Best Practices for Incorporating Music Into Your Podcast

A great music intro to your podcast doesn’t just sound cool, it tells your audience what to expect before you say a word. On this episode of Podcasting Q&A I'll walk through a practical approach to choosing and adding music to your podcast that fits your voice and matches your overall vibe!

Free Music Resources:

• Pixabay.com
• Freemusicarchive.org

Paid Music Resources: 

• Epidemicsound.com
• Audiojungle.net

Podcasting Q&A Episode: 

• Customize Your Episodes with Dynamic Content

Keep podcasting!

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Podcasting Q&A
• 0:57 The First Step In Choosing Your Music
• 2:17 Examples of Intro Music
• 3:45 Royalty Free Explained Clearly
• 7:51 Creative Ways To Use Music In Your Podcast
• 10:53 Avoid Using Dynamic Content For Music

Transcript

Welcome to Podcasting Q&A

Cara Pacetti 0:00

Welcome to Podcasting Q&A, brought to you by the people at Buzzsprout. I'm your host, Cara Pacetti, and I'm bringing you the best tips and strategies to keep you podcasting with confidence. Today I'm answering the question: how do I incorporate music into my podcast? So you can use music in a lot of ways for your podcast. The most popular being an intro and outro. It creates an overall feeling, overall vibe for your podcast. Personally, the music that we've chosen for Podcasting Q&A is my favorite. I love piecing together our episodes. And then the final bow on top is adding that music to my intro and my outro. And it just makes me so happy. It just feels like the completed package. And so we are definitely going to answer this question and let our Podcasting Q&A listeners know how you can add music to your podcast too. So the first step in deciding which music you want to incorporate in your podcast is actually not deciding music at all. It's recording your first episode. I recommend recording your episode first, writing out your content, deciding what exactly is your podcast going to include. And then from there, go music shopping. So I'm going to share some resources in a little bit about where to find music. But first, I just want you to think about the process. So searching for different music options, and I want you to pick maybe a top five or a top three. And then I actually want you to add that music to the episode because the music that you select may sound awesome on its own, but then once you get it added to your episode and you hear your inflection and your voice, and as a whole, it changes the whole sound of the music. I know when we were deciding on music for Podcasting Q&A, we went through maybe three examples. And there was one I was decided on. That was the music we were going to use. And then at the last minute, I found the actual music that we use. And so I'm so glad that I took the time to listen to the music, to hear it in the episode next to my voice before I went ahead and made that decision. This music will be here for years to come. And so you want to really give it some intentionality and some thought when you're deciding it. I want to give a couple of examples of music in this episode just to give you an idea. So if your podcast is an uplifting podcast, you want to think short, light, maybe some retro funk. So let's give this a listen. Another example I found that I wanted to share here is maybe one you could use for a tech podcast. So if you're in the tech space and you're releasing episodes, think about including maybe some electronic music, a futuristic music. And so I found a good example here that I wanted to share. So let's go ahead and listen to that one too. Those are just a couple of very quick examples that I wanted to have fun with because I found those. I searched for them on my own, and I just wanted to share them with you as ideas. So speaking of finding music, where does this music come from? And what are the rules around it? The music that you include in your podcast needs to be royalty-free. Now, I want to explain what this means because sometimes there's some confusion around this. Royalty-free doesn't actually mean free. When an artist creates a song and that song gets included in a podcast or a movie, and those downloads occur, that artist gets paid every time something containing their music is downloaded. Those are what royalties are. What we're looking for is music that is royalty-free, meaning you only have to pay for it once. You don't have to pay every single time your content containing the music is downloaded or consumed. Royalty free sounds like it might be something that's free, but it's actually not. You are still paying for it, but you're not going to have to pay continued royalties as your episodes get downloaded. So usually you can pay a one-time payment for a subscription to a library of royalty-free music. Sometimes it's a monthly subscription. So you have to pay monthly to stay active and to be able to use that music. But that is what we're looking for with royalty free. And if you are using music that is not royalty free, you can get yourself in some really hot water with the artist that created the music because, again, that is their livelihood. They are trying to be paid for the royalties that are a part of the music that they created. So make sure that if you're using music, it's royalty free. Another option is if you are musically talented or you have friends who are musically talented, create something on your own. This is original content. And so nobody can take this away from you. You're not gonna have to pay royalty fees for this if you create it or if your friend creates it. And if they give you permission to use their music and maybe they just would like for you to include them in your episode descriptions, whatever the agreement is that you've worked out with them, that's another great way to find music that you want added to your podcast. If you don't have a friend who could offer you the music that you can use on your podcast, there's actually something called Creative Commons music. So Creative Commons music allows artists to share their compositions with the world for free. The license is very, but usually artists will let you use a piece of music without getting permission as long as you give the artist credit. So if you're on a site and you are searching Creative Commons music, just read the fine print. What is it that you need to do on your end in order to be using this music? This is a really cool outlet that artists are a part of where they get to share their music for free with the world. Another fun resource for music that maybe a lot of people don't know about is actually public domain music. So the copyright on a song eventually expires. And when it does, that song enters the public domain where you can use it however you see fit. Now the expiration date is a little long. So here in 2026, any music that is published in 1925 or before is public domain. So you are free to use that. You don't need to purchase it, you don't need to sign any license agreements. But just note that the music available there is probably gonna be classical. It's gonna be a little different than what we're hearing nowadays because it's from the 1920s and before. So just keep that in mind uh when you are searching for music for your podcast. But again, if this is a storytelling podcast that's set in the 1920s, maybe you can find music there. So that option is available for you. The last couple of resources that I want to share are actually a few websites that I'm going to link in the show notes. Now I'm gonna give you two free options and two paid options. And on these websites, you will be able to search libraries of royalty-free music that you can use on your podcasts. The first two resources are free. One is called Pixabay, and the other is freemusicarchive.org. I will link those below if you want to check those out for some free music that you can use on your podcast. And then there's some paid options. I recommend epidemic sound and audio jungle. Feel free to check those out. I will link them below. Once you've decided on the music that you want to incorporate into your podcast, the next step is to decide just how you'd like to use it. How are you going to include this music? So often music is used as an intro or an outro. So the intro typically comes after a brief welcome, like in podcasting QA. I welcome the listeners and then I jump right into the music. You want to think about the music is grabbing the attention of the listener. My voice will enter, and then the music politely steps back and unveils the stage for the actual event, the episode, what we are all here for. And then at the end of your episode, you would have an outro. This keeps the music present while you finish your final thought, and then it smoothly disappears. So that is an ideal application of both an intro and an outro. In addition to adding music as the intro or the outro for your podcast, you can also create what is called a music bed. So think about it like you're creating a little bit of bedding with music that you're just gonna place your audio, your voice, right into it. And so what it sounds like for the listener is you can hear the host speaking, and then quietly in the background, you can hear that music playing. So this is a creative way of incorporating music. You just want to make sure that you're watching your audio levels because if the music is too loud, that's gonna be really uncomfortable to listen to as a listener. So you want to make sure that you are bringing that volume of your music down enough so that your voice is coming across louder than the music that is acting as a bedding in your episode. I also want to talk about volume when it comes to the intro and the outro. You don't want the music to be jarring. You want to make sure that the music is at the same volume level as your speaking. So even though it's not playing together as in a music bedding, it's still important to keep that audio level fairly low so that it's not super distracting. This is just the decorative piece of your podcast. It's not meant to steal the show. So we've decided on the music that we want to use. We've decided on how we want to use it. And so, what's the next step? How do we add this into our podcast episodes? So, this would need to be done within your editing software. Most editing softwares make this really easy to do. Some are just a simple drag and drop, and then you can work on fading that audio. It's really easy if you're able to save the audio files separately with the fade already added into it. And then when it comes time to editing your episode, you can just record your audio, make your edits, and then the last piece is to just stick that audio file to your episode, making it really easy. I know that GarageBand and Adobe Audition, you manually can drag the bar for fading your audio. I know for Audacity, there's actually a setting that you can decide how to fade and it will do the calculations and the adjustments for you. Depending on your editing software, it should be really easy to add in those audio clips. One thing I want to point out is that here at Buzzsprout, we have a tool called dynamic content. And dynamic content allows you to add an intro and an outro and even a mid-roll to your episodes. But what I want to caution you on that some people get confused about, you don't want to use your dynamic content for your intro or outro music. I do not recommend it. We see a lot of podcasters that write in and they are 200 episodes in and they've used the dynamic content as their intro or their outro for their episodes. And now they want to use that for something different. And they're gonna have to go back and remove the dynamic content or replace it. And so they're replacing their intro and their outro because they added it as dynamic content way in the beginning of their podcasting journey. And so my recommendation is always to add this intro music and outro music from within your editing software. If you want to know a little bit more about that and actually creative ways of using dynamic content and why I'm recommending against using it for your intro and your outro, check out the podcasting QA episode on dynamic content. I will go ahead and link it in the show notes, and that will give you some creative ideas for how to use it. If you'd like some more information on adding audio to your episodes, or maybe you have some technical questions that you're struggling with, please reach out to the podcaster success team here at BuzzSprout. You could reach us by emailing support at buzzsprout.com. If there is a question you'd like to see answered on a future podcasting QA episode, just click the send us a text link in the show notes and let us know. Be sure to join us every Monday to kickstart your week. Thank you so much for listening. And as always, keep podcasting.