If you’re a content creator, you already know how important the right musical accompaniment can be. The music you choose can influence how your audience reacts emotionally to your content. But how do you choose the perfect match? In this guide, we explore music selection for your content and share practical tips to help you get it right every time.

Assessing your music options

Before getting into the creative process of selecting some music, take a moment to understand the different routes you can take to source your material. Each option has unique advantages and disadvantages.

1. Royalty-Free Music Libraries (Subscription-Based)

Collections as in these ones from RouteNote Create make it easier to find the mood music you’re after

Advantages:

  • Usually the most cost-effective option, especially for regular creators.
  • Licensing is simple and typically covers all major platforms.
  • Often offers a large catalogue covering various genres, moods, instruments, and tags.
  • Unlimited downloads allow experimentation without extra cost.

Disadvantages:

  • Some tracks may be used by many other creators.
  • The sheer amount of content requires time to explore and shortlist tracks.

2. Royalty-Free Libraries (One-Off Licensing)

Advantages:

  • Ideal if you only need occasional music.
  • You only pay for the track you actually use.

Disadvantages:

  • Can quickly become expensive for frequent projects.
  • Fewer opportunities to try alternatives without paying again.

3. Sync Licensing Commercial Music

image courtesy of Horus music

Advantages:

  • Access recognisable songs from major artists.
  • An almost limitless choice
  • Strong emotional pull due to familiarity.

Disadvantages:

  • Generally very expensive and legally complex.
  • Complicated restrictions may apply to certain platforms or regions.

4. Commissioning Original Music

Image courtesy of Chase Jarvis

Advantages:

  • Completely unique and tailored to your project.
  • If done well it offers perfect emotional and structural alignment.

Disadvantages:

  • It can be an expensive option.
  • Requires time for briefing, feedback, and revisions.
  • You only have a certain amount of control over the outcome.
  • Relationshps can become strained if your vision has not been fully realised.

5. Public Domain Music

Advantages:

  • Completely free to use.
  • No licensing restrictions of any kind.

Disadvantages:

  • Limited selection.
  • Often older music that might not match modern content styles.

6. AI-Generated Music

Advantages:

  • Fast, flexible, and often inexpensive.
  • Allows you to generate custom moods and structures.

Disadvantages:

  • Quality can vary significantly and is generally not as good as professionally mixed “real” music.
  • Random and inconsistent results. It often takes a long time to get what you have in your mind.
  • Licensing terms differ widely. It’s important to check usage rights.

Visualise your ideal soundtrack

Before you start browsing, it’s vital to first take a moment to imagine the kind of music your content needs. You need to have a starting point so giving some inital thought is crucial and often overlooked.

When assessing the type and style of music you’re looking for ask yourself the following questions:

  • What sort of emotion should the viewer feel—excitement? calm? tension? humour? joy?
  • Should the music be a driving factor or simply support the visuals?
  • Would a vocal add value or distract?
  • What sort of instrumentation would fit the vibe—acoustic guitar, piano, synths, orchestral elements?

If you are struggling to visulise a musical theme then try looking at examples from other creators or styles that inspire you. Their music choices can help inspire your own direction and give you a starting point for your search.

This visualisation step should become your guiding compass when navigating your musical choices.

Build shortlists

So for our following examples we are going to take the production music library root. Most libraries will have a method of adding tracks you like to a favourites list or playlist. Or if you are using an unlimited subscription based library such as RouteNote Licensing you can simply download shortlisted tracks as soon as you come across them. Just make sure you save them into a dedicated folder or folders if looking for different styles.

To aid you in finding tracks to consider it is vital that you use filtering to find applicable options. While platforms will vary in the different search filters they offer they will generally include things such as:

  • Mood (uplifting, dramatic, peaceful, etc.)
  • Genre (electronic, orchestral, rock, hip-hop, etc.)
  • Sub Genre (DnB, cinematic, surf music, boom bap, etc.)
  • Instrumentation (Piano, trumpet, synth, flute, drums etc)
  • Vocal type (female, male, choir, rapping etc)
  • Tempo (in Beats Per Minute / BPM)

Avoid trying to find the “perfect” track immediately. The goal at this stage is to give yourself options and be open to lots of different musical ideas. At this stage you will not necessarily be auditioning the music with your content so you cannot be sure whats going to match perfectly. Be open and imagine visualise the content in your head when going throught the libraries, picking out options.

If you do happen upon something that seems absolutely perfect then it could be worth quickly auditioning it over your content. If it matches perfectly then consider halting the search for the sake of time efficiency. Your job has been done!!

Audition lots of tracks

Now for the really fun part. There is nothing quite like the feeling of seeing your same piece of content, take on multiple personalities, through the addition of music.

So, work out a way to audition the shortlisted music over your footage. This could mean simply manually syncing the music and visuals on screen, or better still importing the music into your editing software.If you just have a storyboard to work to then you will need to use your imagination a bit more. Ideally this process works best when viewed against your actual footage.

When auditioning, consider the following factors:

  • Does the music enhance and sit well with your visuals?
  • Does it support the pacing?
  • Does it clash with dialogue or narrative?
  • Does it feel natural, or does something feel “off”?

You’ll often get a gut feeling when you see the two mediums mix. Trust that reaction. As a creator of content it’s one of your strongest creative tools.

Still not sure? Get opinions

Quite often you will end up with a handful of tracks that work. It can then be really hard to make an objective decision as to the best choice. This is where getting outside input can be very useful.
Try:

  • Asking friends or fellow creators.
  • Showing a few options to collaborators in the content
  • Posting short teasers on social media
    • This not only gathers feedback but also builds anticipation for your final content.

Final Thoughts

Choosing the right music for your content is part strategy, part creativity, and part instinct. There’s no strict formula. Only you decide the emotion, energy, and story your content should convey.

Wherever you source your music from, the most important thing is that the soundtrack aligns with your vision and enhances it well.

And once you’ve chosen your track, don’t forget you can still shape it further. Tweaking timing, trimming sections, looping, or adjusting dynamics can make all the difference. For help with that, you can check out this guide on editing music for video content:
https://licensing.routenote.com/blog/editing-music-for-video-content/

The main thing is to trust your gut, experiment, and enjoy the process of finding the perfect musical match. Like George Lucus said of the making of Star Wars, watching the John Williams score being played live to the action was the most thrilling part of making the movie.

Stop risking your channel’s revenue and momentum on a flawed system.

RouteNote Licensing guarantees that the music you license is protected from Content ID claims, allowing you to focus on what you do best: creating great content.

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