Music for Video: The Licence Trap and the Level You Are Missing

Two things decide whether music helps your video: whether you can still use it in a year, and whether it sits far enough under the voice. Both have concrete answers, and both are usually got wrong in ways you do not discover until the video is already published.

Set your speech around -6dB and your music around -30dB, then check the mix on phone speakers rather than headphones. And before you commit to a subscription library, find out what happens to your back catalogue if you stop paying.

The licensing trap that catches people later

Subscription music libraries license you while you subscribe. What happens afterwards is the part creators find out the hard way. Stated in r/PartneredYoutube:

“Just to be clear, Epidemic's policy is they will claim any video with their music if your subscription lapses, but they won't strike it.”

And the version from someone it happened to, in r/NoCopyrightMusic:

“Now Epidemic Sound has claimed copyright on all my YT videos with their music, music that I downloaded while the subscription was active!”

This is not a scandal, it is the deal. But it changes the maths. A subscription library is a recurring cost for as long as you want your archive monetised, not a one-off purchase, and that is the number to compare against a track you license outright.

Free is where the real risk is

Music advertised as copyright free on YouTube itself is the worst of both worlds. From r/SmallYoutubers:

“Nope, don't use music from youtube that claim to be “copyright free”. They can claim your video when it starts getting big. Also most of those”

The mechanism is described plainly in r/NewTubers:

“Anyone on there can lie and say their music is royalty free, you use it, then they claim it. You'd have to check for every piece of music you”

Note when the cost lands. Nobody claims a video with two hundred views. The claim arrives on the video that finally works, which is the one you least want to have to strip and reupload. Keep the licence document or download receipt for every track. It is the only thing that resolves a dispute quickly.

The levels, and why yours sound wrong to other people

There are working numbers. From r/PartneredYoutube:

“I set my vocals at -6db and my BGM to around -30 to -35.”

That gap is larger than most people expect, which is exactly why the complaint below is so common. A creator in r/PartneredYoutube describes the disconnect:

“I’ve had a few people mention that the background music in some of my videos is too loud, even though during editing I deliberately lower it so it’s”

The reason is monitoring. Headphones separate the music from the voice for you, so a mix that feels balanced at your desk turns to mud on a phone speaker, where most viewing happens. Check every mix on the worst speaker you own. If you can hear the music clearly while someone is speaking, it is too loud.

Across roughly 5,000 videos a year, music level is the note we give more than any other on audio. It is almost never the choice of track. It is that the track is four or five decibels too present, which is enough to make a viewer tired without them being able to say why.

Choosing the track itself

• Instrumental under speech, always. Lyrics compete with your voice for the same attention.
• Match the energy of the cut, not the topic. Fast cuts want momentum, slow ones want space.
• Pick tracks with a flat middle. Music that builds fights your pacing rather than supporting it.
• Silence is a legitimate choice. Talking-head sections often play better with no bed at all.

The mistake worth naming is using music to rescue a section that is not working. If a passage feels flat, music will not fix it, and it will hide the diagnosis. Cut the passage instead, then decide whether it wants a bed.

The short version

• Check what happens to old videos if your subscription lapses.
• Avoid anything labelled copyright free without a licence you can produce.
• Keep the receipt for every track.
• Speech near -6dB, music near -30dB.
• Judge the mix on phone speakers, never headphones.
• Do not use music to prop up a section that needs cutting.

If you would rather hand off the part where levels and licences have to be right every time, our first video is free up to four editing hours.