The Production music library is the backbone of the audio portion of the video production business. The better ones offer a lot of variety, originality, and a wide range of moods, tempos, and orchestration styles. They offer rock, jazz, movie-style music, r&b, acoustic, classical and more. Pricing varies, from “by the cut” to “all-you-can-eat” by subscription. In all cases, they are offering royalty-free music, which means once you pay for it, it can be distributed and played as many times as needed, without fear of paying further composer’s and musician’s royalties. This means your video won’t get bounced on YouTube for FaceBook,
The Shine Library is an Italy-based music library with a wide variation of compositions and orchestrations. It has about 8 hours of music available, with the important point being that this music is absolutely available only via Shine. You can browse by mood, orchestration, and genre. Shine offers selection by the cut (3.99 EUR /4.86 USD) or via collections at various prices. I include them because they’re unique.
This a very comprehensive library from one of the leaders of the stock video / photo / music industry. It offers over 17000 selections! Most selection if not all are unique to Shutterstock Music. They recently acquired Premium Beats, another high quality library, and now offer two levels of membership: $19 /month for the original Shutterstock Library, or $49 including the Premium Beats addition. They offer a sophisticated selection process. You can choose by Genres, Moods, Length 0:00-5:00+), BPM (beats per minute) (0-300+) Vocals, Instruments, or Artists. What’s compelling about this– beside the fact that you WILL find something that works for your video sequence– is the fact that loops are included in case you want to take advantage of another approach below– doing it yourself with musical loops!
Tunepocket offers thousands of selections, at a very attractive monthly price: $8.95 / month, or $99 annual). Select by category, mood, genre, instruments, length or tempo. They offer a simple royalty free license with wide rights–one license that covers most personal and commercial use, including freelance work. If you don’t need to download a ton of music, they offer 5 selections for $39. They offer instrumentals, vocals, sound effects, loops, and short cues and intros. They are also tied into YouTube offering keyword, title, and tag generators. Their music is cleared for virtually all types of work, including
- Vlog / YouTube (incl. monetized)
- Promotional video
- Training / class
- Presentation / slideshow
- Film / documentary
- Podcast / audio book / voice over
- Game / app
- Explainer video
- Ad / commercial / product demo
- On hold music
- Video intro / outro
- Freelance work
Do It Yourself Composition / Orchestration (Alternatives to a Music Production Library)
There is another way to add music instead of a music production library: roll your own! There is an easy way to compose your own music. It’s called sequencing by using loops. To do this, you need a loop composition program, and a variety of loops, some of which come with the programs and some of which you can buy via selecting a mood, theme, pace, speed, or orchestration. A loop pack will usually have all the variations of loops you need to compose an intelligible (musically) track for your montage/video edit. This process was first offered in a program called “Acid” developed by the folks that invented “Sound Forge” and the “Vegas” video editing app, both widely respected by PC-based editors. Acid offered not only the technology but a vast collection of thematic loop packages that made song composition easy. From Paisley Park (Prince’s team) to funk to movie orchestrals, they continue to offer a wide selection of styles and moods that you can use to create something unique. There is a beginner’s version of Acid (fully capable) that is worth investing in to explore this wizardry. Since then, others have embraced looping as a means of composition, from Fruity Loops (FL Studio, below) to the Mac’s free GarageBand.
Click the link above to learn more about the above-mentioned ACID. There is a free demo that will work for 30 day, plenty of time to see if you and Acid click.
Producers Planet for Acid (Loops Library)
This is a home for a wide range of providers of music loops. It offers an incredible selection at decent prices and with wide range of styles. If you are interested in other looping programs besides Acid (like FL Studio, below, there are plenty of loops available that have wide range of compatibility.
Fruity Loops (as it was once known) has been on the market for 20 years, and is up to version 20… it is a sophisticated Mac / PC compatible composition tool that specializes in loops and effects packages. It is compatible with midi composition hardware tools if you like pushing buttons to create your “beats”. A wide range of musicians are listed on the site as users, and though I never heard of any of them that is because I’m an aging boomer. One thing to note– buy one time and your updates are free for life.
This is another resource for loops, one that is incredibly comprehensive and plentiful. It offers every style, including vocals.
Scratching the Surface?
There are dozens and dozens of other firms offering music. I’ve discussed this in a prior post. But these groups seem to offer the most variety, each offering relatively unique offerings, at an affordable price and with a wide range of searching for exactly what you need. Each lets you sample the work online, making for a quick selection process (when I started, we had to “needle drop” through a stack of music library 331/3 LPs). I’ve found using on-line libraries like these, I’ve cut my music search time by 90%. Good luck in finding just what you need for your next tribute, legacy, or documentary project.
