YouTube launches royalty-free music library with 150 tracks

YouTube on Wednesday launched the Audio Library, a collection of 150 royalty-free tracks that video makers can use to accompany their footage. The music is available to any YouTube user and can be sorted by mood, genre, instrument or duration.

As YouTube outlines in their blog post on the subject, the right song can create a magical moment while the wrong one can kill the mood in no time flat. It’s easy to slap any old tune as background music for your video but that’s not exactly a great idea when the YouTube copyright police catch wind and yank your video from the site.

That’s not an issue if you use royalty-free tracks. YouTube’s collection includes all different genres of instrumentals including rock, R&B, jazz & blues, pop, hip hop & rap, alternative& punk and reggae, just to name a few. Tracks are also rated by mood so you can get an idea of what each song consists of without having to preview everything.

Track usage isn’t limited to YouTube use, either. Under the royalty-free designation, tunes can be used for any creative purpose for free, forever. Each track is available to download as a 320 kbps MP3 file for this very reason.

You can check out the royalty-free offerings by following the link in your video manager under creation tools. Also, if you know nay musicians interested in contributing to the library, drop YouTube a line.