5 Tips For Choosing The Right Music For Your Video

Choosing the right soundtrack for your video project should include a strategy. Whether you need music for social media or music for documentaries you should always back your decision with the What? Who? and Why? What are you creating the video for? Or what is the purpose of the video? Who is the video for? Why are you creating the video or what is the call to action? In this article, we will focus on 5 tips that will help you answer those questions and give you a clear strategy the next time you have to choose music for your video project.

1. BRANDING

Branding is a huge part of any video content. From the logo animations to the lower thirds and the music for video editing (link to library), all these elements reflect a brand’s identity so having clear branding throughout a video is necessary for any project. The music in a companies video is just another extension of the brand. Let’s take a corporation for instance, what does typical corporate video music sound like?

It’s typically instrumental with no lyrics, stringed instruments, and typically symphonic. That is the professional sound that they are trying to communicate. That is a part of their brand and who that company is. On the other hand, you have companies like Nike who are targeting a younger crowd who uses more upbeat music genres and pop music.

2. TARGET AUDIENCE

Branding and target audience usually go hand in hand. Your branding should be geared towards your target audience, but sometimes your target audience might vary. Having a clear direction on who your audience is will help you to choose the style of music that is appropriate for your viewers. The target audience can include viewers age, gender, platform preference, buying habits, etc.

You want to target the interests of this audience the best way possible. A great example is this Mountain Dew Commercial: Mountain Dew Commercial Music. In this commercial Mountain Dew is targeting a younger audience and so for the outro they use the popular rap song by Jay Rock titled “Win”. Once you have chosen the target audience for your video you have answered who the video is for.

3. COMMUNICATION

Once you have dialed in who your video’s target audience is, it’s time to think about what your video is trying to communicate. Maybe you are trying to show a companies culture, promote a product, or educate people on a service that you offer. No matter what you are communicating your music will also have a message that it is communicating, so making sure that these messages are consistent is very important.

For example, if you wanted to promote a bowling alley where people go to have fun, it would be the wrong choice to be playing a downtempo or sad instrumental. That doesn’t communicate fun! You would need to choose music that is lively and full of energy. Once you have a strategy for what you are trying to communicate then you can move on to emotion.

"No matter what you are communicating your music will also have a message that it is communicating"

4. EMOTION

Music provokes emotion and using the right background music for your video can help your viewers to connect on an emotional level with your video content. Think about the old ASPCA commercial that played the song Angel by Sarah McLachlan. They use that song to invoke empathy for the abused animals that they are trying to fundraise for. They are trying to get you to feel sad so that you will feel bad enough to give your money to their organization to help abused animals. Emotions are a powerful way to draw people into the call to action.

5. CALL TO ACTION

Lastly, you want to leave people with a call to action and the music plays a big part in this. Just like we referenced in the section above the organization ASPCA used an emotionally provoking song to call people to act by donating money to their organization, most videos should move people to action. Maybe you are editing video for a documentary and want to move people to learn more about the subject matter or you are producing video content that will drive leads to a company. When you key into the emotions of people it can help you drive them to a specific call to action.

CONCLUSION

There is a lot to be considered when choosing the right music for your video project, but here at WolffScore, we believe if you follow these 5 tips it can save you a lot of time and effort. Our business is set up to help you to save time from sifting through thousands of songs and delivering you the professional music you need in an easily navigable platform.