How to Find the Right Music for Travel Videos
Videos are one of the best marketing materials to promote travel products, such as tours, activities and attractions. A big part of it is thanks to the soundtrack, which makes us ask, how to find the right music for travel videos?
This type of media is more effective than plain text and images because of its capacity to elicit emotions in the viewer.
Before booking with you, your guests want a taste of the experience you offer. If they are able to feel the atmosphere of your tour through a video, the live feeling should be worth their money.
For example, a promo video of a safari should be exciting and fun. This is what a traveler wants to feel when getting close to wild animals.
Not for nothing that 79% of people use YouTube to search for travel inspiration. Also according to HubSpot, in 2019 video was the number one form of media used in content strategy.
You must be thinking: “Ok, video is great, I know that… how about finding the perfect music for my travel videos?”
We will get there, but before it’s good to understand why a great soundtrack matters. Or you can simply jump to the article section How to find the right music for travel videos.
Elements of a great travel video to promote your tours
To show the essence of your tours, your promo video should feature your tour guides working, your guests enjoying the experience, amazing footage of the destination, the local food, people and culture.
All these elements will generate emotions in your audience. But to evoke the right atmosphere that will result in bookings, besides high-quality images you also need a powerful soundtrack.
A Nielsen research found out that ads with some form of music perform better than others across four key metrics: creative, empathy, emotive, information.
The perfect soundtrack matches the right feeling you want for the viewer. It generates the emotion you need for your guest to create a positive connection with your product.
For a ghost tour, you may want a thriller soundtrack. A museum tour, classic music could fit. When promoting a safari, some adventure music.
Take this Intrepid Travel video as a good example. The soundtrack they’ve chosen fits the theme of the video, it entices the right emotion at the same time it evokes a good feeling about the company.
Can I use any music I find in my videos?
The short answer is no.
Music is a type of work protected by copyright. It means its rights of reproduction, distribution, adaptation, public performance and public display are legally protected.
According to Copyright.gov:
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression
Be careful with the music you choose to play in your videos. If you don’t have the right permission, you can be penalized.
YouTube for example is constantly demonetizing videos and even shutting down channels that don’t respect the copyright law.
To avoid this headache you have essentially four options:
Now that you understand better the role of a soundtrack in a great promo video and how copyright works, let’s take a look at how to find the perfect music for your travel videos.
How to find the right music for travel videos
There are different platforms on the internet that you can use to find the right soundtrack for your videos.
Each one offers a different experience, music library, price plans and licensing options.
Here we will list six of them for you to find the right music for your travel videos.
1. Epidemic Sound
The platform offers a vast option of music styles. It counts with over 35,000 tracks and 90,000 sound effects that are royalty free. Their library size may sound overwhelming, but their search tools will help you easily find the right music for your travel videos.
Pricing: Epidemic sound offers a 30-day free trial and later on you can start paying €10/month in the annual subscription plan.
2. Artlist
Another great royalty-free platform with high-quality music for your travel videos. Their licensing allows you to use the music listed on the platform anywhere, from YouTube monetization to commercial use worldwide.
Pricing: In order to have access to all their music, you can start paying US$16/month.
3. YouTube Audio Library
Many people don’t know, but YouTube has a great public domain music library. All you need is a YouTube account in order to have access to it. There you will find all sorts of music that you can filter by genre, popularity and even mood.
Pricing: It’s free to use. After creating a YouTube account, go to Creator Studio > Create > Audio Library and have fun!
4. Audio Jungle
Audio Jungle is part of Envato Market, a huge platform for all sorts of digital products. No surprise they have one of the biggest sound libraries on the internet, with more than 1,729,802 tracks and sounds.
Pricing: You can find Royalty free music and audio tracks from $1. You can also subscribe to Envato Elements and have access to all of its content from €14.50/month.
5. Amazon Music
Yes, that’s right! Amazon also has its own royalty free music library. Not a surprise at all, actually. There you can find around 1000 songs, and one of them might be perfect for your travel video.
Pricing: You can buy specific tracks for your videos starting at US$0.99. That is a great alternative to paying a monthly subscription.
6. Jamendo
Another royalty free platform with great background music options. You can search music by category, for example, travel. This makes your job of finding the right music for your travel videos way easier.
Pricing: Jamendo standard licensing gives you access to unlimited tracks and has a price of US$49/month. You can also buy single track licenses from US$9.99.
Extra Tip 1: Collaborate with professional artists
This is a great alternative to find the perfect background music for your videos in case you are tight on budget. By collaborating with an independent artist you are not only saving money but also supporting their work.
But where to find independent artists to partner with?
You can check out SoundCloud. On this platform artists from all over the world publish their work. All you need to do is to find the perfect soundtrack and contact the author for a partnership.
Extra Tip 2: Produce your own music
Are you a rock star? Perhaps not, but you might know how to play some instrument or maybe you have a friend who does.
Creating your own music is free and you can use its rights the way you want — because they are yours.
I suggest you take a look at the app GarageBand. It comes within any Apple device and it’s a good start point if you want to create your own music.
Conclusion
A memorable promo video is not complete without the right background music. The challenge is, how to find music for travel videos?
For that purpose, you can use royalty free sound platforms, public domain music libraries and, why not, create your own music.
Any of these will provide you high-quality material to create a video that will convert views into bookings for your tours.
“I have the perfect video, now what?”
How about using it as part of a great marketing strategy that will put your brand at the top of your customers’ minds?
Download our free ebook Comprehensive Guide on Digital Marketing in Tourism for 2021 and take the next step on your digital marketing journey.
Originally published at https://www.orioly.com on August 25, 2021.
