In this article, we’ll discuss why you need to use music in your explainer video, what sort of music you should choose, and also, what the thought process in the back of your mind should look like when you’re selecting a music track for your explainer video.
Then I will show you a couple of places where you can get some high-quality, royalty-free music tracks for your videos.
And at the end of this article, I’m gonna share with you our personal favourite one that we’ve used over the years to purchase, literally, hundreds of music tracks for our client videos and our own videos as well.
So, why is music so important, and why you should use music in your video? It’s pretty simple! Because it communicates something about you, your message, and your brand.
And I’m gonna make a parallel here, which I’m pretty sure you’ve heard before. Whenever two people have a conversation with one another, the actual words that are being used only make a minority of what’s actually being communicated.
The vast majority of the communication actually happens on another level, which is made of facial expressions, vocal tonality, body language, and a lot of other things as well.
And going back to our explainer videos, the same is true for videos as well. Of course, the script and the words that you use are very important, but, you can use music to set the tone for the video and communicate emotions much better than words can.
So when it comes to selecting a music track for your video. You need to have two questions in mind.
1) Is there any sort of music genre or style that appeals to my customer base?
2) Is there any musical stereotype for my product category?
Now, that’s when it comes to the genre or style of the music. But you can also think about it in terms of mood or emotion. Because let’s say you’re making a dramatic video that’s full of tension. You want to have some music that works synergistically with that and sends across the same emotion
Or maybe you’re making a corporate video, in which case you might want to go with something more neutral, maybe low-key, something in the background that doesn’t really do much, but still feels very professional.
AppSmart – Explainer Video
Or let’s say, for example, your video is aimed at young individuals and you want the video to be fast-paced, full of energy, upbeat, and very happy. We don’t want to have some sort of sad music in the background. You want to have some music that’s full of energy and gives the viewer the same feeling while watching the video.
Thnx Tag – Explainer Video
Now, in the end, it’s actually pretty simple. You just got to do a bit of research and basically, listen to a lot of music tracks on a couple of websites, that I’m gonna show you in a minute and pick the one that you like the most, and you think works perfectly with your brand.
So let’s look at a couple of amazing options and make sure you read all the way to the end where I’ll share the one that we use all the time for our clients.
BenSound is a smaller website that focuses on quality, not quantity. What I love about it is that they have a more unique model to license things. Because if you’re low on budget, you can find some absolutely amazing music tracks here that you can use for free, in exchange for attribution.
Of course, the free model has some limitations, but for more advanced and professional users, you can just purchase a license and get rid of them. And if you really like their stuff, they also offer a subscription with unlimited downloads of all the tracks which once downloaded are yours forever.
Pond5 is a massive stock marketplace that offers a lot of things, including royalty-free music. The prices are quite affordable for a single-use license that usually goes for around $20 to $30, depending on the track. Overall they have 1.5 million music tracks to choose from, so definitely something for every taste
PremiumBeat is the subsidiary of ShutterStock, one of the largest stock marketplaces in the world. As you can probably tell from the name, it deals with premium music and is a curated library of some of the best music content you can find.
What I absolutely love about them is that for every track that you purchase, you can get a ton of different variations of it. You can get shorter versions for 15, 30, or 60s usually, different loops, and even each instrument or sound individually, called stems, to use them however you want. This gives you a ton of flexibility in editing.
Now this list wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t look at a few options with unlimited downloads. One of the most popular ones is Epidemic Sound. It has a great catalog of over 35,000 tracks, the quality is very good and the pricing is very affordable as well. They offer both a monthly and yearly subscription and you can download an unlimited number of tracks to use in all of your projects.
Just like EpidemicSound, artlist.io is another incredibly popular platform with a subscription-based model that offers you unlimited downloads. The music is cleared to be used on any projects such as YouTube, client work, wedding videos, and of course, explainer videos as well. Quality is again very good, the user experience on the website searching for music is also very good and we even use some of their songs in our YouTube videos sometimes.
audiio.com spelled with a double “ii” is the new kid on the block in terms of music subscriptions, but what’s different about them is that for a limited time and for early adopters, they also offer a ridiculously good deal for a lifetime membership with a one-time fee of around $299, so make sure to check them out as well.
And last but not least, the one we use all the time for our client projects is AudioJungle.net, which is part of the Envato marketplaces. Maybe we’re just old school, but here at The Explainer Company, we like to get unique songs for our projects and also make sure that authors get a fair share of the revenue of each sale. We’ve been using AudioJungle for maybe 10+ years now and purchased hundreds of songs. The quality is great, the collection is massive and yea, it’s our favourite place to get music tracks from.
So there you have it, our top 7 favorite places online to get royalty-free music tracks for our video projects. There are plenty of options for all budgets and I’m sure you’ll find something great for your project as well!
To find out more, check out our entire Explainer Series on YouTube for free or check out our blog Explainer Guides where we go even deeper and cover everything related to Explainer Videos.
And if you want to get an amazing explainer video for your company to stand out from all the noise, produced by a professional and experienced team with over 10+ years in the industry and more than 400+ videos produced for clients all over the world, then browse our website, check out our portfolio and get in touch!
