If you have ambitions of becoming a social media influencer or simply want to relay your thoughts and opinions to a large audience, then it’s more than likely that you have your own YouTube channel.
An astonishing 2 billion plus people visit YouTube every month, which accounts for about one-third of all internet usage, and every single day over a billion hours of video footage are watched every day. Those number are astounding.
Now, when it comes to using YouTube as a means of income, it’s not only a dream occupation, for many, it’s a genuine option. The number of YouTube channels that garner upwards of $100k a year grew by more than 40% over the past year, thus proving that being an influencer can come with tangible rewards.
When it comes to the growth of the audience that YouTube channels generate, those channels with more than one million subscribers increased by 65% year on year. This shows just how much content each visitor is consuming on a daily basis.
Giving Your YouTube Channel a Professional Touch
As you set about boosting your YouTube channel’s visibility and increasing awareness of your brand, you may well look to use various forms of music, such as copyright-free music, to help drive interest and exposure.
Perhaps you host a video podcast and want a catchy intro; maybe you shoot documentary footage and edit this into a weekly show and you want to bring in musical samples, or even SFX (Sound Effects), to help bring your episodes to life.
You’ll need great music to allow your visuals and ideas to truly pop. Getting good quality music can prove a daunting undertaking, especially if you don’t have a limitless budget. However, there is a cost-effective way to bridge the gap.
Music Licensing and YouTube
Of all the social media channels available to you, YouTube is the most brutal when it comes to the use of music without the relevant permissions or licenses. If you happen to use uncleared music, either by choice or accident, you can expect the following actions to be taken against you.
Firstly, you’ll be hit by a copyright strike in the form of a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice. This will inform you of YouTube’s suspicion that you are using music without permission to do so.
Just dealing with this first suspected instance can prove fatal to your YouTube account. This is because any attempt to communicate with the service about this potential transgression is next to impossible.
If you feel the claim against you is invalid, it may still take months to clear your name, and if you are found to have broken copyright laws, then you could be fined and, in some instances, imprisoned. In other words, you need to avoid even the possibility of this occurring.
Royalty-Free Music for Your YouTube Channel
While there are niche options when it comes to music that is available without any cost, music that has seen its copyright expire as well as music that is in the public domain, in reality, the best way to get the best audio accompaniment to your YouTube channel output is via royalty-free music.
Royalty-free music, sometimes called copyright-free music, is ideal for getting affordable access to an extensive musical database that will cover all your needs. Whether that’s for small samples or songs of a specific genre, or SFX, you can get it all with an inexpensive subscription service.
The companies that offer you royalty-free music do so under a blanket license that pretty much gives you free reign when it comes to using the content as you wish. That can be it’s free use in advertisements as well as coverage worldwide, all without the need for additional licenses or further cost.
Where Does Royalty-Free Music Come From?
Each provider houses a large number of musicians, artists and bands whose songs and samples are offered to the paid user. In this way, those who create the content are rewarded financially by the brand that uses them. They can also receive much-needed exposure if their song suddenly becomes a massive success because it’s being used to front the latest dance craze or a commercial for an international brand.
In many ways, this is as stable a form of income as musicians can secure, especially given the relative lack of live concerts that are happening currently.
The reason this all works in your favor, as a YouTube channel owner, is the fact that you have such a wide musical palette to paint with and can hunt down precisely what you want and need for the specific purposes you require.
The quality of the sound files offered makes the seamless connection between your video output and the musical soundtrack something of a match made in influencer heaven.
