How to build a profitable podcast.
Your podcast intro music can have a MASSIVE impact on the emotional state of your listeners... this post explains all.
As we keep saying on this blog: Podcasting is blowing up.
Every podcaster is looking for an edge... a new way to offer value MORE to listeners.
Every detail counts in achieving this, and your podcast intro music is an underrated but critical detail. Once you understand the psychological impact that podcast intro music can have AND how you can make the right choice of music, you will take your podcast to the next level.
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We need to prime our podcast listeners’ emotional state prior to engaging them with our audio content: this is the role of your podcast intro music...
Podcast intro music is the music or tune you hear BEFORE the voice of the podcast host. It is the music that ideally ushers you into a specific state that the podcast producer defines with their audio selection.
For thousands of years humans have used music to impact the emotions of themselves and others.
The selection of your music within you podcast is no different...
We want to maximise the impact of our episodes by priming the emotions of listeners.
You can use music in several ways on your podcast, but one of the most impactful places to add music is at the start of your podcast, this is the podcast intro:
Like you watch in film and shows, you need to set to the feeling and style of the podcast with your choice of music. E.g. when a film producer wants their audience to feel scared, they play scary music.
If you want your audience to be:
Then your podcast intro music can achieve each of these.
The right kind of music will hook your listener’s attention from the start and make them pay attention to what you have to say.
Let's start off by looking at a few free places to find podcast intro music...
As with all of these selections, you do not need to be conerned with copyright.
You can get free music for your podcast intro via this platform. It is a platform for royalty-free music, video, and images. On this platform, you can select music under different genres, moods, and get to choose different types of sound effects that are great for different situations:
You do not have to fear copyright issues as all audio shared is covered by the Pixabay license; this means you do not have to pay the artist that created the music or give them credit.
This platform is quite famous for royalty-free music. All the music on this platform belongs to Kevin MacLeod. Some of his work is used by other podcasters and in YouTube videos.
You get to choose from a wide variety of songs and genres, but you will have to give the artist credit to use the music for your podcast intro:
A lot of podcasters and creatives do not know that YouTube has a wide variety of music that is royalty-free for them to use and download unlimitedly. You can get different types of music by searching the library under other genres, mood, artist, and track name:
Musopen is a non-profit organisation, and they offer a wide variety of music that are royalty-free. However, their focus is majorly on classical tunes. You could search for a particular type of music through the composer, instrument, or period of release:
It is easy to discover great music for your podcast intro on Musopen as their system of rating helps to identify good music. You also do not need to have an account before downloading tracks on this platform.
You can get free music on this platform; they follow the open-source method, where the users can get their music on the platform, and also download other people’s songs. They can edit how they deem fit and share as much they like:
They have good quality songs in their library that you and use for your podcast intro without copyright fear.
CCMixter operates like Free Music Archive. They have a platform of more than 45,000 musicians located around the world. It is an open-source platform, which means it will take some effort from you to get the best music available on the platform. However, it is an excellent source of free music:
With Artlist, you get access to the entire catalogue with unlimited downloads for a year for only $16.60/month ($199/yr billed annually) With 12,000+ songs hand-picked from the world’s top indie artists. Use anywhere from YouTube monetization to commercial use worldwide.
We personally acquire all music for our podcasts from Artlist.
Music Radio Creative adds new tracks daily to their Royalty-free music catalogue, that lets you get access to a wide range of music genre - this is a new addition to the brand ever-growing catalogue.
With the Royalty-Free Music from Music Radio Creative, you get great sounding audio for your podcast. The website also offers comprehensive top-quality custom brand, you can visit here to get access to it.
You want to hook your listener’s attention with the music intro for your podcast. What you don’t want to do is have the music play so long you listeners get bored and switch to another podcast.
The podcast intro music is a small taste of what your listeners can look forward to hearing in the full podcast episode. If they want to listen to music, they can do that with Spotify ;)
We think that thirty seconds is more than enough to play your music for before kicking off the intro.
You can add the intro music to your podcast during editing. The same software you use for post-production and recording is what you can use to incorporate music into your show.
Here are examples of editing software you can use to add music to your podcast:
This editing software is free and is an open-source editor. The perk of an open-source editor is the freedom to apply changes to the original code without stress. It allows you to customise the user experience and adjust to your satisfaction:
Not as affordable as Audacity, but comes with a host of features. Professionals use it for editing podcasts and on the radio. There is also a trial version that you can try for 30 days:
The GarageBand software is available for Apple computers. It is also easy to download, as it is free. However, it is only available on iOS and MacOS. Android and Windows users cannot download GarageBand:
Now that you know how to add the intro music to your podcast and where to get the music.
Here are some tips to guide you legally when choosing your intro music.
Podcast intro music helps to infuse life into your podcast, and you can have the immediate attention of your audience. It helps to tell your story in a better way, as it compliments your spoken words. All these add up to build a strong brand for you.
There are almost an infinite amount of different types of music on the internet, but be sure not to fall into the copyright trap. If you do not have a budget for music, you can get music through the free podcast music websites and make sure you adhere to the terms and conditions.
If your budget is small, there are several stock music libraries you can get music from, and they are easy to use and understand.
For podcasters with a considerable budget, you can either access a paid directory such as Artlist or pay an artist to write music exclusively for your podcast intro. It will add a uniqueness to your show...
And there we have it, the ultimate guide to podcast intro music… you now have everything you need to create your first "emotionally charged episode".
And remember...
Ping us the link to an episode to support@bcast.fm and we will feedback on which emotion we feel from your music selection!
