Free music for your iMovie videos
Making your own videos with iMovie is fun, but at some point you get tired of the standard options. Maybe you’ve had enough of the built-in music, although there is quite a bit available. Fortunately, there is a solution for this: you can choose the soundtrack yourself, but you must have collected some suitable royalty-free music. Then there are two ways to add the royalty-free music via computer and iCloud Drive.
- License free music
- Via computer
- Via iCloud Drive
Choose royalty-free music for iMovie
It all starts with choosing the right music. There are thousands of royalty-free music tracks and audio clips that you can add to your video. Just take a look at Incompetech, Mobygratis or ccmixter. There are many more websites where you can find royalty-free music for free or next to nothing. If you are willing to pay a little for a piece of music that not everyone has, you can take a look at Shutterstock. For a few bucks you can buy a standard license to a song, which you can then use safely without getting sued.
Tip: Use YouTube Studio for royalty-free music
Another option is to watch YouTube on the desktop. You’ll find all kinds of royalty-free music in YouTube Studio that you can download and use freely, even if you don’t plan on uploading your video to YouTube at all.
Some songs require attribution. This means that you make it clear in the credits and in other places who made the music. There is also music for which no attribution is necessary. With Creative Commons, the intention is usually that you also release your work to others.
Here’s how to use YouTube Studio to download free music:
- Open YouTube on your computer.
- Click on the user icon at the top right.
- Select YouTube Studio.
- Click on Audio Library in the left column.
- Choose from Free Music or Sound Effects.
- Download the song you want.
The handy thing is that YouTube has already done the selection for you, so you can be sure that everything is right with the rights holders. It doesn’t matter whether you upload the video to YouTube later.
Add royalty-free music for iMovie via computer
Once you have found the song you want on the desktop, add it to a video. This can be done via the computer and via iCloud. The computer is especially useful if you really have your own music collection and don’t use Apple Music or Spotify. This is how you do it via the computer:
- Make sure you have the location of the song in Finder and connect your iPhone or iPad to your computer. For Windows: Add the song to iTunes.
- Sync your iPhone or iPad with the computer so that the song is also on your device.
- Grab your iPhone or iPad and the iMovie project you want to edit.
- Tap the plus sign (see arrow).
- Tap Audio > My Music.
- Scroll to the desired track.
- Select Use.
As shown in the image above, you can also choose all kinds of standard music. If you choose your own music and use Apple Music, you will also see all those songs. However, you cannot use them due to security. It’s not royalty-free music.
Use royalty-free music for iMovie via iCloud Drive
If you are a subscriber to Apple Music, Spotify or another music service, you probably don’t use music from your own collection. Synchronizing via the computer may feel like something of the past. Fortunately, you can also download royalty-free music via iCloud Drive. That is how it works:
- Move the downloaded files to a folder on iCloud Drive.
- Open the iMovie project you want to edit.
- Tap the plus sign (see arrow in the image above).
- Tap Files.
- Browse to the desired track or enter its name.
- Tap the audio item to use.
If you want to know more about using iMovie on iPhone and iPad, we have a separate tip with much more useful information.
https://www.iculture.nl/tips/imovie-iphone-ipad/
