Music is an essential component in any video. It engages your target audience by emphasizing the mood and energy of your video project. But even though a hit song might be perfect for your video it does not mean you are free to use it. It most cases you don't have the right.

So what type of music can you use in your YouTube or Vimeo video? Most commercial music is protected under copyright and in the past decade, YouTube has created a system to analyze and flag users that have infringed upon these rights. YouTube's system references the music used in your project against their database of copyright protected music. Through this Content ID system, YouTube can then report the views on your video and send it back to the copyright holder. YouTube can also mute the audio in your video, run ads over your video, or completely remove your video.

It is possible to find the composers, producers, and songwriters for the original commercial music and obtain a license from them but this method is certainly not an easy or an inexpensive process. For instance, this copyright can fall under a number of different parties. First off, the composer owns the compositional copyright to the music, the performer or the artist owns the performance rights to the song, and finally, the record company can also have a hand in the sound recording copyright to the track. Overall, in order to obtain a license from the following parties, you could end up paying a large fee (in the tens of thousands) for the music used in your video. Fortunately, there is an affordable alternative to this time-consuming and expensive process.

Take suspense background music at the YouTube Copyright Center this site thoroughly explains the restrictions to using copyrighted music in online video content.

Royalty free music or otherwise known as stock music for YouTube is the ideal quick, cost-effective, and of course completely legal alternative to expensive custom music or commercial license options. Once a royalty free music license is acquired the licensee does not have to pay any additional fees for use of this track and is also able to use this track on as many projects as they would like in perpetuity. Furthermore, many music libraries allow YouTube video content creators to monetize videos that contain their music content. This is extremely important for well-known YouTube and Vimeo creators that depend on the ad income that their channels produce. Many professional YouTube, Vimeo, and social media video content creators rely on stock music as an easy way to get high-quality music behind their creative projects.