How to Add Background Music to a Screen Recording
Play any polished product launch video muted-then-unmuted and you'll notice the trick: under the narration there's a quiet music bed, and it's doing more work than it seems — masking mic noise and mouse clicks, smoothing over cuts, and signaling "this was made on purpose." Adding one to a screen recording takes about a minute; getting it to sit right takes knowing four rules.
The four rules of demo music
- Volume: lower than you think. 25–40% under narration. If you notice the music while listening to the words, it's too loud. No narration? 50–60% works.
- Fade in and out. Music that starts and stops at full level feels like a mistake at both ends. A 1–2 second fade each way is the difference between "soundtrack" and "someone's playlist leaked in."
- Loop, don't stretch. A 30-second instrumental loop under a 2-minute video is normal and unnoticeable; viewers don't track musical structure while reading UI.
- Instrumental only. Lyrics fight the narration and the captions. Lo-fi, soft electronic, or ambient beds win; anything with a vocal loses.
Adding a track in DemoReel
- Open your project in DemoReel and switch to the Audio tab.
- Click Add music and pick any audio file — MP3, WAV, M4A. It's stored locally like everything else; the file never uploads anywhere.
- Set the volume slider (start at 40% and lower it until the narration owns the foreground), and leave Loop until the end and Fade in and out on — they implement rules 2 and 3 for you.
- The track rides the output timeline: it plays straight through your cuts instead of hiccuping at every join, which is exactly what makes cuts feel invisible.
Balancing music against the recording's own sound
Three faders matter: mic, system audio, music. The usual demo mix is mic at 100%, system audio at 60–80% (interface sounds add texture; keep them under the voice), music at 25–40%. If one stretch of the recording is loud — an autoplaying video, a notification you forgot — duck just that stretch with a volume section rather than dragging the whole track down.
Where to get music you're allowed to use
The copyright strike happens at upload, not at edit. Safe sources: YouTube's Audio Library (free, filter by "no attribution required"), Pixabay Music and Free Music Archive (check each license), or a subscription like Epidemic Sound or Artlist if you publish regularly. Skip mainstream tracks entirely — Content ID will find them even under narration, and "it was quiet" is not a license.