Background Music for Apps

If there is one industry that has been booming for more than a decade, it is mobile applications. Apps and the devices that support them continue to grow at a constant rate, with no signs of slowing in the foreseeable future.

In fact, there are now more than 2.7 billion people worldwide who use smartphones, in addition to the 1.35 billion who use tablets, which has doubled over the past six years.

To corroborate this data you only have to go out to the street and take a look at the people around you. The surest thing is that you will find several people with their eyes stuck to their mobile devices.

We use our phones at work, at home, on the street, while we eat… in fact it is possible that you are reading this article now from your mobile.

And what do people do stuck to their mobile all day?

According to the “Mobile Marketing Statistics Compilation” study by Smart Insights, 90% of the time we spend on mobile we are using applications.

If you are an application developer or, on the other hand, you have already created your app, this is very good news. However, to succeed in the huge ecosystem of applications:

For this reason, if you want to be competitive in this multi-million dollar market you will need to understand how people download applications, how they use them, and what elements to use to make them happy with your app.

In this article, we’re going to discuss one of those essential elements for a good user experience: sound and music.

However, I want to warn you of something important when it comes to sounding your app.

Copyright in Music and Sound Effects

When we choose sounds and music for our apps it is vital to be informed if those sounds are copyrighted.

Copyright is the exclusive right of an author, publisher, or company to exploit the songs or sounds they own.

To get rid of problems and have the peace of mind of doing things correctly, there are several online platforms that allow us to acquire a multitude of sounds without copyright.

The Bests Royalty-Free Music and Sound FX Platforms

Next, I’m going to show you the three best services to acquire the best music and Royalty-Free sound effects for your apps. I will start with the one that best meets your needs, and then show you its two best alternatives.

Let’s go for it!

Epidemic Sound

Epidemic Sound is one of the most reputable landmarks in the industry. In fact, it is one of the oldest – since 2009 – and has one of the largest music libraries: more than 30,000 songs and 60,000 sound effects.

This platform has two features that will help you develop the creativity and continuity of your app musically speaking:

The proper license for sonorizing apps is the ‘Single Track License’, which has several models with different prices according to your needs:

However, if you prefer to test the platform before purchasing your subscription, you can do so at zero cost.

Currently, Epidemic Sound offers a free 30-day trial period for new users that will allow you to enjoy all its features without paying a single dollar.

Envato Elements

Envato Elements is one of the best platforms for royalty-free music licensing.

It offers a music library with over 90,000 songs sorted by genre and mood, which you can listen to before downloading.

All of these tracks are intended to be used as background music, so most will have no lyrics built-in.

But Envato does not just live by the music itself. Through its monthly subscription -which costs $16.50/month– you will be able to access a wide variety of useful elements for your apps, such as:

In addition, the subscription includes the following benefits:

For all the above reasons, Envato Elements is the most complete platform that you will be able to access to sound and personalize your app in the best possible way.

Audiojungle

Audiojungle is another of the best Internet service platforms in the royalty-free music licensing industry.

As soon as you enter you will see that navigating through its menus is super intuitive. You will have a wide collection of songs and sound effects at the click of a button, which you can filter according to:

You can play any song and audio effect, and even download it for free. But with a watermark that will be removed when you buy the track.

So you can try it on your app to see if it is the sound you were looking for or not.

However, one advantage is that once you have paid for a track, you can use it as many times as you want indefinitely.

Audiojungle license prices depend on the number of sales or downloads your app receives.

If we talk about the songs, the available licenses are as follows:

If you already have your app, or if you have the project to make it, most recommendable would be to choose the ‘Standard’ license. Once you see that your results are increasing, you might consider moving on to ‘Mass Reproduction’.

As far as sound effects are concerned, licenses have a lower cost:

As with songs, if you only have one app, the ideal license would be the Standard one. If, on the other hand, there are several apps that are going to use the same sound effects, the ‘Multi-use’ would be the most correct one.

You can see that Audiojungle is a leading platform that offers a huge list of music tracks – more than half a million – of the highest quality and at a very reasonable price. Everything you need to sound your app is here.

Apps Facts to Keep in Mind

To know the type of sound your app needs, you will need to know the types of applications users are consuming and see what sounds those applications use.

Below is a chart of the most popular categories in the App Store.

As you can see, the most downloaded category is games.

So, if you have in mind to create an app that is a game, you should take note of the sounds that those applications similar to yours have.

And in the same way, do the same if your app would fall into another category. The idea is the same: download them, see what kind of sounds they have, and look for them in the platforms I mentioned in the previous section.

Conclusion

Mobile applications are part of our everyday life. The app market is constantly growing, and that is not expected to happen in the near future.

It looks like 2019 will continue to be a great year for the mobile applications industry.

In fact, according to data compiled by the Buildfire portal in its article on Download Statistics and Mobile Application Usage in 2019, they show that:

With this data, you can be sure that developing an app today is something that, despite fierce competition, compensates and much as long as the application solves a problem and is accepted by users.

And to achieve this we have already seen that both sound and music are important elements.

The advantage of having reached this point in the article is that you now know the risks of using certain copyrighted sounds. But you also know where to get the quality sounds you need to connect with your app users.

Platforms like Epidemic Sound and Audiojungle are perfect for your sound needs. In addition, Envato Elements, will also allow you to get other useful downloadables for your app.

Now it is up to you which of the three to choose, according to your requirements: