Music for vlogs, made from your own day

Tracks for vlogs

• Under the morning talk to camera before you head out

  Afternoon Tea Guitar · 2:24 · Acoustic · Upbeat · 89 BPM

• A relaxed bed for a long walk and talk section

  Peaceful Piano Night · 3:00 · Lofi · Calm · 90 BPM

• For a fast montage of the best moments of the day

  Cheerful Synthpop Summer · 2:39 · Electronic · Upbeat · 118 BPM

• Under an honest moment near the end of the vlog

  Felt Piano Awakening · 3:17 · Classical · Calm · 75 BPM

• Over the sign off and the end screen

  Punchy Funk Brass Outro · 0:12 · Funk · Upbeat · 144 BPM

• A quiet bed for a slow cozy day at home

  Elevator Bossa Nova · 1:00 · Jazz · Calm · 152 BPM

Library tracks are free for personal use. Commercial use needs Pro or above. More tracks like these in the music library

Two kinds of footage, two jobs for the music

Almost every vlog is built from two kinds of shot. There is you talking to the camera, held at arm's length or set on a tripod, and there are the cutaways: the coffee being poured, the street outside, the train window, the friend laughing off camera. Music behaves differently over each. Under talking it is furniture, there to fill silence and set a tone without asking for attention. Over the cutaways it is the voice of the video, carrying the story while nobody speaks.

The easiest way to lose a viewer is to treat both the same. A busy track at full level under a talking section makes every sentence harder to follow. A thin, quiet bed under a run of cutaways leaves the visual section feeling like dead air. Most vlogs that keep people watching move the music up and down a lot, dipping it whenever the creator speaks and lifting it the moment the edit goes to pictures.

Jump cuts and talking sections

Talking sections in vlogs are usually cut hard. Jump cuts remove the pauses, the "um" and the restart, and a two minute ramble becomes forty seconds. Those cuts are fast and irregular, so do not try to put them on the beat. Music with a strong melody or a pronounced kick draws attention to the jumps, because the ear notices when the picture jumps and the music carries on unbroken. A steady bed with no strong hook hides them instead.

Pick something with a soft rhythm and a narrow range: muted guitar, lofi drums, electric piano, a warm pad. Avoid tracks whose melody sits in the middle of the voice range, roughly where a flute, a whistle or a lead synth plays. When your voice comes in, set the music 15 to 20 dB below it. That sounds very quiet in isolation, but it reads as present once the voice is over it.

Cutaways, montages and where the beat matters

Cutaway sections are where cutting on the beat pays off. A sequence of six shots of a market, a beach or a morning routine feels intentional when each cut lands on a downbeat, and lazy when the cuts drift. At 100 BPM a beat lasts 0.6 seconds, so a shot of two beats or four beats gives you a natural rhythm. Fast day in the life montages often use one beat per shot for a few seconds to create a burst of energy.

When you edit to a library track, you have to bend the picture to the music. When you upload your cut to Sonilo, the music is built to follow the timing already in it, so the busy and quiet stretches line up with your talking and cutaway sections without sliding audio around the timeline. Either way, let the big montage be the musical high point, and keep the music calmer before and after it so the contrast reads.

• Talking to camera: low, steady, no strong melody, 15 to 20 dB under the voice.
• Cutaway runs of 5 to 20 seconds: lift the level, cut on downbeats.
• Montage of the day: the most energetic part of the music, one or two beats per shot.

Leave room for the real sound

A vlog is meant to feel like being there. Street noise, a door closing, wind on a beach, the barista calling a name, a friend's laugh: these are what make it feel lived rather than produced. Burying all of them under wall to wall music makes a vlog sound like an advert. Leave gaps. Drop the music out for a few seconds when something real happens, then bring it back.

If you talk over location sound, leave the speech setting on in Sonilo. It keeps your dialogue and narration while the music around them is replaced, and the music has its own volume control before export, so you can set how far it sits under you. For sections where the natural sound is the point, many vloggers lay the new music in their editor beside the original audio and ride the level shot by shot.

Length, structure and the ending

A typical weekly vlog runs 8 to 20 minutes, and one track will not carry all of it. Most editors change music every two to four minutes, usually at a natural break: arriving somewhere, a time jump, a change of mood. A shift in music tells the viewer that a new chapter of the day has started, and that is useful pacing in a long video with no chapters on screen.

Endings matter more than people expect. A vlog that fades out on a random bar feels unfinished. Plan for the last shot, often you saying goodbye or a quiet frame of the evening, to coincide with the end of a phrase or a final chord, then let the outro music run under your end screen for 10 to 20 seconds. Shorter vlog edits for Shorts or Reels, which usually run 30 to 60 seconds, need a single track with one clear lift and a definite final beat on the last cut.

Choosing the mood for the day

Morning routines, study days and cozy days at home suit soft acoustic guitar, lofi beats and gentle piano. City days and errands suit laid back hip hop beats or mellow jazz. Trips, festivals and big days out want brighter indie pop, funk or upbeat electronic music. Honest or emotional moments, a talk about a hard week or a milestone, suit slow piano or strings with a gentle build.

Keep the palette consistent across your channel. Viewers come back for a feeling as much as for content, and a vlog that sounds like your last ten feels like home. The presets above follow those common pairings; change the direction to name your own instruments, tempo or mood before you upload.

How to make music for vlogs

1. 1

   Upload your vlog

   Upload the finished or nearly finished vlog. Sonilo reads its cuts, pacing and scene changes.

2. 2

   Pick a vlog preset

   Choose Morning routine, City day, Big day out, Reflective night or Sign off, or describe the music yourself. Leave the speech setting on if you talk to camera.

3. 3

   Generate and export

   Generate on the create page, which shows the credit cost before anything runs. Pick the better of the two versions, set the music level and export it with your vlog.

Questions before you start

Music for other kinds of video