While you can do that with third-party apps before uploading your video, you risk violating YouTube’s copyright terms. This is because third-party apps don’t tell you which songs YouTube flags for violating its copyright rules.
Once YouTube identifies such a violation, it means you can’t monetize the affected video. If you want to prevent that, the best option is to use the built-in YouTube Studio editor to add recommended music to your video.
How to Add Music to Your YouTube Video
Adding copyright-free music to a YouTube video is simple when you use YouTube Studio. Let’s see how you can do that in just a few steps outlined below.
1. Save or Schedule Your Video
If you’ve already published, scheduled, or privately saved your video already, ignore the following steps, and jump to the next step below. Otherwise, you can keep following along.
After logging in to your YouTube account, head to the YouTube Studio page. Alternatively, you can click on the three menu icon at the top-left corner of the YouTube homepage, and then select Your videos to load the YouTube Studio homepage.
When you reach YouTube Studio, click on Create at the upper-right corner of the web app to upload a new video if you haven’t done so already.
During the upload process, tick the Private option once you get to the Visibility step, and click on Save.
Alternatively, you can schedule the content for later publishing by ticking the Schedule option, and then clicking on Save. Doing this ensures that your video is only available to the public at a specific date and time—ideally after you add your audio.
However, to edit a video you’ve saved as a draft already, click the Content option on the left sidebar of YouTube Studio to load your videos.
Once your content appears, click on the drafted video to open it for editing. Then, head to the Visibility option to save it as a private video or schedule it for later publishing.
The above steps are necessary because saving a video as a draft doesn’t give you access to edit it via YouTube Studio’s built-in editor.
However, ticking the Private option or scheduling the video keeps it away from public viewing and gives you access to the editor. This allows you to add music before viewers can see your video.
2. Access the Music Library
Once you’ve completed the steps above, click on the video you want to make changes to. On the left sidebar, click on Editor to start editing the video.
Once the video editor comes up, look to the lower-left corner of the video. Click on the plus sign to the right of the music icon to load the built-in music library.
You might want to listen to the music before adding it to your video. To do that, click on the play symbol left to the music you want to add.
Once you’re satisfied with the music and want to use it in your video, hover over it and click on Add to add it to your video.
You can also download copyright-free music for later use by clicking on the Audio library option at the top-right corner of the music library. On the next page, hover your mouse over any audio clip and click on Download to save it in your local storage.
Taking Full Advantage of YouTube Studio
Adding copyright-free audio to your YouTube videos has never been easier. YouTube Studio has a lot of built-in features that let content creators carry out live edits of videos on their channel.
With YouTube Studio, channel owners can trim, join, and blur video elements, as well as add YouTube’s recommended free audio to their content.
