- Music can be one of the key components
to bringing your podcast to life.
So whether it's just an intro and an outro
that bookends your show,
or you've got this entire musical experience
that's expertly edited into and woven throughout your show,
you want to be sure that you're using
the right music the right way
so that people will applaud-cast your podcast.
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It's very important to think of the role
that music is going to play in your production
and even more importantly
to make sure that you're using the right music
so that way you don't get in any sort of trouble
and your show is able to stay up
and be heard by as many people as possible.
You may or may not be familiar with royalty-free music.
If you're somebody who does a lot of video production,
chances are that you are,
because getting music for your videos can be very tricky.
And so oftentimes you need to seek out royalty-free music.
And more often than not, the way to get the best music
with the most flexible licensing
is to sign up with a subscription service.
You can always go online and search up
"free royalty-free music"
and see if you can find something that's going to work,
but using a paid service
is really going to help protect you.
And if this is something you're going to do in the long run,
it's a worthwhile investment.
The very first investment I ever made
into my YouTube channel
was for an Artlist royalty-free music subscription
and that was before I had even made any videos.
I just paid the money and thought,
"Okay, I'm serious about this thing."
And that was years ago and I still use them.
So there are a lot of royalty-free music sites out there.
However, today I'm going to talk specifically
about Artlist.io and Epidemic Sound
because those are the two services that I use.
And even if you end up choosing something else,
you can at least see what to look for
in a good royalty-free music service.
Artlist looks kind of like a music playing website.
You find the song that you want.
You can preview them
and then you can click the download button
and you basically go check out
and download the song and you can use it however you want.
Now Artlist does require an annual payment
so you pay for the whole year all at once, all upfront.
But if we go to their licensing page
and we search for the word podcast,
we can see that it pops up here.
You're granted a non-exclusive license
to use this music in a bunch of different formats,
including specifically podcasts.
So not every royalty-free music site
mentions podcasting specifically.
Since podcasts have become more popular
over the past few years,
it's more common for them to mention it
but it was something that just a few years ago,
it was tough to find royalty-free music
that you could use in a podcast.
Artlist specifically mentions podcasting.
Now, the reason why I like Artlist so much
is because they have the most flexible license.
You can use it basically anywhere,
you can use it for client work.
And maybe most importantly, you can see right here,
"The license to use is valid in perpetuity."
So even if you don't renew your subscription after a year,
all of the stuff that you downloaded
while you had an active subscription,
you can still use in new projects.
Now Epidemic Sound is the other service
that I use personally
and it works very similarly to Artlist.
You can go through different categories, different genres,
and you can find the music that you want.
A unique thing for Epidemic Sound though
is that every song gives you the option to download stems.
So you can download the full song,
or you can just download different parts of the song,
which means any song could end up
being an instrumental song.
If there's something you really love, like in the past
I found songs that were super cool
but it had like a loud trumpet in the background.
And so, as I was talking,
it was just like (imitates trumpet)
and I needed to get rid of that.
I could download everything
except the track with the trumpet on it
and then I had a great background.
So there's a lot of flexibility
with the fact that you can do that for every song.
And the Epidemic Library is huge.
It's definitely bigger than the Artlist library,
although both services are constantly adding music.
Epidemic is a monthly fee.
You could pay annually if you wanted to
but you can also just pay month to month.
However, their license is not perpetual,
meaning that while you have an active license,
you can download songs and use them.
When you cancel your subscription
or if you don't renew your subscription,
then you can't make any new work that includes that music.
The work you created
while you did have an active subscription will be safe.
You're not going to get copyright claims
or anything like that,
but you just can't use that music anymore in anything new.
And Epidemic does have different subscriptions
for personal, commercial, and enterprise.
So it's not just one license for everybody,
it kind of depends on your use case.
But what you're hopefully noticing
is that no matter which one you choose,
it does specifically say that you can use it with podcasts.
Now, one thing to be aware of
'cause I get this question a lot.
If you host your podcasts through Anchor,
Anchor is owned by Spotify and that means
your Anchor-hosted podcast can actually use music
from the Spotify library,
which obviously includes a lot of copyrighted material.
And while some people love being able to do that,
it is important to note that that is going
to limit your podcasts to being listened to on Spotify
because they have somehow worked out
those licensing agreements with those copyright holders.
But if somebody listens to your podcast
that includes copyrighted music on a different platform,
it might not end up even being available on that platform.
It might get copyright claimed on that platform.
You could be in for a headache
if you try to use copyrighted music on different platforms.
It's just one of those things, if you're thinking,
"Hey, I know a way around this
where I can use copyrighted music,"
there's definitely a catch.
So hopefully that gives you at least a basic overview
on how to incorporate music effectively
and legally into your podcast.
If you want to know more about producing your podcast,
I've got-cast you covered.
Check out some of these videos right here.
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