Can You Find 3-Minute Songs To Use In TikTok Videos?

TikTok has an enormous library of songs (which they call TikTok Sounds) available to content creators who want to add a music background to their TikTok content. Many of them are not only trending on the social media platform, but they’re hits on Spotify and radio stations as well. (A different selection of Sounds is available for commercial use on the TikTok for Business app.)

It’s easy to add a song to a TikTok post. Simply hit the “Add Sound” button at the top of the Create or Edit screen and choose a song that matches your content.

You’ll notice one potential problem as you create TikTok videos, though. Almost all of the sounds are short clips, either 15- or 60-seconds in length — and almost none of the longer ones are popular songs from popular artists. Most sounds match the most common lengths of posts uploaded to the app, but that’s no help if your content is longer than a minute.

The difficulty you may experience when looking for music to back a three-minute video is understandable.

Most copyright owners who license songs for use on TikTok only permit the use of short segments of their music; using more than 15 seconds or a minute of most songs would legally infringe on the owner’s rights. You can’t even “loop” songs from the TikTok library; the app will cut the audio after one minute if you try it.

Even though the problem is understandable, that doesn’t mean it’s convenient. What’s a creator to do when they’re planning — or have recorded — a video that’s three minutes long and need a music background?

There are several solutions, and one of them is simple.

How to Get 3-Minute Songs on TikTok

The first option may not allow you to use the music you’ve dreamed of including in your content, but it works perfectly.

Search the TikTok Sound Library

1. Tap the “+” icon at the bottom of your TikTok home screen to open the app’s video creation interface.
2. At the top of the Create screen, click the “Add sound” button. (If you prefer, you can record your video first and then use the “Add sound” option once you’re in the Edit screen.)
3. Tap the magnifying glass on the top menu of the popup, and then search for “3-minute songs.”
4. You’ll have a long list of choices; click on a song title to preview the Sound, and hit the checkmark next to it to add it to your video.

A large number of the choices will be instrumental music or user-created Sounds (because of the copyright issues we’ve mentioned). If you want to try finding songs by specific artists or in specific genres, you can search for those topics and then look through the list of results to see if any options are three minutes long (or longer).

Not happy with what you’ve found?

Try an Alternative Method

None of these options will be easy, but they may allow you to produce the exact video you have in mind.

• Find royalty-free music online (or if you’re musically talented, create your own), and upload it to the app for use in your video. It’s a good idea to use TikTok’s copyright checking tool (available in the Creator Tools section of the platform) before including the music in your video. That will ensure it doesn’t get flagged and taken down by the system.
• Use a third-party editor to create your video. A popular choice is CapCut, which is owned by the same company as TikTok. CapCut is designed to let you upload finished content directly to TikTok, and it has many more three-minute songs available.
• If you have a specific song you want to use and it’s not licensed to TikTok for long segments, contact the copyright owner and negotiate for the rights to include it in your video. Thi$ may not be a $uitable $olution for most TikTok u$ers, though. (If you couldn’t tell, the rights will probably be extremely pricey.)

If you’re going to use any music that doesn’t come directly from the app’s library, be sure to use the copyright checking tool and notify the platform (if necessary) before posting your video. That can prevent your content from being taken down, and let you avoid headaches after you’ve uploaded.