LEGAL MUSIC FOR FACEBOOK VIDEOS & ADS

Choosing a song to use on Facebook or Instagram is not as simple as it may seem.

The main problem comes when you upload a video that contains some type of music protected by Copyright since any social media platform can, without prior notice:

This situation, which may seem small when we download free music from the Internet, is aggravated if we are an individual or company who wants to publish any video on our fanpage or use it in Facebook Ads / Instagram Ads.

Using free music could lead easily to lose precious time, and risk our brand or channel to receive negative notices from the platform or even worse, the closure of our account.

What options do we have, to save time and money in the process?

LICENSED MUSIC FOR FACEBOOK, SNAPCHAT, TWITTER & TWITCH

Choosing royalty-free licensed music and paying the corresponding subscriptions or licenses is the ideal option. Using this type of music we make sure that:

There are several online marketplaces that sell royalty-free music licenses, however, the best one, the simplest and most intuitive is called Epidemic Sound. With more than 300,000 royalty-free songs, Epidemic Sound is the most famous YouTubers and big social media channels use it.

You will see that they provide a service specifically for Youtube, but they allow you to use the music as well in other sites, as mentioned here.

There are, as well, other monthly payment services for which you can access a library with thousands of royalty-free songs, like Envato Elements.

On this marketplace, you can find all kinds of musical genres and sound effects under a single license (that will serve you for all kinds of uses), for just $16.50 per month. And this subscription provides you:

In my experience, they do not insist on crediting them, and you will be able to monetize your videos without any further problems not to receive a copyright claim never again.

USING FREE MUSIC

Another option is to use free music that is distributed under Creative Commons licenses. However, the main problems that you will have are:

However, it is a very valid option for personal accounts, in which these types of problems are not as significant as if we are a company or a serious brand.

Often the content (video) is created with other apps or software that offer songs “for free”, and the problem only appears at the time of publication, when the platform warns you that it has detected content that is in violation of its terms of use.

To prevent this from happening to us, you will have to download free music from these places:

In all of them, you will find music libraries with all sorts of background songs from different genres and sound effects. We recommend reading the terms of these free licenses within each page, to make sure you can use them in your videos without any problems.

Facebook itself has also recently added its own sound collection, thanks to which you can put music and sound effects to your videos without fear of copyright infringement.

The use of audio content available in this sound collection is free. However, the license granted is subject to the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (DDR). It states that the content offered may only be used in videos that we create, upload and distribute on the Facebook and Instagram platforms only.

THE MAIN DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO OPTIONS: FREE OR LICENSED?

As we said, the essential difference in choosing royalty-free music to place on your Facebook or Instagram videos is basically the peace of mind that provides the purchase of a legal license:

If the video is created by a company or brand or is going to be published as an ad with Facebook/Instagram Ads there is no discussion: it is essential then to choose a subscription from Envato Elements.

If, instead, the video is going to be published in a personal account, then yes, we can be a bit more condescending and use free music… but beware! As long as it is royalty-free or Creative Commons, never a famous song or from an artist who has not explicitly said that his music is not under copyright and can be used without problem.

Artists and record companies use the technology called Facebook Rights Manager, by which they can control at any time thanks to a comparison algorithm videos with their music that is uploaded to the platform, so there is no way to skip that limitation.

Conclusion

Best thing to do is, therefore, to adapt ourselves to the rules imposed by these social platforms: by acquiring the corresponding licenses, you will end up saving a lot of time, both in finding the right music and subsequently avoiding undesired actions, such as the automatic elimination of your videos or the closure of your account.