Feb 11, 2022
Every business enjoys finding a competitive advantage. But in today’s market, one of the best ways to get ahead is to find a tool or software that allows for faster innovation and better customer benefits.
And APIs can offer a shortcut to increased customer satisfaction and retention, particularly when they incorporate new services or features that your customer wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
We’re going to cover the benefits of music APIs, particularly in the video production space. But before those specifics, let’s start with the nuts and bolts of why APIs are so valuable.
Helpful uses of an application programming interface
The shortest explanation of an application programming interface (API) is a tool that allows one system to interact with or pull from a separate system. Think of it as a third-party extension, web service, widget, or toolkit that you can use without having to download it.
Probably the easiest example is Slack. While Slack is a pretty simple tool in and of itself, it can be scaled and modified using APIs that add functionality and meet the needs of different teams without forcing Slack’s engineers to create 4,000 variations of their product. Instead, APIs create a way for a single app to retrieve information from other apps and easily integrate that data for users.
In fact, most tools that you use in a productivity software or even in a web-based application are either integrated APIs or are toolsets that can access a web API. So chances are that you already use an API in your day-to-day job.
Hopefully understanding how an API works also sheds some light on why they’re so useful, and how finding the right API can benefit your customer while also saving you from having to develop or create something internally.
Does music really matter in video production?
The short answer is "Absolutely." However, we won't settle with a one-word response here because music is so important to video content that we've written a few dozen articles covering every piece of that relationship. But for now, we'll try to keep things a little more streamlined.
Content creators and filmmakers are exactly that — professionals, freelancers, and hobbyists who shoot, direct, produce, and edit videos. They probably didn't attend music school to learn music composition, how to arrange a score, or the art of conducting an orchestra.
But have you ever watched a great video that didn't include music?
The music that filmmakers and videographers use has to come from somewhere. Most of the time, the solution is royalty free music. Music licensing is expensive, complicated, and time-consuming; royalty free music is affordable, simple, and quick. It's an effective and popular solution that people who make videos are already using, and often paying money for.
So, from the perspective of a business that specializes in video-related software, your customers are already aware of their need for music and probably all-too-familiar with the complications of music licensing. Anything you can do to help them overcome this obstacle — in addition to the problems you already solve — just makes your product even more valuable.
How your company benefits from a music API
Let’s look at music APIs from the perspective of an enterprise scale business or a video production web tool.
Music has become absolutely, undoubtedly vital to video content. Think about viral trends on a platform like TikTok — it all comes down to the music and sound effects. And the right music can pump an ad full of emotion, hold a viewer’s attention, or launch a YouTuber’s career with the perfect blend of humor and energy.
You might already know that an API allows for a custom integration, letting you set up a particular toolset into your existing website, web service, or application. A music API like Soundstripe means you can offer your customers radio-quality music as a built-in feature of your product.
Instead of needing to create an extension or offer a second app, you get to pull all the benefits of an established tool (music catalog, meta data, search functionality, etc.) and present it as an awesome new resource that will make your customers even more attached to your product. And you don't need any specialized music knowledge or licensing experience to do it.
Which leads us to the second half of this equation: All of the ways your customers will benefit from — and be thankful for — incorporating a music API into your existing service or product.
How your customers benefit from a music API
So how exactly will music APIs benefit your customers? After all, their willingness to use the product could decide whether or not it’s worth investing into something like Soundstripe’s API.
As we've already covered, most content creators, ad agencies, and independent filmmakers are already using some sort of royalty free music catalog alongside video editing apps. They can’t afford to spend thousands of dollars licensing single songs, and that puts a lot of value on products that can connect them with music for a more affordable price.
A music API meets that need for your customer, whether they are creating music videos or corporate training videos or just looking for audio files for a personal short film project.
In addition to adding more value to your product, API music services also incentivize the customers who already need it to take advantage of the new offering. And, as a result, they’ll spend more time in your ecosystem (and hopefully using the other products you offer too).
Further reading
Thankfully, you don't need to spend the next year of your life studying copyright law or music licensing. You already know some of your customers need music for their video projects, so finding a simple API that delivers great songs can be an easy win for you and registered users already invested in your products.
If you'd like to learn a little more about royalty free music, streaming music online, and what other applications your customers might be interested in, here are a few top articles from Soundstripe's blog: