What is a Music Loop?

Many of our visitors are still a bit confused about what exactly a music loop is and how theey can be used for royalty free purposes in their multimedia projects such as Flash animations, background music for websites and on hold message systems to video games and alarm clocks.
Here are some answers I sent to a recent inquiry:

Could you please explain to me what a loop is?

A music loop is a short piece of music, anywhere from 7 to 30 seconds or longer. What makes the music file a loop is that it is edited to loop seamlessly from the end back the beginning.

And why would people want to create loops?

Music loops are preferable in many situations:

  • You have flexibility in editing with music loops. You can lay the loop in any audio editing software end to end many times for as long as you need the music to play. For example if you were trying to match the length of the music exactly to a scene in a video then a music loop might be a good way to go.
  • If you are using the loop in a web page you can set your embed parameters to loop = true and the music will play seamlessly in the background until the visitor leaves your page (just make sure they are not leaving your page because you haven’t given them  a way to turn off the music that is playing forever in the background)
  • The applications that may most benefit from a music loop though are Flash applications and Video Games. These are two areas where size of the files used is extremely important. With music loops you can provide a wide variety of music in these applications with a minimum in file size.
  • Powerpoint presentations are also a good application for the use of music loops because of file size.

And do music loops have bridges in them like a real song does?

Ah, good question. If the loop is a long one then it can have a bridge, but then you are starting to lose the advantage of having a loop in the first place.
What we do at Partners In Rhyme is edit the bridge out as a separate music loop and put together music loop packs with which you can use the loops to create your own custom edits. Play the verse 4 times then the chorus twice, or play alternate the verse and chorus, then repeat the chorus and fade it out.
This type of thing is perfect for Flash applications where you can designate which music loops you want to play when. You can get the sound of a full length track with only a fraction of the space.

Where do I go to download music loops?

You can download free royalty free music loops on the free royalty free music loops and sound effects page on our site.  You can also visit musicloops.com to download higher resolution royalty free music loops and full length music tracks to be used in multimedia projects on a royalty free basis.
At Sound-effect.com you can find really cool sound effects loops to use as quick loading background sounds for your website. These are nice for background sounds on websites as they can be a little less annoying than a short music loop that plays forever.