How to Add Music to Google Slides

Google Slides is a very potent tool that allows you to create and share impressive slideshows. If you want to learn how to add music to your Google Slides presentations, take a closer look at our detailed guide.

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Snapmuse Published: Sep 26, 2022 Updated: Jul 17, 2023 9 min read

Presentation and Music

Presentations constitute a serious part of business and education. Using engaging presentations, you can convey almost any information and idea across. Attention grabbing animations, easy to follow graphs and charts, impressive visuals make presentations alluring for everyone and makes information gained through these presentations much more memorable.

In addition to educational purposes, you can use presentations and slideshows for your business: You can train your team, convince and impress your customers, inform your shareholders and do much more.

If you want to improve your presentation skills and move faster in your career trajectory, we are here to help you by giving you the best presentation tips and tricks. 

First and foremost, use a user-friendly presentation tool. Google Slides is our favorite and it is one of the most used presentation tools in the world. It allows you to store your presentations in your Google Drive and share them with your team members. Moreover, it allows collaboration: You can your team members can edit and work on the same presentation simultaneously. You can also chat with one another via Google Slides interface, leave comments for each other, and add presenter’s notes to each page.

In addition to these collaboration features, you can also create visually pleasing presentations using Google Slides. From animations to graphs, you can add many engaging details to your presentation in order to ensure that your message is fully and thoroughly understood by your target audience. 

Moreover, you can add music to your Google Slides presentations! It is scientifically proven that as human beings, we respond to music. When we hear a low tempo song, we feel much calmer and somber. Certain keys make us feel sad while others can make us feel excited, happy or cheerful. Recent psychology studies show that music helps us learn and retain information more efficiently: Classical music improves cognitive abilities and memory, low tempo instrumental tracks create a calm ambience and improves the performance of learners. 

And maybe the best thing about music is the fact that it evokes strong emotions! From grief to pure bliss, music has the ability to tap into every single emotion in the spectrum. That is why the most acclaimed movies have the best soundtrack, we can never forget the jingles of the most successful advertisements even after decades, and the songs we associated with certain memories never fail to make us feel strong emotions. 

If you want to make your presentations be impressive, memorable and convincing, the best thing you can do is to add music! 
Using the right music to highlight the message of your presentation is the surest way to keep your audience entertained and engaged. With the music, you can make even the longest presentations fun and memorable. 

If you want to learn how to add music to your Google Slides presentations to make them come alive, you are in the right place. Below you can find a detailed guide on adding music to Google Slides along with some tips and tricks that will help you create top tier presentations.

If you want to share your presentation online via social media platforms like YouTube, you must be very careful with the background music you use. In order to avoid copyright infringement lawsuits, social media platforms enforce strict rules and community guidelines that prohibit the use of copyrighted tracks.
In the event of using copyrighted material in your presentations and videos, the platform you share your content on sends you a warning message and takes action regarding the copyright issue. Thus, your content can be removed, muted or be disqualified from monetization opportunities. If you repeat the offense, you can lose your channel and account permanently. 

That is why most content creators and businesses use free non copyright music for YouTube. If you want to find royalty free music and free intro music for YouTube, take a closer look at our YouTube background music download library where you can find free beats, background music, instrumental music and more.

See our guide below to learn how to add non copyrighted music and more to your Google Slides presentation.

How to Add Music to Google Slides?

It is very easy to create, share and add music to presentations on Google Slides. If you want to use this tool for your educational, personal or professional presentations, first you need to log into your Google Account. If you don’t already have one, you can create it free of charge on Google. 

There are several ways to add music to a presentation on Google Slides:
  • You can use online music services like Grooveshark, Soundcloud or Spotify.
  • You can download the song you wanted to use and upload it to your Drive.
  • You can add the YouTube link of the song you want to use.

In this guide, we will take a closer look at each method.

How to Add Background Music to Google Slides?

There are different ways of adding background music to Google Slides. We will go through each.

Online Music Services
If you don’t want to download the song you want to use, you can opt for adding music through Spotify or other streaming platforms. First, you need to find the song you want to use on the streaming platform of your choice. Then click on the three dots next to the song and get the shareable link.

After that, go back to Google Slides and open the presentation you want to add music to. Go to the slide page you want to add the song. Click Insert on the menu bar on top. Then click Shape > Shapes on the dropdown menu. Click on the shape you want to use and draw it on your slide. You can change the border color and color fill of your shape. You can also click and drag it to reposition, and resize it. 
Once you are done with formatting and placing the shape, click on it and select Insert > Link. Paste the link in the Insert Link box and click Apply. Voila, you are done! 

All you need to do is to click on the shape while doing your presentation to play the song on the streaming platform you chose earlier.

YouTube 
If you are not willing to download the song you want to use, you can insert it from YouTube. This way you can also show the video or start the song at a specific timestamp. 

First of all, find the song or video you want to use on YouTube. Right below the video, you will see a Share button. Click on it to copy the shareable link. 

After that, return to Google Slides. Go to the slide you want to add music to. Click on the Insert button on the top toolbar, choose Video option. Then enter the link you copied before. Click on the video, and press the Select button. Following that, you will see that the thumbnail of the video you selected on the slide. You can reposition and resize the thumbnail to make it more visible or less visible. You can also right click on the thumbnail to see Format Options where you can view and edit Video Playback settings such as Autoplay When Presenting.

After you finish editing Video Playback settings, you are done!

Insert Audio
If you have a specific music track downloaded, you can opt for Insert Audio option to add music to your presentation.

You can find thousands of non copyrighted, royalty free background tracks on Snapmuse. You can browse by genre, mood, and artist to find the best song to accompany your presentation.
Once you found and downloaded the song you want to use, upload it to your Google Drive. Then go to Google Slides. Select the slide you want to add music to. Click on Insert on the top toolbar. Select Audio to open a window that shows all the usable audio files on your Drive. Scroll to find the audio file you want to use in your presentation. If you don’t want to get lost amongst the countless files in your Drive folder, you can also type in the name of the audio file you are looking for. Once you find it, click on it.

Then click on the Select button on the bottom left of the screen. After that, you will see an audio icon on your slide. You can resize and relocate that icon as you wish. Moreover, you can right click to view and edit Audio Playback options.

Once you are done with adjusting the Audio Playback options, you are good to go!

How Do You Add Music to Google Slides without Downloading?

If you don’t want to download songs to add music to your Google Slides presentation, you can add music via YouTube and various music streaming services. Find the track you want to add to your presentation, copy its shareable link and go to Google Slides. Click Insert > Video and paste the link.
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