How to add Music to Streamlabs

If you want to do better streams, you definitely need to know how to add music to Streamlabs.

You’ll not only fill empty spaces (like when you are taking a sip or catching your breath) but also you’ll improve your brand image, each streamer likes a different kind of music!

If you want to add not background music, but Spotify, check our guide on how to add Spotify to Streamlabs.

How to add Music on Streamlabs, step by step guide

There are a couple of ways of adding music to your Streamlabs scenes.

Option 1 – Adding music on Streamlabs by just playing it

If you play your favorite song on your computer, from Spotify, a website, or a media manager like Eagle, you’ll see at the bottom right of the Streamlabs window that the Desktop bars start moving.

This is due to the fact that Streamlabs Desktop is able to detect all the audio your speakers would emit, and use it as a sound source.

So, if you want your viewers to listen to some music, just play it and be sure that this source is working.

Remember that this is not audio captured by the mic, you could be using headphones and the sound would still be captured.

As you can see, very easy, there are a couple of caveats though.

Problems with this approach

If you are using macOS instead of Windows, you’ll quickly find out that this is not working for you.

This is because macOS doesn’t support natively the ability to capture sound from your desktop.

You’ll need to use a third-party app like Loopback or Blackhole (you can read how to configure the last one here) to achieve the same result that Windows achieves by default.

Besides that, you’ll see that although you can change the volume, or even muting that track, you have to do this as a whole.

That means that if you have several things playing at the same time on your desktop, everything will go up and down in level at the same time, you don’t have individual control of a music track over another sound.

Option 2 – Add your own music tracks as media

This is a much more professional way of adding music to your Streamlabs scenes.

Step #1 – Add a new source

In the scene you want the music to be played on, add a new source using the plus button.

Step #2 – Select Media Source

The Media source is highly versatile.

With it you’ll be able to add videos to your scene (mp4, mov, mkv, avi…) gifs, and also audio files, using mp3, aac, or ogg extensions.

So just select that source and add it to the scene.

Step #3 – Name the source

This could be just “music”, or the name of the track you want to use, like “gaming soundtrack)

Step #4 – Pick the song and activate the loop

In this step, you’ll see a settings window for the source you just have added.

The most important things to do here are:

1. Locally select the song you want to play using the “browse” button.
2. Check the “Loop” option, so the song plays continuously.

Step #5 – Adjust music levels

That’s all!

Now, every time you activate the scene where the music source is, it will start playing automatically.

Using this method, you’ll be able for instance to lower the volume only on the music track independently.

This method isn’t perfect either.

As you can imagine, is good for adding background loop music, or a long “song”, but it’s not suitable for playing different songs in a row, or changing them one after the other.

By the way, although the music is “playing”, you will not hear it by default.

If you want to do so, you’ll need to open the Mixer preferences:

And then, on the Source of your Music, change the Audio Monitoring to Monitor and Output.

But again, you’ll only need to do this if you want to hear the music as well. Otherwise, turn off the monitoring, you’ll audience will hear it, but you’ll have a quieter stream.

Option 3 – Add music to Streamlabs via Audio Output Capture

Streamlabs is able to capture any audio device, input (like a mic), but also output (like a bluetooth speaker)

So, if you pick that kind of source on your scene:

Then you’ll be able to select the audio device you want Streamlabs to capture:

For instance, using Loopback on Mac, I can create a new Virtual Audio Output Device with Spotify and Music App as Sources:

Then I just create the Audio Output Capture source as I stated before, pick that device as the source, and it’s done, the music from the Music App or Spotify is directly routed to the Streamlabs Scene.

On Windows you’ll need to use something like VB-Audio, which is free, and also works on macOS.

If you want to know how to do this, check our step-by-step guide on adding Audio virtual devices to Streamlabs, using Spotify as an example.

What’s your favorite way of adding music to Streamlabs?

As you have seen, there are a bunch of options to add your favorite track to your streams.

Option 3 is the most professional, as you will be able to independently manage your source.

Takes a little more work to set up, but it’s worth it.