Podcasts are mainly conversational, but music can make a show more listenable. But creating original music for themes, beds, and underscoring is a heavy lift creatively and economically — a production strategy mainly limited to well funded networks. In smaller budgets, using un-owned and uncleared music is legally hazardous.
Acast steps into the breach in partnership with Slip.Stream, an online database of royalty-free music. The deal for podcasters on the Acast platform is this: Six months of free access to Slip.Stream. After that half-year free period, podcasters must subscribe to continue accessing Slip.Stream.
We wondered whether a podcaster could continue using the track(s) acquired during the free period. An Acast spokesperson gave us this answer:
“All podcasts published with Slip.Stream tracks during the six month term are covered in perpetuity. However, if a podcaster chooses not to subscribe to Slip.Stream after the six months has passed they cannot then release new podcast episodes using those tracks. All access terms will be clearly communicated directly to podcasters by Acast’s Creator Network team.” –Acast spokesperson
Interestingly, that puts pressure on participating podcasters to invest in ongoing subscriptions after six months, to preserve the sonic identities of their shows.
Like other repositories of its type, Slip.Stream offers a universe of tracks in many lengths, genres, moods, and intended uses. A section called Podcast Playlists, each playlist of which offers about 20 tracks, is obviously pertinent to this arrangement with Acast. But podcasters can productively browse all categories to find perfectly toned music.
According to research conducted by Acast, 85% of listeners say that the quality of music in podcasts has improved in recent years and 74% say they prefer to listen to podcasts that use music to set the tone and mood of an episode. Another 60% prefer podcasts ads with music.
“Whether it’s used for intros or outros, or to set a tone or drive action in a plot, music is an important element that makes a podcast memorable and engaging for listeners. Now, through this partnership with Slip.Steam, Acast is making it even easier for podcasters to discover the right song for every transition, story climax, and anything else in their creative process,” said Veronika Taylor, SVP of the Creator Network at Acast. “Music has played a key role in the rise in production quality as podcasting has matured and today’s audiences have become accustomed to that high quality audio production and storytelling. Including music in episodes can help podcasters to meet these heightened audience expectations for an engaging experience.”
“Music has the power to evoke the full spectrum of human emotion. Podcasters know how to tell a compelling audio story, but can often be challenged to find songs that fit their creative needs and are safe to use on their podcast,” said Jesse Korwin, Chief Marketing Officer at Slip.Stream. “Through this partnership, Acast and Slip.Stream are helping more podcasters enhance their storytelling and create more engaging content for their audiences by giving them access to more than 70,000 songs they can begin using in their podcast production.”
