Want an updated, no-nonsense tutorial on how to add music to your YouTube video?
At VEED, an easy-to-use, yet powerful, video editor, we understand the power of a good audio track. Adding music can make your YouTube videos more fun and engaging, highlight important moments and emphasize the emotions you want your viewers to feel.
YouTube has changed its video editor a lot in 2020, so here’s the most recent way to add music to your YouTube video.
You’ll learn:
- How to upload a video to YouTube
- How to add music to your video with YouTube video editor
- Limitations of YouTube video editor
- How to add multiple music tracks to your YouTube video using VEED’s easy-to-use video editor
- Where to find music to add to your YouTube video for free
YouTube Studio’s video editor will allow you to add music to your video, but it’s also quite limited in features. If you want to add multiple audio tracks that you’ve uploaded (YouTube can’t do this) to your video, we’ll also teach you how to with VEED!
Let’s go!
How To Upload A Video File To Youtube
If you already know how to do this, scroll further down to the next section on how to add music to your YouTube video.
1. Sign in to YouTube
The Sign in button is in the top-right corner of the homepage.
2. Click the video icon on the top-right corner of the homepage
3. Select Upload video
4. Choose the video file to upload from your files
5. Enter the title and description of your video.
You can also add your custom thumbnail, too! Read our blog posts on how to create thumbnails that get clicks!
6. Save your video file!
How To Add Music To Your Youtube Video With YouTube Creator Studio
Here’s the fun part!
Disclaimer: You can only add 1 audio track and only from YouTube’s catalog of royalty-free music. Read the section on how to use VEED to add multiple music tracks to your YouTube video further down below.
1. Go to YouTube Studio
2. Go to videos in the left toolbar
3. Choose the video you want to add music to
4. Go to Editor (it's the clapperboard icon)
4. In the left side of the video timeline, click + next to the music note icon
5. Pick through YouTube’s thousands of royalty-free songs.
Browse through the YouTube audio library and take your pick out of the thousands of available music on YouTube.
6. Add the audio track to the video
7. Move and trim the audio track, as you please
Once you've added music to YouTube video, you can move and trim the track as you wish.
8. Click Save. Wait for the video to get processed and you’re done!
Limitations Of Youtube Audio Library and Video Editor
The YouTube editor is quite limited when it comes to actually adding music to your YouTube video.
Here are some reasons why:
- You can only add 1 audio track. This is, by far, the biggest limitation for adding music to video with YouTube's Audio Library. You can’t merge other audio tracks in the video. This is a huge pain for long-form video content creators who want to include different audio tracks.
- The catalog only includes YouTube-commissioned, royalty-free audio tracks. Most, if not all, of the audio tracks in YouTube audio library are instrumentals and don’t have lyrics. When it comes to adding music to video with YouTube's Audio Library, you might be spoiled for choice, but if none of them piques your interest, then why bother?
- You can’t add your own music to the YouTube video. Nope, the platform’s video editor doesn’t allow you to upload your own music to add to the video. Weird, huh?
Want a video editor that’s even easier to use and more intuitive than the YouTube editor? Use VEED to add music to your YouTube video.
How To Add Music, Sound Effects, And Multiple Tracks To Your YouTube Video With VEED
Stop relying on YouTube audio library to add music to YouTube videos. VEED is one of the best video editors to create professional-looking videos for YouTube.
1. Go to VEED and upload your video
2. Go to Upload in the left toolbar
3. Upload your audio file or your music sound effects
If you don’t have any idea on where to get awesome audio files to supplement your online content, read the next section below!
4. How to use the different elements of the add audio tool
Click on the external audio track in the Timeline to activate the track menu.
Volume - Self-explanatory. This controls the volume level of the different music tracks that you’ve added to your YouTube video. Make sure that your background music is quieter than the voice-over.
Start Time - This indicates when your audio track should start. Sometimes, the bit that you want to end isn’t at the beginning.
Trim - This indicates when your audio track should start and end in the video. If your audio track is longer than the video, the track will go on even after the video ends, so make sure to trim it shorter.
5. Click Upload Audio to add more audio tracks to the video
6. Click the video content to change the volume of the original audio track
You can also click the video content to change the volume of the original audio track.
7. Position audio and trim it in the Timeline
In the Timeline, you can trim and position audio to whenever you want it to appear. You can position audio by dragging the audio content.
8. Export and download
9. Upload to YouTube!
You’re done!
Where To Find Music To Add To Your Youtube Video For Free
Who isn’t a sucker for free stuff? Want to build a music library of free music files?Here are websites to find great music to add to your YouTube video… for free!
Be careful when adding licensed music to video, or you might get hit with a frustrating copyright claim from the copyright owner of the original music sound.
This means adding no commercial songs and opting for creative commons and royalty free licensed music, instead.
YouTube Studio - To use the platform’s royalty-free music for your YouTube video, you can log in on YouTube Studio and go to the YouTube audio library. If you know what to look for (e.g. genre, artists, mood), enter the information in the search bar.
Josh Woodward’s songs (with lyrics) - Do you want good songs with lyrics by a professional musician? Go to Josh Woodward’s website to download quality acoustic and pop-rock songs. All he asks is for you to subscribe to his newsletter for free.
SoundCloud - Of course, who can forget the one platform that helped popularize DIY music? Most tracks on SoundCloud are Creative Commons music, so if you want some variety in your music to add to your YouTube channel, this is the website for you.
Free Music Archive (FMA) - Want spoken-word audio tracks? FMA has them! It’s one of the biggest platforms for free audio tracks, with more than 1,500 public domain tracks for commercial use and thousands more licensed under Creative Commons.
There you have it. There are so many places to get royalty free licensed music sounds to add to your potentially revenue generating content to prevent the risks of having a copyright claim from music owners.
Adding Music To Your Youtube Videos Makes Them More Engaging
In this tutorial, you've learned different ways to add music to YouTube online content.
Whether they are promotional videos, student films, community-based videos and so on, adding music to YouTube online content is bound to help your videos become more engaging and compelling.
Great music sounds played in the right moment in your video can emphasize a certain mood, help create good pacing, and catch the viewer’s attention during those moments when it starts to wander off.
Of course, VEED is so much more than for adding audio tracks. You can create accurate subtitles automatically, add text to your video, merge, trim and split your videos, add an audiogram, and so on.
