The right music can do a tremendous job of capturing your audience's interest in a video. Any emotional connection between your viewers and your message will encourage them to watch longer, learn more, and cultivate a stronger relationship with your organization.
The Part Music Plays In Your Videos
Today, the Internet makes it easy to source an ideal piece of music to accompany your message. Before you dive into the depths of the world's online music libraries, take some time to think about your video's real meaning. Are you hoping to inform or to entertain? Are you trying to spread awareness about your overall brand? What sort of mood are you trying to create? How's your pacing - fast or slow?
A well-chosen piece of music will be sensitive to the general feel of your video and do everything it can to further your goals. Do your best to turn away from your personal tastes. You need to end up with a tune that best serves your mission.
Music plays an enormous role in what people think when they are watching a video. When done right, music will amplify its mood. Make a poor choice and your soundtrack will distract and hurt your videos performance.
With stock music, you get the luxury of choosing per-recorded music from any genre or category. You will find plenty of "homages" to the latest and greatest popular hits. Don't worry about getting too specific in your hunt for the perfect track. After you have chosen a genre, there will be endless pieces of music to choose that align within your vision.
Fitting Your Music To Your Budget
Unless you have a large marketing budget to play with, it is unlikely that you will be able to attract the attention of A-list musicians or record labels. The rights to use popular tracks for promotional purposes usually sell for tens of thousands of dollars, assuming they're available at all.
It is difficult to justify the expense of securing rights to popular music in all but the most exceptional circumstance. Consider the fact that an equivalent piece of stock music usually cost a fraction of the price of a mega hit.
Another significant advantage to shopping for stock music is they are created expressly for resale. There is no need to waste time and money setting up complex one-off licensing arrangements. All of the rights and restrictions are settled ahead of time. Many stock music vendors give you a range of different licensing options. This can be a huge cost saver. Making a video for online use only? Save by not purchasing the rights for television use. Scoring a video that's only going to be distributed on a few hundred DVDs? Save again by licensing only the number of copies you're planning to distribute.
When you choose to use stock music, this sort of deal customization is simple and saves money.
Matching Music To Content And Audience
Sometimes you video's subject gives you clues that will help you pick music. Certain audiovisual combinations are so deeply ingrained in popular culture that it makes sense to follow them in your marketing. Are you showing footage of a Middle Eastern locale? Make sure you use some Arabic music.
When it comes to your audience, put everything you know about their musical tastes to work when you are scoring your videos. This is when it's important to step away from your own musical tastes. Your audience comes first.
The sheer breadth of the different stock music libraries available to you today is staggering. The odds of finding a track that ideally suits your marketing video are excellent. Have patience and don't stop listening until you hear that perfect tune!
Robert Menne writes and plays music in his spare time. He shares the latest tips and advice about guitars and guitar playing, as well as the best video guitar lessons to help you learn to play guitar.
