Track music and sound effects are podcast essentials. Without them, chances are that your podcast will sound really flat and lack the oomph needed to capture your listener’s attention during the entire podcast. Anyone who records podcasts know this and so put much effort in finding the right music and background effects for each episode.

When looking for the perfect music loops to go with your podcast though, make sure that you don’t just pick out music based on what blends well with your current episode. Before anything else, you should make sure that the music you pick is counted as “podsafe music”.

Podsafe music is simply any music or sound byte which license specifically allows its use in podcasting. Note that most of podsafe music you’ll find are distributed the Creative Commons licenses. Check for specific license details, especially as to the form of artist attribution required. Note too that not all music distributed under the Creative Commons licenses allow for commercial purposes, so find out if this is the case.

While you may reckon that a simple sound byte is not really that of a big deal, it is still better to err on the side of caution and not have to worry about being slapped with a lawsuit in the future. You also don’t always have to search for podsafe music every single time you record podcasts anyway since editing software usually come with a good selection of free/built-in sound effects. However, for those special music tracks and sound bytes, make sure that you only use podsafe music.

Image via PodSafe Twitter Account

Originally posted on February 28, 2012 @ 11:38 pm