Podcasting Q&A

Is it best to use theme music in your podcast intro?

January 25, 2024 Buzzsprout
Podcasting Q&A
Is it best to use theme music in your podcast intro?
Show Notes Transcript

Today on 5 Minute Mondays, you’ll learn how to properly incorporate music into your podcast episodes.

Check out our blog featuring 9 places to get free music for your podcast.

Places to purchase royalty-free music:


Fill out this short questionnaire to submit a question or topic for a future episode.

Need some help with your podcast? Join the Buzzsprout Podcast Community on Facebook to get the help you need from podcasters just like you.

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today on five minute Monday's, you'll learn howto properly incorporate music into your podcast episodes. Welcome to five minute Mondays. We bring the best tips and strategies for building your podcast in five minutes or less. So if you're new here, consider subscribing Now. Today's episode could be a little different, because I'm gonna do a rapid fire of answers for Michael, who submitted some really fantastic questions in the five minute Monday submission form. First question from Michael. Is it more attractive tohave theme music in your intro or not, So you can really go either way with this when you properly execute it. Podcast theme music in your intro can increase the perceived quality of your show because it sounds more like how people would think of a radio show or a television show. And so they make that correlation and think, Oh, well, this person has a really great podcast when it's executed. Poorly, however, has the opposite effect. It feels slapped together. It feels amateurish. So when you incorporate theme music into your intro, you have to make sure that it sounds phenomenal. And this might being that you outsource putting your intro together. That might be what you need to do, but you don't need it. We have podcasts that don't have intro theme music like this one. We just have a little sound effect, and you can totally do that. There's no there's no rule here, but when you could probably execute it, Podcasting music really can increase the perceived quality of your show. Question number two. Where to get podcast Theme music either recorded for money Buy it somewhere or any free libraries. So all linked to a block post in the show notes for this episode, where we list a bunch of places you can find free royalty free music, which is the key. There has to be royalty free, which means you have permission to use it in your podcast without paying any kind of copyright. Ah, Salling to that for free music as faras, we're not by royalty free music tracks that are already created. The studio I recommend typically or audio jungle or sound stripes. So audio jungle you would search through tens of thousands of songs and pick one that you like you by the license and then you use it as many times as you want. That I recommend if you're using it for intra music because you're gonna use the same track every single episode. If you're using different music in different episodes, I would recommend looking into sound stripe, which is a subscription service where you pay 15 bucks a month and you get unlimited music tracks. So if you're always mixing and matching or trying different things or using it in segments, things like that, then you can look. It sounds. Tripe is a way to get royalty free music to use in your podcast. Then, as far as custom music, but I would encourage you to do is go on Soundcloud and listen to artists and find a new artist that you really like and think. Okay, I want them to make me a podcast intro that sounds like their style of music and then reach out to them and say, Hey, what are your rates for doing a custom song or a custom audio track? And typically you could expect to spend anywhere between 102 $100 per song. If you use a website that specializes in podcast intro music that could go all the way up to 3 to $400 for song, but it really just depends on your budgets and how important it is for it to be custom for you. But any of those are great options. Question number three Are there any recommendations on type of music for it to not be annoying for listeners? So that's an interesting question, because the answer will change depending on when you listen to this podcast. Because music tastes definitely follow trends, right? So recently, the kind of synth retro vibe has been very popular, but that will always be the case. So the most important thing when you're choosing the type or the genre of music is that it matches the tone and personality of your show that is much more important than anything else. So when somebody listens to the theme track, it should kind of clue them into what the podcast is going to be about, how it's going to feel when they listen to it. So that's the thing that you want to dial into and then question number four. Should there be any music between podcast segments, or is it better to not do it? So this is something you could go either way with, uh, I've done it both ways. Ah, happy medium. It's to use what's called a stinger, and that's a 3 to 5 second contained audio track. So it's not a sound effect, and it's not. A song is kind of in between, and this is actually what we use in buzz cast. And so in our episode, we divide our segments with a stinger that we use to kind of clue in the listener that we're changing subjects. So that's something you could do between podcast segments. But you can certainly also use music and faded in and out to signal that change as well. So thanks for submitting those questions, Michael. I hope my answers were satisfactory and helpful, but that's it for today. Hit the subscribe button. If you're watching this on YouTube, or subscribe to the five minute Money's podcast and your favorite app to squeeze even more podcasts related content into your life. And if there's something that you want to talk about on a future episode, just click the link in the show notes to submit your question. Thanks for listening and is always keep podcasting