Are you tired of sifting through bland royalty free music so you don’t get sued? Are you spiteful that your parents didn’t put you in music lessons growing up? Good news: it doesn’t have to be that way! Many people think of AI music as nonsensical robot noises randomly strung together (which, yes, it can be), but it’s come a long way in the past few years and there are lots of tools that make it easy to create your own songs.
Loudly is one of these tools that I’ve recently been experimenting with to create background music for social media content. It gives you a few options: you can browse previously made AI-generated pieces based on genres, moods, instruments, etc.; you can use their text-to-music generator (“I want a soundtrack for running along a beach at sunset”); or, what we’ll be experimenting with, you can generate your own music.
To create your song, first, select the music genre you would like. For the sake of drama, let’s go with “epic score.” Then you choose your instruments: you can’t have a dramatic soundtrack without strings and keys, and I also added bass, percussion, and guitar. You can then select options to change the key, energy, tempo, and genre blends to set the vibe.
The free trial only allows you to create songs with 30 second durations, but if you end up being a hardcore AI music generator fanatic, there are personal, pro, and enterprise subscription options for purchase. For my purposes of creating social media background music, the free version suits my needs. The music is royalty-free with or without a subscription, so you can’t go wrong.
Finally, you press “generate” and Loudly will create three options based on your inputs. If you’re happy with them, you can download the tracks as is, or make fine tune edits. Honestly, a lot of the outputs are just “eh” and have some questionable musical elements, but after some experimenting, you get a sense for how to make it work for you. For instance, some instruments, tempos, and keys might be better suited for specific genres. Synthesizers for an EDM song? Absolutely. High-energy, fast-tempo ambient music? A little unusual. (But hey, why not? Worth a try.)
For this experiment, it generated a piece called “Journey to Greatness.” Listen, it’s not going to win me Grammys, but it’s fun to experiment with and try as an alternative to royalty-free music.
Jessica Adelson
