When creating content specifically for TikTok, finding the right style and tone can be tricky. If you’re creating a TikTok just for fun on a personal channel, your best bet might simply be to be as organic as possible and to just have fun with it. However, if you’re creating content for a brand or promoting yourself in some way, you’ll have to really focus on creating something that is watchable, shareable, and engaging while still ringing true to the core of the TikTok community. If you are looking to improve the quality of your TikTok and give your videos, in general, an extra splash of professionalism and watchability, we highly recommend adding sound effects to your content and videos. And while, for TikTok specifically, you don't want to overdo it with overly-produced sound and visual effects, some well-placed SFX can give your videos the exact boost you are looking for. Let’s explore some of our top picks for TikTok's best royalty free sound effects and how you can add them to your videos. To get started right away, let’s first and foremost give you some high-quality (and royalty free) sound effects to use in your TikTok videos. We’ll explore a bit more about what royalty free means and how you should license and use sound effects and music for your TikToks and other videos below, but for now, let’s give you the goods you came here looking for. (Also, we should quickly mention that these are just our top ten royalty free sound effects for TikTok selections. If you’d like to check out more, try our full sound effects library here at Soundstripe.) Description: Happy, spiritual rising. Description: Loop: Crowd of people applauding and cheering. Description: Forest ambiance with chirping birds and street noises in the background. Description: Drone with human ghost voices. Description: Ambience in city commercial zone. Train passing by and forklift moving around in the background. Description: Rain is falling, and water is dripping out of the gutter10 top royalty free sound effects for TikTok
- Kick Impact 01
Description: Reverberant heavy kick hit with a high pre-delay.
- Rise Impact Low Strings 01
Description: Tense rise leading to heavy impact, then ringing out with low strings.
- Giggle Female Short 01
Description: Young girl giggling. Short.
- Glitchy Trance 01
Description: Glitchy, trance pad.
As mentioned above, these are just ten selections that might be great options for your TikTok videos. However, we know that TikTok content vastly ranges in style and substance, so if you’d like to explore further the thousands of sound effects we have available, visit our entire sound effects library—or scroll along as we get to some of our best curated sound effects playlists below.
How do sound effects work on TikTok?
Similar to other social video sharing platforms like YouTube or Instagram, sound effects can be a simple addition to your TikTok videos. With TikTok, creators always have the option to create videos in the app, and it’s actually quite easy.
However, creating content directly in TikTok also limits the creator’s ability to add elements like more advanced visual effects and a greater diversity of sound effects and music selections.
TikTok does offer its own commercial music library; however, it doesn’t include royalty free sound effects for your videos, which can leave creators scrambling to find these assets elsewhere—and usually on sites like Soundstripe.
If you are looking to use sound effects in your TikTok videos, you’re most likely going to need to create and edit your videos outside of the TikTok app and upload the finished videos directly to TikTok. In truth, this is by far the more professional method, as it will give you much more control over your video’s edit and composition.
What are royalty free sound effects?
Now, before we move on to how to work with sound effects in your TikTok videos, we should quickly talk about what “royalty free” means in regards to sound effects, music tracks, and other assets in general.
If you aren’t familiar with the term, here’s a great primer on what royalty free music is (and is not); however, to quickly explain, royalty free music and sound effects are simply audio tracks that are licensed for you to use through a music licensing service that has fully licensed their use from the artists who have composed and recorded them.
In short, artists deserve compensation for their work, even if it’s just sound effects. Unless you’re creating SFX and music tracks yourself, if you’re going to use professionally recorded tracks by Grammy-winning artists, you will need to find a resource that can provide those with complete copyright protection.
Companies like Soundstripe handle this, compensating the artists who created the music or sound effects and providing full protection and coverage for creators who use the music and sound effects on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, etc.…
Our top sound effects playlists for TikTok
To help you add royalty-free sound effects for TikTok, we’ve also selected some playlists with plenty of great SFX for your videos. Check them out below.
Say Cheese
Description: Shutter, zoom, focus, clicks, and other camera sounds
Atmosphere
Description: Background elements of urban and rural life to bring life to a scene.
Collision Course
Description: Brace for impact! Sound designs for significant collisions. Buckle up, buttercup.
Kids
Description: Expressions of ankle-biters. These are the sounds of childhood.
Glitch
Description: Is it deja vu, or is it a glitch? Definitely a glitch.
City Life
Description: Experience the hustle and bustle of city life with these sounds
Power On
Description: Electrical hums, buzzes, and sparks signal a device's turning on.
Foley
Description: Movement of various textures to add an extra layer of believability to your project.
Epic Film
Description: Soundscapes, transitions, and hits designed for epic films and TV.
Sound Design Clips
Description: Cinematic sound effects, pre-arranged into powerful sequences that you can cut your footage to
If you’d like to dive even more deeply, we have some additional royalty free sound effect playlists that would also be great for your TikTok videos or other needs.
Tips for using royalty free sound effects in TikTok videos
Finally, to wrap up, let’s review some essential tips and tricks for working with royalty free sound effects in your TikTok videos. As you can see in the YouTube video above, using sound effects to level up your edits is actually a pretty simple process.
There are plenty of online and free video editing apps for adding sound effects. However, if you want to go more professionally, you’ll probably want to use established video editing software like Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, or Final Cut Pro.
In our tutorial, you can see how to add sound effects to add atmosphere to your videos. However, in truth, sound effects can add so much more as well, including:
- Add auditory bedrock for intros and outros
- Liven up your boring transitions from shot to shot
- Add realistic sounds for any stock video shots
- Make motion, in general, more dynamic and fun
- Safely sell punches, gun sounds and explosions
In addition to the ways listed above, sound effects are always a great option to add to your TikTok videos. We also have you covered if you’re looking for even more of the best royalty free music for TikTok or a better understanding of how to use copyrighted music on TikTok, so feel free to explore our Soundstripe blog.
