HeerLaw.com specialize in ensuring that your use of creative content adheres to all applicable laws.

So, it’s important you have permission to use any music you want to include in your videos. 

If you are too busy to source music to use in your videos every time, you can get your virtual assistant (VA) to do it if you have one. 

Below, you’ll find simple steps to help you source music for your videos the right way. Both you and your VA can follow the steps below. 

1. Find The Right Type of Music For Your Marketing Campaign 

Music is not a standalone element. It should complement your video, else it will have the opposite effect you intend to achieve. 

So, it’s important you choose the right type of music for your marketing campaign. To choose the right music, you have to put two things into consideration and these are the type of video you are making and your audience. 

Type of Video You Are Making

The type of video you are making will heavily influence the type of music you’ll want to use.

What type of emotion do you intend to evoke in your music? The answer to this question will help you identify the genre of music to use. 

If it’s an educational video, you’ll want music that can maintain the interest of the audience.

 If you are trying to tell a story, music that can advance the plot and heighten the emotion of your audience will be more suitable. Promo videos, ads, and announcements will require attention-grabbing videos. 

Background music is as important as the characters and images in your video. Have this in mind as you explore several tracks. 

Your Audience

It’s easy to forget to consider the target audience when choosing a track for a video. 

But putting your target audience into consideration will help you select the right type of music. Different age groups tend to prefer different music. While a young audience may respond well to hip pop or electronic, it’s unlikely 60+ people will take well to it. 

2. Confirm The Music You Intend to Use is Royalty Free

Royalty free music is your best bet when it comes to legally using music for your videos. For those not familiar with royalty free music, it’s a type of music license that allows you to pay for a song ONCE and use the music for your intended purpose without additional payment. 

Check that the music you want to use for your videos is royalty free by checking if it’s available in the library of reputable royalty free music providers. 

You’ll also see the amount you have to pay to obtain permission to use the music in your videos.

The price of royalty free music is usually very affordable compared to dealing with record labels to obtain rights to use a track or song. You can also start your music searching journey on a royalty free music provider website. 

3. Find Something Similar If The Music You Like Isn’t Royalty Free

As a content creator, you may be inspired by a particular song or track only to search for it and find out it’s not royalty free. 

It can be a bit disheartening…or more than a bit. But don’t fret, chances are you’ll find royalty free music that is similar to it. You won’t find an exact match but you can always get something that can give the same vibe or invoke similar emotions in your target audience. 

4. IntegrateThe Music In Your Video

Unless it’s your first time adding music to a video, you are familiar with the process. There are different tools that can be used to add music to your videos on different devices. 

If your videos include a lot of speaking, using music with vocals will clash with the original video audio and make it difficult for your audience to understand or hear the dialogue. Some of the song’s lyrics may even send the wrong message. This is why most videos use music without vocals. 

Teaching your VA how to edit videos can free up a big slice of your time.

Remember to pay attention to the pacing of the background music. Ideally, the tempo of the music should match that of the video. So, this is something to have in mind when editing your videos.

Conclusion

Once your VA understands how to properly add music to your videos for your marketing campaigns, course or internal SOPs, you’ll be able to bring the exact vibe you’re wanting to portray without encountering any financial or legal issues.

Just as photos must be sourced from royalty-free stock providers, music is the same. Start on the right foot as music companies are using automation to crack down on people using their tunes without the proper licensing.

Author: Idan Santhaus is a co-founder of TuneReel, a composer, and an avid video editor.