Finding music for your films is not easy. It’s a little bit like a treasure hunt, and not always the fun kind—it’s the kind that can really slow your edit if you don’t have the right tools at your disposal. We know because we’ve been there. You’re in the middle of a project and it’s time to start thinking about the soundtrack, then it all comes to a screeching halt.
There’s a sound in your head, but you’re not really sure how to translate it into a song.
This entire scenario is the reason Musicbed exists. Since we started, it’s been our job to eliminate as many of the unknowns as possible. We’ve brought hundreds of artists, bands, and composers together under one roof—each of them handpicked as a great choice as music for your films. But that’s only half of the equation.
As we said before, you already know the perfect song is in there. You just need the tools to find it. There are more than 20,000 songs on our roster and you can’t listen to all of them. Even if you narrowed it down to a specific genre, it still leaves you with far too many options.
In this post, we’re going to run through a few clever tools to help you track down the perfect music for your next project, to help you find the song you’ve been hearing in your head. First, be sure to create a free account so you can test out all of these features.
Song Pitches
This is the most underutilized service we offer, maybe because it just seems too good to be true. Our Music Specialists know the roster better than anyone and they’ll offer free song pitches to you at no charge. Yep, completely free.
They’re true professionals, too. They spend all day every day digging through our roster and listening to new music. They hear what other filmmakers are using and also know about new releases before anyone else does.
So, why does this matter to you? Well, you can tell our specialists what you’re looking for and they’ll spend the time finding it. Simple as that. They can tell you what’s trending right now, offer some hidden gems other people may not be noticing, and give you a well-rounded list of songs that fit the vibe you’re looking for.
It’s like having an extra member of your team who you don’t have to pay. Put them to the test—trust us, your project will be better off for it.
Browse/Search
Prefer the DIY approach to finding music for your films? We get it. That’s why we’ve built the industry’s most robust search engine, designed to help you navigate our extensive roster in just a matter of seconds.
Once you’re logged into your free account, click the ‘Browse’ button in the main navigation at the top of the site. In this view, you’re seeing every song in our roster—all 477 pages of them. So, to start narrowing down to the perfect song, use our filters, which populate on the left-hand side of your screen.
Types of filters
Genre: Choose from 20 different styles of music, ranging from hip-hop to ambient and everything in between.
Mood: Have a scene in mind, but not a genre? Think about what sort of emotion you’re trying to convey and choose from 14 different moods.
Artist: A lot of filmmakers have their go-to artists or want to seek out a new favorite. With this filter, you can see each of our artist’s work—more than 700 of them.
Attributes: If you’re looking for something specific, this is your place. Choose from 82 different attributes, like ‘Earthy’ or ‘French’.
Instrument: If your scene calls for a violin—or definitely doesn’t call for a banjo—you can narrow your search by 40+ instruments with this filter.
Advanced: Under this menu, you can search by vocals (male, female, choir, etc.), the type of build a song has, song length, and even BPM, which is handy if you need a song for a tense scene or a slow, moody scene.
How to use filters
Now here’s how the filters work. Under each filter menu, you can click the ‘check’ to include that filter in your search or you can click the ‘x’ to exclude the filter for your search. For example, if you click the ‘check’ by the ‘piano’ filter under instruments, you’ll now be seeing every song on Musicbed that features a piano. If you click the ‘x’ on the same filter, you’ll be seeing every song except for songs featuring a piano.
You can make this search as specific as you want by combining filters, too. So, if you include ‘Sad’ under mood and exclude ‘Piano’ under instruments, you’ll be seeing every sad song that doesn’t feature a piano. You can include and exclude any number of filters to hone in on the perfect song.
One last tip. You can also click on any song in our roster, scroll down to the Details section on its page, and see exactly which filters are assigned to it. So, if you love a song’s vibe and want to find more like it, you can see exactly how to search for it on our platform by reverse-engineering its tags.
With our set of filters and search tools, you can begin to narrow down more than 20,000 songs to exactly what you want in just a matter of seconds. The combinations are limitless and so are the opportunities.
Expanded Player
This may seem small, but it’s a hidden gem that many filmmakers may miss out on. When you’re playing a song on Musicbed, hover over the cover art and click the arrow that pops up. Voila! You’re looking at our Expanded Player.
Think of this section as a heads up display built specifically for you. You can see your listening history so you can track down that great song you heard last week. You can also see your Pinned Projects to quickly access work. Most importantly for discovering music for your films, though, you can see similar songs to the one you’re listening to—it’s a super fast and easy way to hunt down the perfect vibe.
Playlists
Our A&R team has its hands on every aspect of our roster— it’s how we built the world’s best music library for filmmakers—and Playlists are an example of it. Our Playlists are curation within curation, the perfect place for any filmmaker that needs a faster option or just wants a shortcut to where they’re going.
There are 100 playlists for you to explore right now, with more being added all the time. Our specialists curate each of them with new music so you’re always seeing the latest and greatest. You can explore our Genre playlists if you want a broader view of a certain type of music, or you can really hone in with our Vibe playlists, curated with a certain feeling or mood in mind.
And, just added this year, you can now explore our Filmmaker playlists! We reached out to some of our favorite creatives and had them build playlists based on their tastes and the music they’re using in projects right now.
All in all, our playlists are the perfect place for straight-up inspiration. There’s no better way to start a project than by picking your favorite playlist and discovering something new.
Spotify
Last but not least, you can now discover music for your films by following our playlists on Spotify and find inspiration wherever you go.
We’ve integrated our platform with Spotify so you can follow playlists directly from musicbed.com. Just connect your Spotify account under the ‘Integrations’ tab on your Account page. Then, you can follow our playlists on Spotify just by clicking ‘follow’ on Musicbed!
As filmmakers ourselves, we built this platform because we know how difficult it can be to find music for your films. There are so many options out there (and so much music) that it can be difficult to know where to start.
Our advice would be this: test out each of these features! By getting to know the tools we’ve built, you’ll not only be more efficient in finding music but you’ll also be discovering new songs for your next project. And, if you have any questions, please reach out to our Music Specialists. They can show you how to make your music search easier and offer those song pitches we were talking about earlier. Happy hunting.
