Selecting the perfect song for your real estate videos can be a daunting task. The backing track for a home walk-through sets the tone for the video and the overall experience for the viewer. Different songs will often impact how you edit. Songs should match the style of the home as well as your personal shooting style. Let’s start with some general considerations and then move into great resources for licensing music.
HOW TO PICK A SONG FOR YOUR NEXT REAL ESTATE VIDEO
Many of your song selections will start with being guided by your personal style. If the pace of your shooting style is more slow and controlled, you’ll often find yourself gravitating towards slower and calmer music. If you like to shoot and edit more quickly, with techniques like time remapping and stylistic transitions, faster-paced music will match this style.
We have fortunately had almost no push back on music selections with agents. We don’t even allow agents to select their own tracks. We strive to match the song to the style of the home. A country home set on a large lot will often get an acoustically driven, slower paced song. A downtown condo that is situated for the nightlife will get a current, trendy, fast-paced song. Finally, we will check with our agents to make sure our music choices have been appropriate and to see if there are any changes they would like in the future. (**This is how we do it, largely due to the fact we don’t offer revisions on our videos. Our turn around for video is 2 days and don’t have time to second-guess music or jump back into projects once they are rendered.)
MUSIC LICENCING SERVICES FOR REAL ESTATE
As artists and creators, we knew that we need to have properly licensed music for our video productions. Not only is honest, you will also avoid having your videos removed from sites like YouTube and Facebook. While there are some completely free options, we have never found usable music on these sites. Below you will find some of our favorite music licensing services.
PremiumBeat.com
Premium Beat is a fantastic service with music for any project. Their standard license covers exactly what you need for real estate, short of TV advertisements. At $49 a song, Premium Beat is on the more expensive end we would consider for real estate work. Depending on the scope of your work and your pricing, this could be a great option and work within your budget. I would advise that you always download the watermarked version of your track if you are going to allow your client to have revisions. What we love about Premium Beat is that within a few clicks it seems like we can always find a great track. Search by genre, mood, BPM, and more. You will definitely find tracks you’ll love here.
Musicbed.com
Musicbed is another premium option. They have fantastic tracks and a great selection. The quality of music is hard to beat. Though for most real estate uses the licensing becomes quite expensive. If your agents are going to use Facebook to promote the video and put FB ad dollars behind the video, the license fees grow and grow. We have used Musicbed.com for other video productions but not for real estate. If you have the $5,000,000 listing and the budget to use Musicbed, you won’t be disappointed. For day to day real estate video, there are great options that will cost you a lot less.
Artlist.io
Artlist is a subscription-based service for music that offers you a little more than the per song pricing of Premium Beat. For $16.60/mo (when you pay for a year) you get unlimited downloads and can use the tracks for all your commercial work. The songs are pre-checked for YouTube monetization and new music does come in quite often.
It might take a little more digging, but you can find great tracks for many genres here. This is a top place to check out if you prefer a monthly subscription and many options.
Soundstripe.com
Soundstripe has been our favorite for real estate music. Like Artlist.io, Soundstripe is a monthly subscription that you can pay annually for even more of a discount. Monthly it runs $15/mo or only $135 for the year. The Soundstripe license covers our needs in real estate perfectly and their selection has been our personal favorite. We can confidently pick through their playlists and dial in a song for each client. We also love using the search function which allows us to hide the songs we have previously licensed so we can avoid reusing a track in a tight local market.
LISTEN AND GET TO EDITING
With the really good unlimited music services we now have, it’s up to us as videographers and editors to find the tracks that show off our listings. Search through all the tracks, save your favorites, and start your edit! Have fun with your music too. We have such a short time to grab people’s attention online, make sure they
