When you’ve clicked on the song or songs you want, the Import All button at the bottom right, (highlighted by the green arrow in the screenshot above), will change to Import Selected.

Using the folder structure highlighted by my red box at the bottom of the screenshot above, navigate to where your music file(s) are saved. This opens a large window that will look similar to the screenshot below, but obviously, your folders will be different than mine. Just click the Import Media icon, which is the skinny-looking downward pointing arrow in the upper left corner of iMovie (as shown by the red arrow in the screenshot below). Once you have the music files you want to use, importing them into iMovie is a piece of cake. The easy solution to finding music that avoids any copyright issues, and supports the artists, is getting your music from an established provider of royalty-free music. Public Service Announcement: Do remember that any audio you use that is not in royalty-free or in the public domain is likely to run afoul of the copyright sensors embedded in distribution platforms like YouTube.

Maybe you downloaded it from the internet, ripped a song from a CD (being mindful of copyright law, of course), or wrote something yourself in GarageBand, or recorded it on your Mac. So, to import a music file into iMovie, you need a file. Like most people, I pay a monthly fee to just listen to music through Apple Music or one of its streaming competitors. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t purchased a song in Apple Music / iTunes in a very, very long time.

While this may sound obvious, iMovie is a bit old-fashioned in that it still assumes you want to add music that you have purchased through Apple Music – probably back when it was still called iTunes. If you follow the first three steps below, you will have successfully added music to iMovie, (and if you get to the end of Step 3, you’ll also learn how to do it in just one step.) Step 1: Choose the Musicīefore you can import a music clip into iMovie, you need a music file. Adding Music in iMovie for the Mac: Step-by-StepĪdding Music in iMovie for the Mac: Step-by-Step.

How to add music to imovie