PowerPoint presentations can serve many different purposes, and often people use them for various business presentations. Like most things in life, your presentations can be improved and made more memorable and appealing with the inclusion of the appropriate background music. It doesn’t matter whether you are doing a live presentation to an audience with PowerPoint, or creating an online video, music will really bring your message to life and make it thoroughly engaging.
Don’t Risk Being Boring
The last thing you want is for your presentation and its information to be boring and go down like the proverbial lead balloon. While the inclusion of music won’t guarantee your PowerPoint presentation will be a success or even loved, it will certainly help to liven it up and get people interested in what’s going on.
What Kind of Music?
This really depends on the tone and mood of the presentation, what the content and message is and who the intended audience will be. For the most part music will be played in the background, possibly even when the presenter is speaking, so you won’t want anything loud or intrusive. The exception to this would be to highlight certain points in the presentation, or when transitioning between subjects. Both the start and end of the presentation could accommodate music that is a little louder and more confronting.
Sound effects used at the appropriate times and in the right way can really bring the whole presentation together, so don’t think things are limited to full on music tracks only.
You want something that will suit the mood of your message. This will depend on what material you are presenting. Is it?….
Informational- Motivational
- Instructional
- Educational
- Corporate
- Entertaining
There are many different types of presentations, so the mood of the music and the style largely depends on what message you are trying to get across and how you want to present that message.
For example, if your presentation is about something serious or dramatic, then you have the scope to use more solemn and dramatic music. Likewise, if the presentation is light and fun, then you will want music that conveys this mood.
Where to Find the Right Music
As your presentation will be a public event – either live in front of an audience or displayed in video form online – the music you use in your PowerPoint presentation will need to be licensed for you to legally be able to use it in your project.
Music licenses for presentations usually don’t cost very much, unless it’s used for advertising purposes, and there is a phenomenal selection of music available for immediate licensing on the web.
One of my favourite websites for licensing music – and for offering my music for licensing – is Songtradr. They have a really quick and easy search function and licensing process that saves a lot of time and frustration when trying to find just the right music to suit the mood of the project. Much of the music is instrumental, so perfectly suited to a PowerPoint presentation.
You can check out my music and other tracks on Songtradr by clicking on their logo below.
Interesting article and good music also, so much so that I kept it on while typing, Are people that honest to licence music for powerpoint presentations? does that apply in small underdeveloped countries.My son is in the music business and he tells me it is becoming more difficult to make money from recorded business,How is this business monitored? I Love background music and I really don’t understand the process. Good luck.
Thanks Courtney. Monitoring the music business can be pretty difficult, particularly in third world countries. Plenty of people do the right thing and license music though. It’s competitive in music for sure, especially when selling tracks on iTunes and places like that.