PodSchool Podcast | Can you use music in your podcast

Today I'm answering a question from Anthony who said, can you use music in your podcast? What a great and timely question.

This is because podcast licensing and the legalities around this industry have been a little slow to catch up to the progress of shows and monetization and everything. And I've said for a lot years like there's a reckoning a coming because there's a lot of people that have music in their podcasts.

And often when I say to people, you can't put music in their podcast, they're like, but that person over there does it. And I'm like, I don't know how they're doing it unless they are hemorrhaging money in licensing fees.

And I kind of get the sense that that's probably not what's happening.

So I want to take you through a few things today around why you'd use music when you'd use music, what you need to think of from a licensing perspective so that you can a sense of what is music for in your show.

A podcast is obviously very different from a radio show, but I think that traditional feeling that people have when they're sort of moving into podcasting fresh, they've still got that radio kind of lens on it. And they're like, but isn't some music supposed to come in at some point? You're like, nah, here's the tip. Your content has to be strong enough.

So that's why it ain't easy. So you got to fill that 20 minutes or however long it is with content that doesn't have any music that might have ad breaks.

But essentially music is not there care as something that is breaking up your content. So let's start with why you would use music in your podcast. The first thing is if you need to set a tone in any way.

Now that could be as simple as your intro and outro music. And this is the music I think you must have on your show. You don't need a very over produced intro with voiceover. You can have that.

That's totally fine. You'll notice on my show I have a voiceover that introduces the concept and gets the tagline out of the way. You can do things like that.

Or on my other show, me and my tiny human, I just have intro music and I come in and say hi. And on most of the shows that I've worked on professionally, looking after networks, we just have intro music, honestly, and that is totally fine.

But having that intro and outro music is like the bow on your piece of audio. It is really important to have that music to make your show sound finished, but also to set the tone for the content.

So that can be really simple use of music.

You can just have the intro, it sets the tone for your content and then you speak for the entire episode and then you have some outro music at the end which matches your intro. You want to have that as the same piece of music.

If you are doing something that's more in the storytelling space, your true crime, you notice that music is a big part of those shows because you have to bring the audience along on the journey and music is a big way to do that.

So if you are doing anything like that, and you don't have to be doing a full narrative or true crime show to introduce music, really, you can be as creative as you like here. But the question is always, is this adding something for the audience or is it a distraction? If it's a distraction, forget about it.

If it is adding something, great, that's what you want. So think about that when you're thinking about setting the tone.

A lot of people I see make this mistake, and that is that they talk and their podcast is just a conversational podcast.

It might just be them talking, it might be two people talking and they put some music under it because they think that is what keeps the content interesting. It's real annoying after about 10 seconds in when you realize, oh, there's music playing under this entire 30 minutes.

If your content is not strong enough to keep somebody engaged without putting music under it, you need to rethink your content. So definitely don't be doing that just because you're like, I've got to have a music bed under here to make it sound interesting and engaging.

Yes, you might have heard that on radio because people do like 30 second speed breaks and they have music under. And that's because the energy of a radio show show and a radio network is much more sort of amplified than that conversational tone of a podcast.

So don't trip up in terms of thinking you need to put music under your content to keep people listening because actually it gets really annoying after a few seconds. The other thing that you'd be thinking about in terms of music is if you wanted to elevate the production value of your show.

Again, this is more applicable to storytelling. True crime fiction. Those kind of things.

But if that is an important thing for how you need to convey your idea to your audience, then that's a really good way to do it as well. Again, must be necessary and adding something rather than distracting. It's also your audio logo.

So as I mentioned, with that intro and outro, it is a great way for people to go, oop, and now I'm in the zone for the content. They will start to associate your music with your show and your brand. It will start to be something they become very familiar with.

You likely don't really want to change it. You can, of course, but if it's become the identity of your show, you can use it on all sorts of things around your show.

And that audio logo, and that audio identity for a show is so important because you can't see it. A lot of people just discount it. But even for brands, that audio kind of trigger that.

A lot of brands use the Netflix thing that you would hear every time you turn Netflix on, those become identifiers and this is sort of your version with your show. So, yeah, you can create something that that's more like the Netflix logo or feels more like an audio brand if you want to.

But a really simple way of doing that is to just put intro and outro music on your track. So that's a really important thing. But as always, always must be used with purpose, not just to jazz up some crappy content.

That's not what music is there for. It cannot polish the turd. It cannot. It can make the turd sound distracting and like, why is there music here?

But it's not going to make the content sound any better. I'm sorry.

If you do find that you have the kind of content that would warrant this kind of stuff and would sound really good with it, just be careful that you don't overuse it. It can get a little bit like, oh, okay, we'll move into this bit of music and this bit of music and this bit of music. Just use it sparingly.

Really put it through that lens of is this adding anything? Is this necessary? Or have I just gone a bit rogue with the music licensing login and I need to pair it back a little bit.

Another place you really want to put music is in your ad breaks.

If you're putting ads into your content, then you want to make sure that you've got some under those ads because it's a really simple signifier of this is a separate piece of content. You want your audience, ideally, to understand which parts of your show are commercial and which parts are not. Yes.

You can integrate brands into your content in a really seamless way that sounds like it is a great part of your show, but you don't ever want it to sound like, oh, I accidentally spoke about this thing because somebody's paying me to do it. But it's not. It's not really an ad, but it is. Music is a really good way just to separate out your commercial content from your editorial content.

And I would say, you know, it's really important that that commercial content still sounds excellent. You still want people to listen through the ads.

Yes, they can skip, but the whole idea of trying to create really solid advertising content in your podcast is to try and get them not to do that. But you do need some kind of audio signifier to say, hey, this is an ad and music can be a great way to do that.

It's also a really good idea to use a little bit of music. It's not really a sting. It's like little tiny, almost a bridge that you can put at the end of a sentence.

If you, especially if you've got an episode that's sort of going on. It's not, it's not recorded in segments. So there's no clean place to put an ad break if you've just got a 30, 40 minute conversation with someone.

You're going to have to find somewhere in that content if you're going to have an ad break to put that ad break.

So rather than it just stopping at the end of a sentence and then rolling straight into an ad break with music, it's a really good idea to take a little piece of your intro outro music and, and create this little sort of bridge that's just a softening into the ad break. So it just eases the transition for an audience they know, oh, okay, an ad break's coming.

Rather than finishing your sentence and then buy this rug on sale. It sort of can be a little jarring that way, depending, especially if you are using dynamically served ads.

If you are on a network, or even if you're using Spotify ads or something where you don't have control over the creative, you've got no idea what's rolling into that show. It could be a very loud, very obnoxious ad and you want to make sure that there's some kind of transition into that ad break.

And that little bridge of music can really help to do that. In terms of when music can be a distraction, I think I've covered that off pretty clearly.

If there Is no purpose other than I just think this might need a bit of jazzing up. Get it out of there, you know. And do not fall into the trap of putting music under your whole podcast.

I hear that happen so often and I'm like, this is. This is not what we need. Really think about sitting down with a listener and having a conversation with them.

If you sat down to dinner with somebody and they pulled out their Spotify playlist to put a bed under their conversation, it'd be like, what are we doing here? What is this? This is really annoying. You'd be looking at the phone the whole time thinking, are they going to stop that at any point in time?

Have they forgotten it's on?

So that's the same kind of vibe you're giving to your audience if you've got random music playing for no reason underneath the stuff that you're talking about. Let's talk about the legalities now because. Oh, isn't that a fun topic? And interesting because a lot of that is starting to catch up.

Spotify in particular is a platform. Obviously they have their own interest in music rights for their business model.

They are starting to pull down episodes off their platform if there are any issues with music licensing. And you would get a notification if you have music in there.

And you'll have to say, yes, I own the license or yes, I'm going to take this track off or I'll just take it down. So if you've got content that has music in there, it's going to be pulled off at some point.

Even if that's just at the moment, it seems to just be happening in the US It'll happen in other jurisdictions for sure.

The time is a coming and you just don't want to get into a situation where you're like, oh, I've got all these episodes up there that now cannot no longer exist or I've got to go in and heaven forbid re edit them because I've got to remove the music out of them. So you want to make sure that if you are going to use any music for any reason, you own the rights to that music.

And there are plenty of sites out there that you can get music on. There are some free sites. I would just say if you are gonna get free music, make sure you have read those T's and C's clearly.

And let's be honest, we're all a little guilty of not reading the T's and C's cause they make em long so we won't read them. So if you are gonna go free. Make sure you know that that piece of music can be used in multiple episodes over a long period of time.

Some of the fine print might say you can only use this once. Well that stuffs ya cause you got more than one episode or you can only use this for a year or you can only use this month or you can't use this.

If there's any commercial content in your content and you might have ad breaks, there's all sorts of different ways that they slice it.

So you just want to make sure if you're going to go down the free road, you know what you are not paying for and down the paid path again, you still have to read the T's and C's or at least understand what the license is for. So you don't need to necessarily. I mean it's always good.

I'm not going to say don't read the T's and C's because that's poor legal advice, even though I'm not a lawyer. But it will usually give you a little blurb of what the music that you're purchasing can be used for.

And it's really important to understand that because again, it might be you can only use this for a year or a number of other things. It might say you can't use it for commercial content.

So maybe if you're making your own ads, you can't actually use that music for that commercial content. So it's really important that you understand that and that you are getting music that you can actually use.

Because now that AI has entered the game, you are not waiting for somebody to hear an episode and say that sounds familiar. This tech is just trawling through countless podcasts and that's how Spotify is kind of pinging it.

And so gone are the days where you can hide in plain sight.

You really need to make sure that you've zipped up all your legals in this space and there are plenty of places that you can buy music and you can get licenses for podcast specific libraries like Epidemic Sound. So then you can actually just pay a license and you can use as much sort of music as you want to in that.

Again, I think you have to keep the license to keep using the music. That's how sting you sometimes. So maybe it's just better off to buy off a one off license that you can use ongoing.

But as long as you understand that stuff, that's really important. Please do not find your favorite Beyonce track on the interwebs and put it into your Podcast that is not allowed.

And the thing about music licensing that's really annoying is it's not just one place. Like, if you're using popular music, different situation.

If you're using stuff online that's designed to be used for this kind of stuff, you go to one website, you get a license for it. That's it. If you are going to use a track that was on the radio, the number of different licenses, there's publishing licenses, there's licenses.

So you've got to get licenses from all of the different holders or all of the licenses to be able to play that specific thing. And I just don't think that anybody outside of maybe Joe Rogan is making enough money to be going down that path. And it's just not worth it.

I can tell you right now, people can listen to the radio, they can listen to Spotify. They don't need to hear Beyonce in your podcast. You. You can bring something else. Beyonce's got a plenty of places that Beyonce can be played.

She doesn't need to be played in your podcast. So do not use any popular music that you do not use. The right. No. Own the rights to.

Because that will get you into trouble and you just can't be bothered. It's not worth it. You know, really not worth it. Final thing I'd say is just around AI music generators, these are a new thing.

I have had a couple of issues with the music that we have used on shows being pinged by platforms like Spotify to say, hey, excuse me, you don't own the license for this. And then we would go in and go, well, yeah, we do. We paid for the license through this specific platform.

And then when we kind of dig a little deeper, we find that it's potentially from somebody who's taken the tracks that are licensed through this platform, fed it into AI and said, can you make me something that sounds like this? And it spat out something, and it's pinging that the licensing is owned by somebody else when it's actually owned by this individual.

So I just am not at the point where, for me, music licensing from an AI perspective, unless again, you've read through the T's and C's and it's watertight.

I'm just not comfortable with that at the moment because I think especially if you are feeding into it, if you're making something from scratch, but even then it's pulling from things that already exist. So I think it's a little too murky, and I avoid AI music at this point in time.

Anyway, I just think from what I've seen in terms of some of the tracks being highlighted and the question when we're going back to them legally is, is this. Was this created from AI? Like, did you actually pull the tracks that we own or that we've licensed into an AI creator and spat out something else?

And that's what's happened. So I would just avoid that. Go with something that you can pay for and that you can know that you own the rights to.

And that can be a much simpler process. So, finally, wrapping up, make sure that you have asked yourself the question, is this piece of music helping or hurting my piece of content?

Is it necessary? Is there a purpose here? Am I overusing it? Have I gone nuts with the. With the login? Do I need to pair it back?

Also, think about, do I have an audio logo and an intro and outro for my show? Very important. I think if you're going to use one piece of music, that is the piece of music to go for.

And then just focus on your content being as strong as it possibly can and sitting down and having a conversation with your audience. Don't be the person who's brought this Spotify playlist along and is talking to somebody while playing music under the background. Not.

Not essential, you know, Hope that's helped. Thank you for the question, Anthony.

If you have a question, you can always head to the link in the description of this episode if you want to get some help setting up your podcast.

I also have an equipment guide that's linked in the description as well, so that just details all the tools and tech that you need to get set up nice and fast. And I also have an online podcasting course called PodSchool that you can check out.

And the link is again in the description with everything else in one place. How great is that? Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next week.