How to Use Royalty Free Music For Your Baseball or Softball Content and Why

Try picturing the saddest, tear-jerking movie scene you’ve ever watched. 

Do you see it? 

Was it in Field of Dreams?

Wherever it’s from, you may or may not remember the background music that was playing at that moment in the movie that really got you. 

Most likely, it was a very melancholic or inspirational tune that shook you up and triggered those tears-a-streaming.

Now, take that same scene, but replace the tune with “Yakety Sax” from The Benny Hill Show – if you don’t recognize the name, click the link, because I promise you’ll know the music. 

And with a simple music track change, an otherwise peak-emotion movie scene has been made funny, odd, or just plain confusing.

We can’t deny that sounds and music have the ability to change our moods and perspective. 

So the sounds you choose to put into your own YouTube, or Facebook and Instagram ads, play a subtle yet important role in making them more appealing, attracting more views, and, ultimately, making you more revenue. 

The right music matches both the content and the overall brand. 

And as we’ll explore in detail, the right music also does not get the creator or brand in trouble for copyright infringement. 

If you’re already a bit experienced with creating content on platforms like Instagram or TikTok, you might be thinking that they’ve already got you covered with the awesome music selection you use for your Reels and TikToks. 

But, before explaining the reason that baseball and softball Coachpreneurs need copyright free music to really grow their brand, let’s dwell on this “making you more revenue” thing a bit longer. 

We’re sure you’ll agree that answering the “why?” and “how?” of this big claim is important.

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#Why Quality Content Is So Important for Coachpreneuers

The hard pill to swallow for most is that your video content is being judged and compared – either intentionally or subconsciously – to everything else published online by all those who end up viewing it. 

Potential clients or customers have already been trained by now on what constitutes a “good” video by companies and content creators with lots of capital, lots of experience, or both. 

Unfortunately, the bar to entering the “good to great” range of video quality is higher than it’s ever been. 

This rapid, predictive judgment based on comparisons to everything else we’ve seen or experienced is how human beings navigate the world, online or otherwise. 

If you were, for example, running a 15-second IG Story ad for your personal coaching brand, your potential customer has more than enough information to know if it’s for them or not. 

Their brains are looking for indications of actual expertise in the words and actions displayed, of course. 

But this alone is not always enough differentiation for coaches these days – people already expect you to be an expert on hitting if you’re teaching it.

To be clear, your ad’s viewers don’t need to know anything about videography, graphics, or sound design to consciously or unconsciously assess these things. 

Our brains just pick up patterns from fully-scaled companies or brands’ content, like Nike or Apple, and compare and categorize the quality of every else they’re exposed to accordingly.  

Also, as many talented teachers of the game have already discovered, an audience following you online may listen to and enjoy your free subject matter expertise greatly, but monetization is another thing entirely. 

When you directly or, more often, indirectly ask your audience to make a purchase, their minds will instantly compare your brand more starkly against other brands that they usually make purchases from. 

These brands that earn your follower’s financial loyalty and the video content that such brands put out will almost inevitably be very polished in the exact details that we listed above – with the current exception of brands winning on TikTok, but that’s a topic for another article. 

This isn’t a perfect inverse relationship, and there are always exceptions to every rule, but, to put it simply: to up your monetization potential when talking about your website, YouTube channel, or Facebook and Instagram accounts, up the overall quality of your content. 

Your longer-form YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram content will want catchy intro and outro music at the very least. 

Considering constant background music in such videos where a person on camera teaches a concept or shows a drill is a personal brand choice that can either distract viewers or energize them and elevate the entire content’s production value. 

As you can already see, baseball and softball content creators have a lot to consider these days, but finding quality music that won’t land them in legal trouble isn’t difficult.  

In this article, we’ll give you some of the best platforms offering up amazing royalty free background music online. 

But first, a bit more background knowledge to help you understand exactly why all this even matters in the first place.

#Why Baseball and Softball Coaches Need Royalty Free Music

As we mentioned, you may love using the hottest, trending music tracks for your organic Instagram Reels and TikToks. 

And this is a great thing – especially in the current year, when it’s still possible to quickly amass a huge audience on TikTok, and Reels are the key to unlocking engagement and growth for your brand after the Instagram algorithm stopped rewarding feed and Story posts as much. 

But, here’s the problem. 

Once you try to create an ad on Facebook or Instagram, at least, it will get rejected instantly if you use that hot new Tierra Whack song – or any copyrighted music. 

It’s a similar situation if you decide to expand your Coachpreneur brand on YouTube. 

So, in order to run ads in the places where most baseball and softball parents hang out, Facebook and Instagram – and to post even organically on YouTube – you need royalty free music. 

Now that our “why” is covered, what the heck does royalty free even mean?

#What Are Music Royalties?

To put it simply, music “royalties” are just payments made to copyright holders. 

There are different types of royalties, some of these include:

• Mechanical royalties
• Synchronisation (synch) royalties
  
• Public performance royalties
  
• Print related royalties
  
• Digital performance royalties
  

But you aren’t copyright lawyers training to pass the bar.

When you, as a baseball or softball creator, post video content or host live online events or seminars, the royalty type that concerns you most is synchronization royalties.

If you want to use content that you don't own as background music on your uploaded videos, you'll, in most cases, have to get a synchronization license. 

Synchronization licenses must be custom-negotiated directly with the copyright holder before you post your video and such negotiations can become rather complex – meaning legal counsel is often required. 

Obviously, no baseball or softball content creator wants to deal with any of the stuff in the sentence above – this is where royalty free music comes in.

#License Types That You Can Freely Use

Before we get on with showing you the great royalty free music links this article is all about, let's give you the basic vocabulary you should learn and remember to avoid any legal complications in the future. 

Focusing on these terms will equip you with the terms needed to navigate the search for awesome background music.

1. Royalty Free: These do not mean that the music is free despite the common misconception. 
   
   What this actually means is that you will only buy the music's license once, and then use it for as long as you want, and however you want with no additional steps. 
   
2. Creative Commons: The particularity with this type of license is that it allows individuals to freely use, distribute, copy, and do what they please with the musical work, but still enables the original creator behind that work to retain the copyrights ownership of that piece and essentially get the credit for it that they are legally entitled to. 
   
   Most of the time, in actual practice, music under Creative Commons requires you to give credit to the creator. And each creator may detail how they would like you to give that credit. 
   
3. Public Domain: These works are also free, but they’re not protected by any sort of copyright, and so, do not require permission from the original owner. 
   
   There are various ways that works can arrive in the public domain, but for our purposes, just know that if music is there – and it doesn’t have any hidden copyrights attached to it – it’s totally fair game to use. 
   
   For example, two surprisingly public domain songs you'd recognize are “House of the Rising Sun” and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” 
   

#Royalty Free Music for Your Baseball and Softball Content

#Bensound

If you search “royalty free music” on a search engine, Bensound is likely one of the first results you’ll get. And for good reason. 

This website is free to the public, with amazing quality music in genres like acoustic, folk, jazz, rock, and more. 

The only requirement you must follow in order to use their music for free is crediting Bensound.com in your projects. 

That is, unless you decide to go for a paid subscription, which will then allow you to receive full access to their Library, and license certificates that enable use of their music without having to credit them every single time or at all.

#YouTube Audio Library

Once you enter YouTube's Creator Studio section and check in the sidebar, you'll quickly spot their Audio Library. 

You will have access to tons of free royalty free tunes and sound effects (stock audio) of the genre of your choice right then and there. 

If you are creating videos to specifically post on YouTube’s platform, this option is a no brainer. 

Just be aware that everyone posting content on YouTube also has access to this selection of music.

A 2018 study by Omnicore, found that 50 million different creators had content shared on the platform – the number is likely much higher today.

Meaning that if you want something totally original for your YouTube channel, you may consider getting your music elsewhere. 

#SoundCloud

SoundCloud is a platform composed of musical artists posting their work. Much of this work is licensed as Creative Commons. 

You will be able to use SoungCloud’s robust search engine to look up music by keywords and find truly talented artists from all over the globe. The site also has a "like" feature that lets you see how many people have already liked a certain song.  

Not that it is necessarily a perfect indicator of the song's quality, but it can be helpful to know how many people already enjoy something if you’re considering using it for your videos.

Unlike some other platforms, SoundCloud is where you are more likely to find music that you’d truly listen to for leisure. Depending on the personal brand you are cultivating, this can be either a good or bad thing. 

However, SoundCloud does still contain tunes composed specifically for commercial or marketing purposes. 

For example, here we've typed in “background music for videos” and we are on our way to finding a whole lot of free to use Creative Commons music. 

Try your own simple keyword search to cater to your brand’s specific needs and style.

#Free Music Archive

Free Music Archives is a platform that offers a hefty catalog filled with many different songs from smaller artists.

These songs are all either tagged as being Public Domain, or under various Creative Common licenses – all holding different requirements for the use of their music. 

Just be sure to pay attention to the specific licensing and requirements for each golden sound you mine from these catacomb-like archives.  

Check out their helpful Frequently Asked Questions section for any additional questions you might have. 

#Epidemic Sound

Used by over 100,000 content makers, Epidemic Sound has made a name for themselves in the royalty free music world. 

They offer a 30-day free trial for you to see for yourself how much their service can do for you. 

Sought after by professionals from all corners of the world with their high quality music and sound effects available to you after the free trial at $15 per month for their lower-tier Personal Use license.

#Musopen

Unlike other royalty free music platforms that mostly feature more mainstream styles of music, Musopen sets themselves apart in the market by having only classical music available in their curated selection. 

If you've been wanting your videos to have a more refined, tailored feel to them instead of the usual commercial/marketing music we hear everywhere nowadays, then this might be exactly what you were looking for.

#Jamendo

Jamendo is a royalty free music platform that caters specifically well to individuals who need their royalty free music for marketing purposes. 

They are one of the largest copyright free music libraries online, as stated on their website, and offer 240,000+ royalty free tunes that you can access with several different subscription types. 

They offer you a choice to pay on a monthly or yearly subscription, or to just get licenses on a per project basis.

Get more information on their pricing plans by clicking here. 

#Storyblocks

Storyblocks allows you with its various subscription plans to download nearly unlimited amounts of stock videos, stock images, and of course royalty free music and sound effects. 

You will have the possibility to choose per category for your basic plan – either image, video, or audio – or get their unlimited access plan that includes all of their categories combined into one great bundle.

#HookSounds

Looking for a High quality copyright free background music, HookSounds will most likely hook you in with their vast free use and mention-only required catalog. 

But, if you're looking to get your YouTube videos monetized, then you will have to get their Basic plan, starting at $24 per month to be allowed monetization, commercial use, and no need to credit right enabled. 

It’s definitely a pricier option for those who don’t mind paying more for an extra catchy intro or outro hook that’ll be used on every video in a series on YouTube or IGTV. But, if you’re on a budget, there are better options above.  

Their pricing plans are available here. 

#Penalties For Not Using Royalty Free Music In Your Baseball or Softball Content

Serious legal lawsuits can result from using someone’s music without permission, but such cases are much more rare.

Usually, the penalties you’ll receive will be from the platform that you’re hoping to post or publish on – but they will still be severe. 

Let's get specific. 

#Facebook Penalties

We already touched on what happens when you try to use copyrighted music in a Facebook or Instagram ad – the Ads Manager will instantly and automatically reject your ad. 

But, as bad as not being able to run one ad might be for your business, this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of risk. 

Facebook mostly decides to flag ads for policy violations via algorithmic automations, AKA, without a human making any decisions. 

You can try to appeal it and get your case in front of a human representative, but using copyrighted music is as cut and dry a violation as that rep will see all day. 

Also, Facebook changes its policy rules regularly, which can often lead to both new and old ads in your account getting flagged without warning. 

This can happen even when you try to do everything right, so you really can’t afford to get an ad rejected over something so easily avoidable as background music. 

If this doesn’t sound too scary, let me explain it more.  

Getting a disabled ad account reactivated again can be a monumental struggle. 

The majority of the time, once an ad account is disabled, it will stay that way even if it was disabled due to a mistaken glitch in the ad policy scanners – let alone a real music violation. 

Having an account disabled is a nightmare for any business or personal brand, because you likely won't be able to ever run ads from and for the Facebook or Instagram account that you may have worked on growing for years. 

This will severely hurt your brand’s ability to scale past a certain point. 

Moreover, if you want to be a person of influence who partners with other brands on campaigns, a deactivated account may affect the types of deals and partnerships you can do. 

For example, things like whitelisting may be completely off the table for you. 

#YouTube Penalties

The penalties you can get for not using royalty free music in your videos on YouTube, on the other hand, are as follows:

• Receiving Content ID claims:
  These aren't as damaging as you'd think, especially if it's your first time. These simply mean that they found content owned by another party on the platform. It will then be up to that creator to decide whether or not they are okay with you using their work. 
  
  If this occurs, and they haven't decided to block your video, your other options are to either to share the revenues you are earning with the respective content owner, swap the music you’re playing with another one, or remove the music altogether from your video. 
  
  As of 2018, YouTube partners had claimed over 800 million videos since Content ID was implemented – it’s likely well into the billions now. 
  
• Getting your video taken down: after receiving a first warning strike.
  
• Live streams being taken down: for a copyright issue will leave you with an inability to stream for 90 days.
  
• Your entire YouTube channel taken down: if within 90 days you get 3 such strikes, you risk losing your channel and this means indefinitely. Avoid this at all costs.
  

We in the baseball and softball community know all about strikeouts, but you usually get another at-bat later in that game or in the next – not so much with YouTube. 

#How Do You Get Caught Using Copyrighted Music?

The copyright owner (it can even just be one of their fans) can themselves stumble upon your video and report you by sending a copyright infringement notice – a legally valid request – to Youtube.

Though in most cases, just like Facebook and Instagram, it's YouTube's own integrated algorithm that does the work of finding infringement by scanning millions of videos on a daily basis, and comparing video contents to see if it can find an existing match somewhere. 

Despite all the scary legal stuff and tech penalties, if you find your music at any of these royalty free sites above and follow their basic rules, you’ll be totally fine. 

Now, go out and have some growing your brand with the help of awesome music. 

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