
Music can make or break any video or movie, but finding the right piece is the hardest part. If you don't have an orchestra or band to record the perfect song every time you need it, there are many services now that offer music with different licensing options depending on your needs and budget. The Music Bed is one such service, and they have been used for all sorts of videos you've probably seen on the web. The company just introduced a brand new version of their site with a number of helpful new features. Continue on to check out the launch video.
Video is no longer available: vimeo.com/88482616
Video is no longer available: vimeo.com/84616818
You may get lucky and find some music with a free Creative Commons license online (I've been pretty lucky with some videos, and found absolutely nothing for others), but more often than not the right piece of music will be available on one of these online music services, and The Music Bed's 5.0 website aims to make the whole process even simpler, and ensure that a license fits your actual needs.
Here is more on what's new:
Every Song Retagged and Recategorized from Scratch
For the past six months, during every moment of every day, five members of The Music Bed team have been relistening to our entire song catalog — three times through. Everything has been retagged and recategorized to be more accurate and more intuitive. Oh, and we’ve improved our vocal tags, too: ambient, choirs, duets, oohs and ahs, male/female — you name it, we’ll find it.
Multitag Searching
Not only are our tags better, but now you can search multiple tags at a time. Want something that’s both post-rock and cinematic? How about something folky with a little bit of tuba? Find exactly what you’re looking for every time. (Wandering, though, is still encouraged.)
Searchable Characteristics
You can now search for songs based on their characteristics: atmospheric, distorted, easy listening, funky, glitch, groovy, the list goes on.
And one of the more interesting new features:
Visual Waveforms
Now you can literally see if the music is going to work for your project — where it builds, where it falls away. No more scrubbing around for the right moments. No more guessing games.
That last one is really key. I've been happy with a lot of what The Music Bed has to offer -- sometimes it actually feels like there are too many songs that could work well -- but it was actually very time-consuming if you needed a specific piece that moved in just the right way at the right time. Rather than scrubbing, seeing the waveform should save a lot of time so you can go right to the moments that may work for your particular video.
Creating an account is free, and the site will now save every song you've played, so you can always go back and find what you listened to rather than needing to manually save each song. And if you're really short on time, the playlists feature is something that I don't believe any other sites are offering. You can quickly find what's popular right now among people in , rather than spending hours searching (though sometimes that can be fun with all of the interesting options).
They are in the process of updating their iOS app to coincide with these new changes, but in the meantime head on over to The Music Bed 5.0 site to check out what they have to offer.
Link: The Music Bed
Your Comment
19 Comments
Great job Music Bed, there is a lot of great music (plus awesome cinematography!), but your music lasts only 30sec. for preview ! That's really annoying when I'm looking for perfect piece for my stories... I'd like to hear the whole thing! That's a pretty significant difference between TBM and marmosetmusic...
March 18, 2014 at 12:25PM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
Hey Vince - all you have to do is log in to get full length previews. Hope that helps!
March 18, 2014 at 12:47PM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
Hey Vince,
If you log in on their website it should let you listen to the full version of any song in their library.
March 18, 2014 at 1:47PM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
ohh so simple....Thank you!!!
March 19, 2014 at 8:07AM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
Really excellent promo video from The Music Bed. They are the best music site I've found - mostly because it is the most usable music site I've found. I love what Philip Bloom says in the promo video about how frustrating it can be putting into words the feel of the music you want... but that's how almost every other site I've been to is set up. They want you to type keywords, pick the genre, etc.... it is so frustrating. The Music Bed is the most intuitive search I've found yet.
The pie-in-the-sky dream for me, though, is a Pandora-style search engine for this kind of music. The Music Bed, if you see this - please consider something like this. I have such a difficult time describing the music I need for a particular project, but I can hear and identify what I do or don't want.
March 18, 2014 at 1:18PM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
One thing I forgot to say - this site does tend to be a little more expensive than other options out there. But when I factor in time saved finding the song, and the fact that it is more likely to be the RIGHT song for a project than if I spent hours trying to figure out the right adjectives to search for and eventually just settle for "good enough"... it's easily worth it.
March 18, 2014 at 1:19PM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
You must be joking... more expensive? Than what, that quagmire if $hit called audiojungle?
March 18, 2014 at 6:34PM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
It may be a quagmire but shit couldn't be any further from the truth. The sheer volume on offer obviously means there will be bad-good with gems hidden throughout. Their lackluster search options means it often takes a lot of time to search for the right track but when you do...you're looking at a license fee of around $20 vs $400 or MORE!!!
I've used Audiojungle on over 20 different corporate jobs and I can tell you not once did I have any dramas finding the right track. On average it would take me 20-30 minutes searching...longest I've spent is probably an hour or so. So even searching for an hour each job its still WAAAAAY more cost effective to use audiojungle...unless your charging your client $400 an hour...in which case more power to you ;-)
March 18, 2014 at 7:02PM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
Way more expensive than other options out there. I'll pass thanks.
March 18, 2014 at 1:45PM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
I would like to know what these other options are.
March 18, 2014 at 6:35PM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
+1
March 19, 2014 at 7:36AM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
Audio Jungle - yes its messy and searching is a bitch BUT considering a license runs $20 vs the $400 or more TMB charges Id consider it more than viable. As I already stated I've found perfect tracks for over 20 corporate projects and the most time I've spent searching is an hour or so.
March 19, 2014 at 1:44PM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
I have a growing list of all kinds if music licensing options on this blog post:
http://bit.ly/musicinfilm
March 19, 2014 at 2:49PM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
I've used TMB in the past and do agree they have a really good unique selection of music. I have some musician friends who license their music through TMB as well. I think it's well priced for slideshows, personal use or film festival work. But, I think their license for corporate/promotional projects are too restrictive especially since you're already having to pay double for the corporate license.
The corporate license only allows you a single use. Even if it's for the same client/project. For example, if you're creating a 60 second spot and want to recut a 30 second one, you need to buy another license of the same song (though if you ask they may give you a discount on the second one) for the alternate cut if both videos are going to be available at the same time (this is what their customer service rep told me when I asked). I hope they address this issue at some point in the future as that's the biggest reason I don't use them more often.
March 18, 2014 at 2:48PM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
I hope TMB either bought Marmoset Music or paid them in some way, because the new design is more than coincidentally similar.
March 19, 2014 at 7:55AM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
Wow. Yeah. It is very, VERY similar to Marmoset. . .
March 19, 2014 at 10:10AM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
I had to look it up to see, but YEAH.
March 19, 2014 at 11:06AM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
Way too expensive for Indie film - 150 dollars for a minute!
March 21, 2014 at 12:16PM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM
I like the music they have on there but their search does not function properly, I selected only instrumental and got many songs back that had full vocals. so annoying
March 31, 2014 at 10:35AM, Edited September 4, 8:56AM