YouTube shares royalty-free 'Muzak' library to help amateur film-makers
150 tracks of generic white bread manage to pick out all the clichés of background music
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.YouTube’s Creators program has always offered generous support to amateur and independent film-makers and its latest endeavour might be one the most useful initiatives yet: providing the public with a library of royalty-free music categorised by the emotional pushes they push.
The YouTube Audio Library includes 150 instrumental tracks that can be used “free, forever, for any creative purpose (not just YouTube videos)” and can be downloaded as 320 Kbps MP3 files.
The songs in the library are intriguing in that they manage to be both completely generic and undeniably appealing.
YouTube's blog suggests that the song below (‘Locally Sourced’) might work for a ‘family video’ and indeed, the track’s jangly, upbeat folkishness is instantly recognisable from any number of comfortable adverts trying to sell you some new healthy snack or a bank account that ‘works for you’.
The new library is undoubtedly doing amateur filmmakers the world over a massive favour – helping them cut costs by not having to pay for music licences and also meaning less video takedowns over copyright disputes.
It’s just irritating how easily a well-timed whistled harmony manages to bypass a listener’s musical judgement and conjure images of trees and sunshine and the like.
The tracks can be sorted by mood, genre and instruments and there’s also a small selection of well-known classical numbers including Les Toreadors from Carmen, the finale of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments