Music can make or break a video. It sets the tone, the pace, and drives the emotion of what you want your audience to feel. Adding music to your videos can really make them stand out, and there are a couple of ways you can add music to a YouTube video. YouTube Studio includes a music feature, or you can incorporate music using your own video editing software. Let’s dive in to explore the different options and why you should add music to your videos.
Video is an audiovisual media, and what the audience sees is only half of the experience. Music is a powerful tool that when used correctly can completely change how an audience feels about a video. An orchestral track can make something feel epic, adventurous, sad, or terrifying. Different instruments can make something feel light-hearted and fun or just add an extra layer of richness to fill the space in a moment of quiet.
The kind of music that you use entirely depends on how you want your audience to feel. Some parts of the video may benefit from having no music at all. Other parts of the video may benefit from something big and bombastic or something mellow. Music increases engagement, draws the audience into the experience, and elevates your filmmaking.
There are two ways to add music to a YouTube video: through YouTube Studio or through video editing software.
When you upload a video to YouTube, you can open up YouTube Studio to explore the music options available to you. Here are the steps, as of August of 2022:
This is a useful tool for when you’re in a hurry and just need to post something quick with music on it. But if you want more control, you’re going to want to use something like Pinnacle Studio.
Using video editing software like Pinnacle Studio to edit your videos gives you a wealth of music tools to explore. Once you have chosen and downloaded the track you want to add to the video, import it into the software and drag it onto the timeline. There you can carefully refine and edit exactly how the music interacts with the video.
Change the start point, loop a section, fade it in and out, change the levels so the music doesn’t clash with dialogue, and combine different tracks — all precise things you can do with music tracks in Pinnacle Studio. It gives you complete control over all the elements of the video rather than just throwing a single track onto it and calling it a day.
With Pinnacle Studio you can also add motion graphics, animated text, color filters, and even record your own narration. It’s a complete creative suite of video editing tools that you can use to elevate the quality of your content.
Music is an art form when it comes to incorporating it in videos. Adding music to videos makes them much more interesting and engaging than simply messaging delivered to a camera. It makes them emotional. You can add music to YouTube videos via YouTube Studio, or you can make use of Pinnacle Studio’s audio editing tools to completely customize how you add music to your videos.