How to Use Popular Music on YouTube Videos Legally?

From background melodies to sound effects like pops, the right audio can quickly enhance your video. However, not all background audio tracks are copyright-free and free to use on YouTube. There are a few bad outcomes if you publish content with copyrighted music, such as your video getting muted, deleted, or demonetized. Our guide shares how to use popular music on YouTube videos in the right way.

Contents Guide Part 1. Can I Add YouTube Music to My Video?Part 2. How to Download Popular Music to YouTube Videos?Part 3. Conclusion

Part 1. Can I Add YouTube Music to My Video?

Sometimes you need to make a video project and would like to use a funny song from YouTube Music as the background music or add it to a specific scene to make the video more attractive, but any of your attempts to import songs outside of the YouTube Music application end in failure. It is impossible. Why?

Actually, each YouTube Music song is encrypted by DRM, which prevents users from streaming without authorization. Even paid users, who are allowed to download songs for offline playing, also can’t move the song from YouTube Music outside of the YouTube Music application to a video creator app.

In this case, how to use popular music on YouTube videos? In the following part, we will share how to find DRM-free music tracks as well as avoid copyright claims.

Part 2. How to Download Popular Music to YouTube Videos?

To help you out on your content creation journey, let’s go over how to use popular music on YouTube videos

Method 1. Get Permission to Use Copyrighted Music

Music licensing is the legal process of obtaining permission from copyright owners to use their music in your projects, helping you avoid potential legal issues and copyright infringement claims. So how exactly do you ask for permission to use a song? If the song you desire was written by a relatively unknown artist on a small record label, it might be possible to reach out to them directly. Of course, if you're a small-time producer and you want to use a chart-topping single, you'll probably have to shell out a good chunk of money if you can get through to the rights holders at all.

Method 2. Choose Paid Music Licensing Sites

If your fees are not enough to ask for a music license from famous artists, how to use popular music on YouTube videos? The second method is to find your liked audio at low prices through sites specializing in selling music rights for video production, such as Lickd, Soundstripe, Thematic, and more.

They make professional music licensing easy, especially for first-time content creators and producers. Some music licensing sites can provide a single-use license. So instead of spending hours and paying $10,000 for getting permission directly from artists, you’ll pay $100 for a license to legally use that song in a specific project. Their affordable pricing strategy, combined with their growing library of popular artists, make them a go-to if you are looking to use copyrighted music, legally, in your videos.

Method 3. Use Royalty-free Music from YouTube's library

For new creators, you can start with free music sites like YouTube Audio Library to find popular music to use in YouTube videos. Since this music library is built directly into the YouTube Creator Studio, it makes a lot of sense for creators who are just getting started and don’t yet have the time, knowledge, or resources to license music for their video projects.

Method 4. Download DRM-free YouTube Music Using AMusicSoft

How to use popular music on YouTube videos if the stock music tracks you’ll find in the YouTube Audio Library are too dull? YouTube Audio Library may not be a good fit for more serious creators who are looking to add higher-quality music to their videos. To find more relevant music, you can search for them from YouTube Music.

However, YouTube Music has limited the usage of music because all music on it is copyrighted by digital rights management (DRM), preventing it from being transferred, shared, or played without the YouTube Music app. What's more, YouTube has very strong copyright policies. If you use commercial music as the background for your YouTube video, your video will be taken down. The music rights holder might issue a copyright claim on your video.

The good news is that there is an option to help you download DRM-free tracks from YouTube Music, which saves you from violating copyright restrictions. Oriented for all YouTube Music Premium and free users, AMusicSoft YouTube Music Converter provides the professional ability to remove the DRM encryption and decode it, helping you to download songs from YouTube Music to MP3, AAC, WAV, FLAC, and more common formats. In this way, you can add DRM-free music to your personal video or play it on any music player you like. Let's learn about how to download DRM-free music with AMusicSoft YouTube Music Converter!

Step 1. AMusicSoft YouTube Music Converter is compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems. Download and install the right one on your computer.

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Step 2. After installation, launch the program and you will find that YouTube Music has also been automatically opened at the same time. Sign into your YouTube Music free or Premium account. Select the YouTube Music tracks you want to download, drag and drop them to the "+" button.

Step 3. Choose MP3 as the output format in the upper right corner and select an output folder for saving the converted songs.

Step 4. Click the "Convert" button to convert YouTube Music to MP3. After that, you can move to the "Finished" tab to view your converted MP3 songs.

The software can also preserve the full ID3 tags metadata including title, artist, album, genre info, etc. Therefore, after downloading YouTube Music tracks, you don't have to update any meta information manually.

How to use popular music on YouTube videos after downloading DRM-free music? Whether amateur or professional video creators can film, edit, and publish their cinematic creations with various video editing tools. There are plenty of video editors available for your computers and mobile devices like iMovie, Lightworks, and Premiere Pro.

*Note: This program is for personal use only, do not use converted music for business.

Method 5. Hire a Musician to Create Original Music for You

Another way to absolutely guarantee to avoid music copyright claims on YouTube is to become the copyright owner of the music yourself. Hiring a musician to create and record a custom popular song made just for you and your YouTube videos will give you original music you can use without worrying about copyright claims. However, this option can become time-consuming and widely vary.

Method 6. Use Music That Is Free Within the Public Domain

If none of the previous options seemed to be a fit for you, you might want to consider some basic free options. Some music copyrights don’t last forever. Eventually, some music ends up in what is called the "public domain." In the United States, music usually enters the public domain around 50 to 75 years after the composer’s death, so don’t expect there to be any top 40 tracks. Musicians can waive their right to their music and give it to the public for free, giving you the right to use their composition, song, or asset however you want, even commercially, but as you can imagine, this is very rare.

Part 3. Conclusion

And voila! From the above method, you will know how to use popular music on YouTube videos legally. From free royalty-free music library to a professional tool like AMusicSoft YouTube Music Converter, you have quite a few options depending on your situation as a creator and your specific resources or budget availability. We hope we’ll see you creating videos featuring music shortly!

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