Your Guide to Using Royalty Free Background Music (BGM) for Video Editing
Soundstripe Team
Jun 6, 2024
Video editing—like filmmaking and content creation—is really all about immersion. The goal of a video editor is to fully immerse a viewer in a video. To do this, video editors use many tricks and techniques to pull a viewer into the content.
While many of these tricks might relate to the types of cuts, transitions, and visual effects video editors use in their edits, one trick that you might often forget to use is the inclusion of music in your videos.
Of course, there are lots of ways to use music in your videos for all different types of purposes. Today, however, we’re going to talk about using background music in your video edits and give you some top tracks and playlists to help you make your videos more immersive.
What is background music?
Let’s start at the top here and go over what background music is—and isn’t. Background music (BGM) is any musical track or arrangement used in film or video projects that provides an auditory backdrop. Background music can be in various fashions, so it’s a pretty loose term used by video editors to cover many different uses.
The biggest tenet of background music, though, is that it should be in the background of your content, where it’s only slightly noticeable, as opposed to the foreground, where it’s very notable to the audience.
Background music can be heard in narrative films and television to fill out scenes that are supposed to be noisy or loud. Background music can also be used in YouTube videos, Twitch streams, or TikToks to give videos extra energy or tone. It’s up to you.
Why you need background music in your videos
Regardless of how you explore using background sound for video, the reasons you would use royalty free background music for video editing are usually the same.Background music brings your viewers in and makes your content more watchable and interesting.
Videos without background music can be—well—boring sometimes. This is especially true if your content is already low on energy and features one or two subjects talking directly to the audience.
This tires viewers out and can be very uninteresting. One easy and quick way to make your videos more appealing to viewers is by adding background music that livens the mood and gives the scenes or content an extra boost.
The best royalty free background music for video editing
To give you an example of what we’re talking about, here’s a list of some of our favorite tracks that would be great for background music in your projects. (If you’re curious about the “royalty free” term for these tracks, we’ll explain that below.)
These songs are hand-selected from the Soundstripe royalty free music library and should run the gamut of style and energy type. Feel free to check out as many of these as you’d like and see if any might sound good to you.
Description: A medium energy, corporate / jingle song best described as romantic and happy. Acoustic guitar and piano are the primary instruments in this track.
Description: A low-energy, hip-hop song best described as reflective and calm. Bass and guitar are the primary instruments in this track.
Description: A very low-energy, ambient song best described as calm and reflective. Rhodes and piano are the primary instruments in this track.
Description: A low-energy, electronic song best described as chill and hopeful. Synth and ambient tones are the primary instruments in this track.
Description: A low-energy, ambient song best described as chill and reflective. The guitar and electric guitar are the primary instruments on this track.
Description: A low-energy, corporate song best described as quirky and fun. Organs and drums are the primary instruments in this track.
Description: A medium-energy, electronic song best described as chill and happy. Ambient tones and drums are the primary instruments in this track.
Description: A medium-energy, electronic song best described as chill and fun. Bass and synth bass are the primary instruments in this track.
Description: A medium-energy jazz song best described as fun and quirky. Bass and upright bass are the primary instruments in this track.
Description: A low-energy jazz song best described as calm and romantic. Percussion and drums are the primary instruments in this track.
Those are just some of our top picks for great royalty free background music for your video editing projects. Feel free to browse our full royalty free music library for even more options.
What is royalty free music?
Suppose you’re someone concerned about copyrights and protections for any of the music that you license for your videos (which you should be unless you want YouTube or other social video apps taking your content down and potentially banning your account). In that case, you’ll probably be interested in royalty free music.
Royalty free music is purchased as a single song or as part of a subscription plan. These royalty free music licensing sites cover all of the licensing agreements with the artists themselves, compensating them for their work and providing protection to use the music in your videos anywhere online.
You can learn more details about how music copyrights work here.
The best royalty free background music playlists
To further help you along, we also have some more royalty free background music playlists for you to check out with even more tracks. These playlists will offer some greater diversity of music types featuring different genres, styles, and vibes.
Description: Compilation of lyric-driven tracks that inspire and uplift.
Description: Indie-centric Songs For Adventurous Souls.
Description: Personal favorite indie tracks chosen by the smiling staffers at Soundstripe.
Description: Vlog underscore for your next lifestyle content drop.
Description: Vibey, understated Pop songs
You can also check out even more YouTube background music selections on our Soundstripe app.
Tips for using background music for video
Finally, to wrap things up, here are some basic tips for using sound effects and BGM for video editing. As a video editor, feel free to play around with any tracks that might liven your videos up.
- Background music isn’t meant to distract
- Find the right levels between background music and audio
- Consider looping songs to make them longer
- Background music doesn't have to stay in the background, and you can turn it up when needed
- Mix up your background music tracks; you don’t have to use just one!
- Using royalty free classical music in your backgrounds can greatly help to set a scene or mood
There’s no right or wrong way to use background music in your projects. Have fun with it and see which background music songs are right for you.