On average, each one of us spends upwards of three hours a day on social media channels, an alarming number if you think about it, and that’s a significant rise on the 145 minutes a day we spent on these platforms in 2020, and this rise is seemingly only going to get more pronounced.
We all scroll for eternity as we go about our daily lives, from the commute to work to when we turn in for the night, and on occasion, we see videos that enrich and entertain us, but on the whole, we digest a lot of content that is sub-standard. This is very much what social media is all about, seeing through the minefield of poor content to find something meaningful.
If you are a budding social media influencer or just someone who likes to post content in order to impress your immediate circle, then you might want to make the most of the use of sound to really make your visuals pop.
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How to Make Your Videos Stand Out
Trying to make your videos stand out from the crowd isn’t an easy task. When you consider the sheer weight of content out there in the likes of YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, three platforms where visual content is so vital, the chances of your work getting a big audience are very slim indeed.
However, using a great piece of music, either to lead your presentation or as background music, will help you take a massive step in the right direction. As we tend to scroll through social media content without even thinking, using a solid choice of music can be all it takes to have a user stick around to take a closer (and longer) look at your videos.
Picking the right song or background music can be the key to making your videos really work; indeed, you should try to think of the audio that accompanies your visuals as the paint on a canvas.
There are some that speak of free music for videos, but this niche is very limited and usually isn’t that great in terms of what’s on offer. There are other options.
So, where do you get excellent background music?
Using Copyright Protected Music
Maybe you heard a great song on Spotify, or perhaps there’s a track you’ve loved for years, and now you realize it goes perfectly with your latest video. Maybe it works ideally with a dance craze video you filmed for TikTok, or it has the immediate appeal that would work as an intro for your YouTube channel’s videos?
If you want to use that mainstream piece of music, you need to be aware of the pitfalls of this option. Firstly the costs associated with doing so are enormous, more considerable than you had probably considered, and there’s every chance that if you were to open discussions with the relevant rights holders, they might just turn you down anyway as they don’t see the appeal of allowing the use of their work on a video that isn’t going to be seen by millions.
If you are considering using this content without the relevant permissions and licenses, then we’d strongly suggest you think again. The chances of getting away with such behavior are pretty much zero. Social media networks use technology that can root out the use of unlicensed material within seconds, and this will result in your likely immediate suspension and perhaps a complete ban.
Then we come to the additional punishments that can range from financial penalties to jail, so do not go down this road.
Royalty-Free Music, the Smart Alternative
One great option to consider is to use royalty-free music, which is an industry that has become hugely successful in recent years. In simple terms, royalty-free music is a service supplied by a number of providers who give users access to vast libraries of relevant musical output on a subscription basis.
The fee you pay, which isn’t expensive, then gives you a massive choice to select from when it comes to finding the right music for your social media videos. That element of choice is critical as it means that you’ll never have to settle for a piece of music just because you happen to find something or because it’s a song you’ve known for years.
The content available from the best providers is remarkably diverse and is well categorized so that when it comes to finding the right music, it’s easy to do so. For instance, the libraries may be sorted by moods and musical styles and can be used as often as you wish in whatever way you deem fit, and all of this is done without the need for additional license clearances.
An additional benefit of royalty-free music providers comes from the fact that many of them also offer massive SFX (Sound Effects) databases so that you can also use these in your content, and that can add value to your projects and make them even more professional in scope and delivery.
