The voice comes first
In a demo, the voice carries the information and the screens carry the proof. Music is there to support both, which means it should be simple, steady and quiet. A track with vocals, a strong melody or big changes in volume competes with the narration, and viewers end up following neither.
Good demo music usually has:
- no singing, or none while anyone speaks;
- a steady tempo that matches the pace of the cuts, calmer for data-heavy products and a little brighter for consumer apps;
- few surprises, so it can loop or be trimmed to any length without an obvious seam;
- its energy in the middle of the sound, not in deep bass, for reasons explained below.
A song you like is not a licence
The most common mistake is using a popular track because it sounds right. Owning a copy of a song, streaming it or buying it from a music store gives you the right to listen to it, not to put it in a video that promotes a business. A product video is commercial use, even when it sits on your own website and is never run as an ad.
If you use a track from a library, read what the licence actually covers:
- Commercial use. Some "free" music is free only for personal or non-commercial videos.
- Where it may appear. Organic social posts, your website, paid ads and broadcast can each be licensed separately.
- How long. Some subscription libraries license music only while you keep paying; others license each video you published during the subscription for good. The difference matters when you cancel.
- Credit. Creative Commons tracks often require a credit line; some forbid commercial use or changes.
"Royalty-free" means you do not pay per play. It does not mean free, and it does not mean the track may be used everywhere.
How the platforms treat music
YouTube uses Content ID, a system that recognises copyrighted recordings in uploaded videos. When it finds a match, the owner of the recording can place a claim on your video. Depending on the owner's choice, ads may run on your video for their benefit, or the video may be blocked in some countries or everywhere, and releasing the claim can mean muting or cutting the song. A claim on a launch video, on launch day, is a bad surprise, and even properly licensed library tracks sometimes trigger claims that have to be cleared by the library.
TikTok gives business accounts a separate Commercial Music Library of pre-cleared tracks, and limits them to it in the app's own editor, because the licences behind TikTok's general sound library are made for personal use. Those commercial tracks are cleared for TikTok; posting the same video with the same track elsewhere needs its own licence.
Instagram and Facebook also offer business accounts a smaller set of licensed tracks than personal accounts see, and may limit or mute videos with unlicensed music.
Ad platforms check music too, and an ad whose soundtrack is claimed can be rejected or stopped mid-campaign.
The pattern is the same everywhere: music inside the platform's own library is licensed for that platform. Music that travels with your video file has to be licensed by you, for every place the file goes.
How loud the music should be
Music under narration should be clearly quieter than the voice, and quieter still while someone is speaking. A common approach, often called ducking, is to lower the music by several decibels whenever the voice speaks and bring it back gently in the gaps.
ShotDemo's own soundtrack is a worked example. The music bed is made at a low steady level, about 26 decibels below full scale, and is lowered further, to a little under half, whenever a line is spoken, with a third of a second to fade down and back up. The mix is then mastered to the same overall loudness every time.
That last step matters on every platform. YouTube, and by most measurements Reels and TikTok too, turn loud videos down to a common level of about -14 LUFS, a standard measure of how loud a whole soundtrack feels. A video mixed much louder than that gets turned down and loses punch; one mixed much quieter plays quieter than the video before it. Mastering to about -14 LUFS, with peaks kept below -1 dB, means your video plays at the same level as everything around it.
Phones change how music sounds
Most product videos are watched on a phone, and phone speakers cannot play deep bass. A track that sounds full on headphones can lose its whole foundation on a phone, leaving only a thin hiss or nothing at all. Music for a product video should keep its tune in the range a phone can play, roughly from the pitch of a low male voice up to the high notes of a piano.
Test your mix on a phone speaker before you publish. If you cannot hear the music at all, it is too low or too deep; if you have to strain to hear the voice, the music is too loud.
Choosing a mood
- Calm and slow suits analytics, finance, security and anything where the viewer needs to read numbers.
- Warm suits tools for small businesses, education and health, where trust matters more than excitement.
- Upbeat suits consumer apps, creative tools and short social cuts.
- Driving suits ads and launch teasers of fifteen seconds or less, where energy has to arrive at once.
- Minimal or none suits tutorials, where every second of attention should be on the steps.
Pick one mood for the whole video. Changing music halfway through a ninety-second demo feels like a different video starting.
Safe options
- Music made for you, with no third-party rights. ShotDemo generates its own beds, calm, upbeat, warm, driving and minimal, made for each video's exact length. There is no recording anyone else owns inside them, so the video can go anywhere, including ads. You can hear a sample of each before choosing.
- A library licence that names every use. Keep the licence document with the video's files, so you can answer a claim quickly.
- The platform's own library, for videos you make and post only inside that app.
- Your own file, if you own or have licensed it. ShotDemo accepts MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG and FLAC files; the licence is then yours to hold.
- No music. A clear voice over well-paced screens works, especially for tutorials. Silence is better than a track you might have to take down.
Music is the easiest part of a product video to get right once, and reuse. Settle the licence question before launch week, and it will never be the reason your video goes quiet.