If you’re a budding social media influencer, or even already one with a strong following, then you’ll need to be making sure that your social video posts are as pitch perfect as possible.
This need is borne out of the fact that there are millions out there keen to make their video stand out from the crowd as you scan your feed looking for content that is interesting enough for you to commit your hard earned viewing time.
When it comes to social video posts the visuals are very much only half the battle, the accompanying audio (be that background music or some element of special effect magic) is a key factor when it comes to a) attracting attention and b) retaining and entertaining your viewership.
The size of the social video market is so immense it’s actually hard to effectively quantify but as a guide, YouTube users upload 500 hours of content every minute and 720,000 hours are uploaded every day. TikTok has 800 million active users per month and those users consume over 1 billion video views a day.
So, it’s safe to say the social video content market is very large indeed and making yourself a name in the industry is a very tough business indeed and requires a great deal of hard work but luckily there are many tools out there built to give you something of a heads start.
Using music from established artists just isn’t really an option for most, due to the sky-high costs associated with securing the relevant music license (plus the amount of effort required to even find out who owns the rights in the first place) and as such a move to snap up sounds from royalty free music providers should be your next port of call.
Currently you might be searching for music on streaming sites like Spotify, and could perhaps even stumble upon a track you really think is ideal. However this won’t do you much good in the long run as you won’t, in all likelihood, be cleared to use the track anyway.
In many ways you have to adopt a different tack when it comes to finding music for your social video needs. Mainstream music is notoriously hard to get cleared for use on social platforms and moves to do so will incur high costs and that can spiral.
Any attempts to use this music without permission will have the additional disbenefit of leading to a number of likely punishments. Firstly you will almost certainly see your video pulled from the social platform you’ve put it up on, followed by a likely strike to your account.
Next, for repeated violations, you’ll likely have your account suspended and then banned (unless you can prove you have the rights to the track you’ve used, which in itself is very tough to prove), and it’s also possible that a fine may be placed on you, or worse.
The growth of sites offering royalty free music, which essentially means access to music for a one-off fee, is proof that the market is rapidly growing and of those in the sphere Artlist.io are the undisputed champions.
First off the size of their music library, both in terms of acts, DJs and singers, but also in terms of the sheer scale of their sound effects offering, it’s all here and very easy to access and locate the right sound for your needs.
Their subscriptions rates are affordable and open you up to thousands upon thousands of tracks that could be ideal for your latest Facebook, YouTube or TikTok video and finding the right track couldn’t be easier.
As of 2021 it’s predicted that each of us will consume as much as 100 minutes of watching online video content, that’s a growth of 20% year on year since 2019, and before too long viewing on a mobile device will outstrip all other forms of consumption.
Therefore it’s key that when you are putting together your latest video, be it a fun dance craze, a mini documentary to educate your following or just a social post between friends, the addition of a catchy beat, atmospheric sounds or a great track could be the additional icing on the cake to make your content really hit home.
