How to Add Background Music to Clips and Audiograms

1. Choose music that belongs in this project

Open Background music in the Clip’s audio controls and choose Choose music. Confirm that you own the music or have permission to use it. Upload an MP3 or WAV, up to 100 MiB and 10 minutes. Check the license for the destination and intended use; a streaming subscription or a publicly accessible link does not itself grant editing or publication rights.

Each Clip uses one music track. Choose an arrangement that leaves room for the voice rather than expecting several competing tracks to be mixed together. An instrumental passage may be easier to balance under speech than a prominent lead vocal. Use Replace when you want a different file, and keep listening to the actual candidate before applying it.

Uploading, adjusting and auditioning your music is available without a paid plan. Those actions prepare a candidate. Adopting, saving and exporting a Clip with background music requires Lite or Standard. An upgrade does not apply the candidate automatically; return, review it and adopt it deliberately.

2. Place music against the complete finished sequence

Choose Entire finished clip, Body only or Custom. Finished time includes independent intros and outros as well as the edited main passage. Music continues across cuts removed from the speech; it is not restarted at every original-source edit.

Use Finished start and Finished end for the music’s placement in the output. Music source start chooses where playback begins inside the music file. These are different decisions: moving the music later in the clip does not mean you want a different opening note.

On the shared timeline, move the music bar or trim its ends. Use the exact time fields or keyboard adjustments when dragging is awkward, particularly on a phone. If you switch the timeline to original-source time, return to finished time before editing the music. The music track does not consume a visual-overlay slot.

When the music is shorter than the selected interval, choose whether to enable Loop when music is shorter. Without looping, music stops when its usable audio ends. Listen at the repeat point; a mathematically continuous loop can still sound abrupt. If you change the Clip range, confirmed cuts or bookends, recheck the music’s boundaries and update its preview.

3. Keep speech comfortably in front

Adjust Original volume and Music volume independently. The starting settings are 100% original audio and 20% music, with a short fade in and fade out. Treat those as a starting point, not a guarantee that every recording will sound balanced. A heavily mastered music file can dominate even at a low percentage.

Enable Lower music while speaking if you want the music to dip during speech and recover in pauses. Listen to quiet words, breaths and pauses as well as the loudest sentence. If speech detection or the original audio is unavailable, turn that option off and adjust the volumes manually. A source with no original audio can still use music on its own.

Set fades that fit the actual music interval. Their combined length cannot exceed its effective duration. Use the ending to support the speaker’s conclusion rather than covering the last word with a sudden musical accent. Original-audio cleanup happens before the music is mixed; cleanup and music are separate choices.

4. Compare the current mix with the unmixed audio

Choose Update preview, then compare Unmixed and Current mix at the same point. The audition is audio only; the picture does not follow it. Use headphones or speakers at a consistent listening volume so a louder version does not merely seem better because it is louder.

Listen through the opening, every speech cut, a quiet phrase, any loop boundary and the ending. Check the transition from an intro into the main passage. For an Audiogram, the finished sound visualization follows the final mixed audio; do not judge the mix from the original-source waveform alone.

Changing a parameter makes the previous audition stale. Update it before deciding that the new settings sound right. If preview generation fails, your settings remain available for correction or retry. A playable older preview is not proof that a later adjustment has been rendered.

5. Adopt the music, save the Clip and check the MP4

On Lite or Standard, choose Adopt for this Clip. This puts the music in the Clip draft; then choose Save changes and Generate clip preview. Complete the finished-clip check and download the MP4. Open it and listen to the full sequence before publishing.

Mixing does not use additional processing minutes or clip-search allowances. After a downgrade, a paid original remains protected; make an explicitly chosen Free-compatible version when needed. A music preview does not unlock paid caption, branding or output-ratio features.

NLE handoff does not reproduce background music. Choose MP4 when the delivered file needs to retain this mix. If you continue with a professional editor handoff, accept that difference and arrange the music and required usage rights in the receiving editor.

6. Reuse a mix carefully on related clips

Standard can apply music to selected clips from the same source. Targets start unselected. Review each one, preserve existing music unless you explicitly choose to replace it, and check the per-Clip results after applying. Different lengths and bookends mean the same track may land differently in each output.

Resolve any saved-version conflict before retrying that target. Successful targets do not need to be saved again by repeating the entire operation. Generate and listen to each finished result before batch delivery. Personal audio schemes can retain mixing preferences, but they do not copy the music file or absolute Clip times; the scheme guide explains that separate workflow.