For a Short or a Reel, skip the track's intro and start where the full beat has already come in, cut on the first beat of a bar, and keep the music about 10 to 15 decibels under any voice. Lofi is built from short loops, so a 30-second section usually repeats cleanly. On YouTube, one rule matters more than any of that: a Short longer than one minute is blocked while it has an active Content ID claim. We never claim a Short ourselves, but someone else's re-upload or a wrong match could, so keep Shorts under 60 seconds to keep it simple.
1. Skip the intro
Most lofi tracks spend the first 5 to 15 seconds on a filtered intro: muffled chords, no drums, maybe some rain. It's nice in a playlist and too slow for a feed. Scrub forward to where the drums and bass are both playing and start there.
2. Cut on the beat
A cut in the middle of a bar sounds like a mistake even to people who can't say why. At a typical lofi tempo of 70 to 80 beats per minute, one bar of four beats lasts about three seconds, so a 30-second clip is roughly ten bars.
- Find a kick drum hit at the start of a phrase. That's your in-point.
- Count bars, not seconds, to your out-point.
- If your editor has a waveform view, cut just before a big kick spike.
3. Loop it without a bump
Feeds replay clips automatically, so the end meets the beginning over and over.
- End exactly one bar before your start point's twin. If you start on bar 1 of a phrase, end at the start of bar 1 of a later phrase, and the loop joins seamlessly.
- Or fade the last second if the section doesn't repeat cleanly.
- Avoid ending on a drum fill. Fills announce "something new is coming", which breaks the loop.
4. Get the level right
- Under a voice: 10 to 15 dB quieter than the speech. If people have to strain to hear you, it's too loud.
- Music only: normal level, no need to push it; platforms even out the loudness.
- Duck it, if your editor can, so the music dips slightly whenever you talk.
5. Mind the platform rules
YouTube Shorts can now be up to three minutes long, but YouTube blocks any Short longer than one minute that has an active Content ID claim (YouTube's help page on claims). Our tracks are not registered with Content ID, so we never claim a Short. Another claim could still appear, for example if someone re-uploads our audio, so:
- Under 60 seconds: if a claim appears, send us the video link and we'll help you answer it.
- Over 60 seconds: check for claims after you upload. If one appears, the Short is blocked until it's cleared, so send us the link and we'll help.
Instagram and TikTok: on a personal or creator account, you can also pick our tracks straight from the app's music library, where they're already credited. Business accounts see a smaller library; this post explains why.
6. Credit it
Put Music: Neural Rhythms · neuralrhythms.io in the description or caption. More credit formats here.
Tracks that cut well
Tracks with a steady beat from the first few seconds are easiest to cut. Mellow Mosaic is the one people already recognise from Reels:
Mellow Mosaic, lofi by Neural Rhythms
For more choice, the free music page has every downloadable track, and each room has its own mood: lofi jazz for cafés and cooking, rainy day lofi for slow vlogs, morning lofi for routines.
Written by Suman Kumar with AI help and checked before publishing. Numbers about our own music come from our Spotify for Artists and DistroKid exports; other sources are linked in the post.