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Choosing Demo Music: Our 4 Favorite Tools

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By Hilary Bird, Marketing Manager at Consensus, @Hilbonix

As we’ve talked about before, choosing the right music for your product demo video is a critical part in determining its quality and success. Our previous post provided you with a guideline to help narrow down what type of music to choose, and below is a list of the best resources we’ve found (and used ourselves) to help you find that style you like. We give a brief description of each and weigh in on their pros and cons.

WHAT RESOURCES ARE AVAILABLE?

YOUTUBE:

There are over 150,000 free tracks to choose from through YouTube. It has an excellent selection of different types of soundtracks, based on length, style, tone and instrument. But it’s important to remember that these tracks are probably being used

by many other people (since it’s free and YouTube is very popular). So if you’re looking for that very unique touch, it’s not the best option. Also, you have to upload your video to YouTube before you can add the soundtrack to it. Adding the

youtube audio track
YouTube audio tracks layout

soundtrack is straightforward, but you can’t edit the video to match the music because the video is already uploaded. Sometimes, this adds an extra level of work.

Overall, YouTube soundtracks are a great option for beginners. They’re easy to implement into a video and they can be categorized by mood, so if you’re looking for an “inspirational” song or an “innovative” song, YouTube has already done the thinking for you.

To access the soundtrack library, click: “My Channel” → the video you want to edit → “Audio” (the icon shaped like a music note)

GARAGEBAND:

GarageBand is an incredible tool used by both beginners and music professionals. If you’re a Mac user, GarageBand is already installed on your Mac laptop. GarageBand has a library of pre-recorded tracks that are free and can be easily used or edited. These tracks are popular and typically used by beginners who are not familiar with designing a soundtrack from scratch. But similar to YouTube, you can run into the problem of

garageband layout
GarageBand layout

hearing your same soundtrack in someone else’s video (I once made a home-video commercial and heard that same soundtrack from my video in a different TV commercial months later.) If you’re looking for an authentic soundtrack, GarageBand allows you to customize your music one-hundred percent of the way: which instruments to use, which notes they’re playing, what measure they’re in, etc. (Click here to download it if it’s not already on your Mac, or click here to download it on your PC.) GarageBand is a very complex tool, so if you’re looking to make your very own first track, be prepared to set aside a lot of time to learn how the program works before you even start creating your song.

BEDTRACKS:

bedtracks audio music website
BedTracks layout

It’s easy to spend too much time on BedTracks. It has a unique feature that lets you copy/paste a YouTube URL (or drag and drop an mp3 file) of any song, and search for songs similar to that one. Downloading tunes from BedTracks is not free. It also requires you to submit an application form to the owner of the track. They can deny or approve your download request. If you’re a music creator, you can submit your music for free to help get exposure, and even make some money in the process. BedTracks is great for those who already have an idea of what sort of music they’re looking for, but just want to narrow it down. You can filter tracks by length, vocals, density, attitude, genre, tempo, key, and a few other options.

AUDIOJUNGLE:

At Consensus, our content creation team typically uses AudioJungle for our demo videos. Along with music and soundtracks, AudioJungle also has a huge library of sound

audiojungle music audio layout
AudioJungle layout

effects, logos and idents, and music packs. The music isn’t free, but they make it very easy to “test drive” the music with your video before purchasing. Our content creation team will download multiple full sample files (it has a subtle watermark throughout the tracks) to see which they prefer the most. You can filter music searches based on length, category, tags, price, tempo and even the popularity of tracks. Being able to sort by popularity is great because it helps you avoid running into the generic song problem, where you could end up hearing your own soundtrack in someone else’s video. AudioJungle is good for team projects where you have some budget towards video production. The average cost of purchasing tracks is between $14-$28 – not a huge cost, but it can add up if you’re making multiple videos.

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