How to Make Copyright Free Background Music with Suno AI

If you're reading this, you're probably trying to make copyright free background music in Suno, but you don't really know how to describe the type of music you want. I've been producing music for 13 years and making YouTube videos for three, so I know the struggle of hunting for background music. At this point, all of my background music is made with Suno, and along the way I had to learn a bunch of genres I didn't know existed.

Quick note on the copyright part: when you generate the track yourself in Suno, nobody's coming after your video for using somebody else's song, which is the whole headache with "free" music libraries. If you're using the music commercially (monetized videos, client work), do it on a paid Suno plan, because that's what their terms want for commercial use.

Now the actual recipes. Every prompt here follows my GMIV formula (Genre, Mood, Instruments, Vocals), except background music is instrumental, so the V is just clicking the Instrumental toggle. What you really need from this article is the genre names and the mood words, because that's 90% of the result.

Study, focus, and chill

For transitions, talking-head sections, or anything that needs to sit quietly behind your voice:

Lofi, chillhop, relaxing, chill, somber, laid back, harp, Rhodes, ambient pads

Swap the instruments for whatever you want. I like a harp and a Rhodes in there, but the genre and mood words are doing the heavy lifting.

Ambient (the drone shot music)

Say you've got a beautiful drone shot of a forest, all color graded and nice, and you just want a soundscape under it. Ambient is the genre, and it's really simple:

Ambient, chill, deep, slow tempo, hypnotic, spacious pads, ambient echoes, reverb, background synths

Meditation

You can literally just say meditation music. Add these and you're done:

Meditation music, relaxing, slow, no drums, minimal, ambience, pads, hypnotic trance

Uplifting corporate and explainer

This is the "vitamin C is important for your health" music. The genres are corporate pop, indie folk, uplifting acoustic pop, and future bass. The mood words are optimistic, bright, inspiring, uplifting, happy. The instruments that make it sound right: plucked acoustic guitar, glockenspiel, and claps. You know the claps I'm talking about.

Corporate pop, uplifting, bright, happy, upbeat, energetic, glockenspiel, plucked acoustic guitar, light synths

Future bass deserves its own mention because it's the classic YouTuber intro sound. Just say future bass and add whatever mood words you want.

Dark, tension, and true crime

For scary stories, true crime, or anywhere you want the room to get colder. The genres are dark ambient, drone, and horror score. Mood words: ominous, unsettling, creepy, tension, dark. For instruments, a sub drone is the secret weapon (that's just one long sustained bass note), plus piano or organ depending on how on-the-nose you want the scary to get.

Dark ambient, drone, ominous, unsettling, tension, sub drone, sparse piano, low strings

Sad and emotional

The instant-tears preset is sad piano. For more range: emotional cinematic, reflective, melancholy, slow tempo, soft piano, strings, subtle pads. This stuff can even work comedically if your footage is ridiculous enough, because everything sounds tragic over a sad piano.

Epic and trailer

For "I'm coming to save the day" energy or those video essay intros. Genres: epic orchestral, trailer music, cinematic. Moods: triumphant, intense, building, heroic. Instruments: big drums, brass, staccato strings, choir stabs.

Comedy and quirky

That old rom-com classical sound, or the music for a clown walking down the street with a 7 Up in his pocket looking for trouble. Genres: quirky classical, comedic orchestral. Instruments: pizzicato strings, bassoon, xylophone, muted trumpet. Moods: playful, mischievous, bouncy.

The one lesson under all of this

Halfway through making the video version of this, I realized I didn't need to walk through a full prompt for every subgenre, because the genre name plus a few mood words IS the technique. Learn the genre vocabulary and you can make any background music you'll ever need.

That vocabulary is exactly what my tools are for. SUNO GPT writes the full prompt from a plain description like "lofi instrumental study music" or "ambient drone shot of a green forest" (first 10 prompts free). And the 10,000 SUNO Prompts eBook has the tags mapped for 200 genres so you can just copy and paste.