Deciphering what type of music to use for game and player highlights can be quite challenging. With the endless number of genres, songs, and artists in today’s world, pleasing everyone in the audio department is nearly impossible. Always keeping that in mind, here’s a few tips to follow when trying to match music with highlights.

1. Recognize what type of sports video you have, and the tempo of the footage you possess. If you have a ton of fast, hard hitting highlights, you probably should choose something more upbeat and less reserved. If you have highlights that are more carefree and laid back, there is nothing wrong with choosing a slower or more nostalgic feeling song.

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2. Use personal music biases to your advantage. Nearly everyone has different tastes in music, which is perfectly fine. With a better knowledge of some genres and artists over others, you are able to choose a song that you can enjoy editing highlights to, which in turn allows for more creativity in your video.

3. Music should always be thoroughly reviewed. There’s nothing more awkward and uncomfortable than iTunesScreenSnapz003sitting in a banquet hall full of players and their parents watching a highlight video with profanity laced music blasting from the speakers. Every song has a different message, and sometimes choosing a lyrically appropriate song for highlights can be difficult. Always make sure that the music chosen will match up with the age group of individuals in the highlight video, and will not construe a negative message. Being cognizant of music that contains any explicit content is a must. Bottom line: Lyrics should also always be
screened before use in any highlight video. Luckily, thanks to iTunes and Amazon – many musicians offer two versions of their most popular songs to choose from; unedited or clean.

4. Be open to outside ideas for songs. A lot of highlight videos All Star Video Sports produce come with songs that the client has selected for us to edit with. In fact we prefer that they choose their own music to make the highlight video more personal. They know exactly what music they want with the highlights. As a sports video producer, you have to be flexible and able to edit to music someone else asks for. Taking suggestions of songs from different generations or genres is always important to take into consideration also.

Music is personal so you’ll never please everybody with whatever the choice. But using these tips to choose highlight music should keep your audience happy.