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By now, you probably know what a powerful creative tool your Mac is. It’s definitely hard to beat when it comes to retouching photos, editing videos, and — naturally — making music.
There are, in fact, so many music making apps for Mac that it’s hard to decide which one to get and what’s the difference between them, especially if you’re just starting out. But don’t worry — below is the ultimate guide to help you pick the best music production software currently on the market.
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- Filmora Video Editor for Windows (or Filmora Video Editor for Mac) is the best background music software for adding bgm and voice to video in the market and provides the best methods, tools and techniques to perform the video editing easily. It has a music library with more than 100 songs.
- FilmoraGo for iOS. As a powerful video editing app, FilmoraGo is able to edit music for your video.
- Shazam for Mac takes your music discovery to a whole new level. Name any song in seconds without ever digging your phone out of your pocket! Highlights:. Shazam with one click straight from the menu bar. Access lyrics & music videos, or listen in Apple Music. Shazam in style with Dark Mode.
The Best Free Music Software For Mac
It’s important to note that no single music creation software is best for everyone. Needs, experience levels, and preferences tent do differ a lot, so the final choice should be different as well. Having said that, there are a few options that have been winning in their respective categories over the years again and again. Here they are.
GarageBand: The easiest way to start
You don’t have to go far for an introductory experience to music making programs — the GarageBand app is already pre-installed on your system.
GarageBand for Mac is a versatile free music making software for beginners. You can use its tutorials to make your first steps into playing an instrument, record your own music (including your voice), add special effects, and produce complete tracks to upload to SoundCloud or beyond.
If you don’t have GarageBand in your Applications folder yet, download it from the App Store for free. When you open the app, it’ll prompt you to get all the available sounds and effects. In the latest GarageBand version for macOS Catalina, Apple has included a fantastic virtual drummer that you can customize to fit your patterns exactly, whether you’re playing rock or hip-hop. The layout of all the GarageBand options is quite intuitive, so you can definitely study the app on your own, learning more as you go.
Some downsides to the GarageBand app are essentially reasons why pros don’t use it: at some point you max out its capabilities and need features like advanced crossfades, for example. When you feel that instead of the music making software serving you, you start serving the music making software — it’s probably time to upgrade.
Ableton Live 10: The best music making software ever
At the other end of the music software spectrum is the industry-standard Ableton Live. First released in 2001, Ableton has been honing its music making software for nearly two decades. It’s not only able to record, arrange, mix, and master your music but also be used at live shows to play that music back, right from the same interface.
Bad news: it’s very difficult to learn Ableton on your own if you don’t have any background in music making. Luckily, there’s a large international community of users, so you’ll likely be able to find either a local or online group in your language, which could become instrumental to getting over various hurdles.
Even more bad news: Ableton is not a free music production software at all. While Ableton Live 9 used to have a Lite version that could be downloaded free, Ableton Live 10 starts with an Intro edition at $99 (then Standard at $449, then Suite at $749). The more expensive the version the more effects, instruments, and sounds it contains.
n-Track Studio: A top recording software for Mac
If the gap between GarageBand and Ableton Live is so wide, naturally there would be some music making apps that would try to fill it up. Enter n-Track Studio.
Make music with n-Track Studio
With this simple app, you can take a professional music recording studio to your Mac. No expensive equipment, no fuss.
n-Track Studio is a music making software free of Ableton’s complexities but with nearly all of its power. You can record songs from live instruments or create complex EDM tracks using virtual tools as well, with the help of a massive library of sound effects. What’s more, n-Track Studio features a free MIDI software built right in and doesn’t require a too powerful of a processor on your machine, since its audio engine is optimized for minimum latency, even when dozens of tracks are played at once.
Starting with n-Track Studio is very easy:
Click the circled plus icon to create a new track, either blank or armed for recording
Right-click on the new track and choose “Add blank MIDI track”
Select your instrument
Play any progression you like, either using your trackpad or a connected controller
Repeat as many times as needed and enhance with other effects
Overall, exploring n-Track Studio is pure pleasure: more freedom than the standard GarageBand without the difficulty and cost of Ableton. Perfect choice!
Make all music sound better with Boom 3D
While selecting the best free music making software is important, it’s equally important to ensure that whatever tunes you create are going to be played appropriately. As most Macs are simply too quiet for all the intricacies of the music software, you need Boom 3D to make it all work.
Boom 3D is a system-wide volume booster and equalizer for your Mac. First, it features a variety of presets to make every genre sound as good as possible, by setting the right midtones, bass levels, and high-pitched notes. Second, it lets you surpass the default volume limit on your Mac to really get the maximum out of your speakers.
Finally, Boom 3D also acts as a nifty little music player that features over 20,000 radio stations from around the world and plays back tracks set in your specific preferences.
So, again, while choosing the best music production software comes down to your level of experience and needs, if you go for a mid-market product like n-Track Studio, you definitely won’t be bored for a long time. Just don’t forget to couple it with Boom 3D for an absolute killer of a sound.
Best of all, n-Track Studio and Boom 3D are available to you absolutely free for seven days during the trial of Setapp, a platform with over 160 apps for your creative self, from music making programs to film editing and drawing. Try Setapp today and unleash you creator spirit. It’s free, so why not at least try?
Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.
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Save video from the web
Finding free music online and saving it on your Mac it is not as easy as it should be. While there are plenty of artists who’d love you to hear their music and who are happy for you to download it for free, the process of finding and then downloading it can be a bit of a pain.
Even if you know where to go looking (and we’ll help you with that in a minute), saving lots of individual tracks in a web browser one by one can be a slow and frustrating process. That’s where a smart music downloader can help.
Best music downloaders for Mac
Get a huge set of top music download apps for macOS. Best utilities in one pack, give it a go!
Where to get free music to download
There are of course, lots of places on the internet where you can find free music to download. But many of those places link to tracks which included cracked files or music the copyright owner hasn’t given permission to share.
It’s important that when you go looking for free mp3, you only use sources that have permission to share that music.
Here are a few places where you can find free music to download legally:
- Jamendo. All the music on Jamendo has been made available by the artists on a Creative Commons licence. That means that, while they retain the rights to the music, they’ve agreed to allow it to be saved to your Mac for free.
- Soundcloud. It's a hugely popular site where amateur and professional musicians, and some well-known names, share music. Not all of it is available to download for free, and you’ll need to create an account. But there are some real gems to be found.
- Last.fm. It's another hugely popular site that, among its discovery and sharing features, also allows you to save music tracks for free.
How to download music online
Is it legal to download music for free? Yes, as long as the copyright owner consents. On all of the sites listed above, the rights owner has consented to allow their music to be downloaded.
There is a number of both paid and free tools that help download free music. Based on your requirements, decide on the functionality of a downloader you’re searching: Should it cover video and torrent as well? Batch downloads? Scheduling?
Here are the key features of music downloader we recommend you pay attention to:
- Control the speed of downloads. For instance, Folx splits large files into multiple threads, so they download more quickly.
- Schedule downloads so they only take place at times they won’t place too many demands on your computer.
- Video and torrents covered. You can get a one-stop downloader for capturing different types of media on your Mac.
- Tag downloads to easily find them later.
Get the best music downloader
Setapp offers a number of music and video downloaders in one package – so you can toggle between different features and interfaces or pick one tool that perfectly covers your needs. Once you install Setapp, click on its icon in the menu bar and search for downloaders there. You’ll be suggested Elmedia Player, AnyTrans, Folx, and Downie. On the selected app, click Install and wait for it to travel to your Mac. Double-click to launch the app.
Here’s the quick overview of each of them:
- Folx: Combines functionality of a download manager and torrent client. This is the best option for capturing large media files, while the app splits downloads in up to 20 streams.
- Elmedia Player: A great alternative to Apple’s native media player – QuickTime, with an in-built media downloader.
- Downie: Video and audio downloader that’s based on superb drag and drop functionality.
- AnyTrans: A file transferring solution and a media downloader that works with iOS and macOS devices.
- Pulltube: A universal media downloader that lets you instantly adjust the length of your video and music tracks.
Add the link to the track you want
Once you’ve found a track you want to save, copy the link. To do that, you’ll need to identify the download link on the site – it will usually be an icon with a downward arrow in it. Don’t click it, instead right-click or Control-click it. From the menu that appears, click Copy Link.
If you use Folx, paste the link with ⌘+V keyboard shortcut. Or the main Folx window, press the ‘+’ button next to the text bar at the top of the window. You should see that the box at the top of the window that opens already has the URL you copied in it. If not, paste it where it says ‘Add URL here.’ To download music from YouTube, select Audio in Quality.
It’s pretty similar with Downie – with the exception that you have to drag the link onto the app icon. To extract music from video, navigate to Settings > Extract Audio Only. From there, you can also customize the quality of output files, convert to mp4, or send to Permute – a universal media converter.
Choose where your music are stored
Once you’ve added the link, choose where you want to save it to. If you’re happy to leave the destination at its default, great. If not, you can change it as you like in any app. In Elmedia Player and Downie, open Preferences > General > Put new downloads in/Save files to folder. For those using Folx, you can also customize app’s behavior upon completing a download – quit, sleep, shutdown, or do nothing.
In case you want to move your audio collections across devices, you can do so with AnyTrans for iOS. A handy file transferring app with an in-built media downloader, it helps you flexibly manage downloads – transfer from iPhone to Mac, integrate with iTunes, or copy to any iOS device.
Choose when to download tracks
Downie and Folx have scheduling features, so you can choose when the downloads should take place.
To activate delayed queue start in Downie, go to File > Delayed start and select a custom time slot.
In Folx, click on the menu and choose ‘Manual’ or ’Schedule’. If you choose manual, the download will be set up and then paused and displayed in the main Folx window. You can start it at anytime by clicking the icon to the left of its name. If you want to change a download from manual to scheduled or automatic, you can double-click it in the main window and change the setting in the menu.
If you choose to schedule, files will be downloaded according to the schedule you create in Folx Preferences.
Download a song and set it as a ringtone
If you can’t stand your default phone ringtone anymore, there’s a solution. You can grab any of your favorite songs from the web and transform it into a custom ringtone with Pulltube app.
Best Music Apps For Mac
You can download music to Pulltube by simply dragging the link into the app window, or saving via a browser extension. After you download your file, click on the scissors button below it and enter the Trimming Mode. In the pop-up window, you’ll be able to play the audio and adjust the length of your ringtone. Once you’re ready, hit Trim and save the ringtone.
Create a download schedule
If you want to plan multiple downloads, Folx is there to help. Open Preferences from the Folx menu and click on ‘Scheduler’. Now click on the time slots where you want downloading to take place. When the box changes color, click on it twice so it turns bright green. Scheduled downloads will now take place at that time.
Continue customizing
Once you’ve scheduled, think whether there are any other settings you want to twick. If you use Folx, you can select the number of threads into which you want to split the download. The default is two and for most music files that will be fine. If the file you’re downloading is particularly large, you might want to select a higher number.
Elmedia Player has robust customization options for audio – for instance, you can select audio device and the number of playback channels.
Authenticate if it’s required
Music Video Apps For Pc
If the website needs a username and password, click Authenticate. Click ‘Saved Passwords’ and then ‘Add.’ Choose ‘HTTP or FTP password’ and type in the URL of the login page, your username and your password in the next window that opens. Click Ok.
You’re all set. You can now download free music using Folx from any website that makes it available.
Most of the music you find will be MP3 files, which can be played on your Mac. If the files are in a format that won’t run on your Mac, you can use Permute to convert media.
You’re all set. You can capture and manage free music downloads using a Mac app that suits your flow.
Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.
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Music Video Apps For Mac Os