How to get good on hold music for your business
- Liam McNaughton
- Sep 29
- 3 min read
First impressions count, and for many customers, their first real interaction with your business happens while they’re on hold.
Generic, repetitive hold music can be a major turn-off. But what if you could create a custom, professional, and engaging audio experience for your callers, without the hefty price tag of a production studio?
Thanks to the power of AI, you can get good hold music for your business with ease.
This guide will walk you through a simple, cost-effective process to produce your own high-quality on-hold music and messaging. It’s easier than you think, and the results can make a world of difference to your brand's perception.
How to get good on hold music for your business
Why Go DIY for Your On-Hold Music?
Cost-Effective: Professional services can be expensive and often come with long-term contracts. Creating it yourself dramatically cuts costs.
Full Creative Control: You know your brand best. This method allows you to tailor everything from the style of music to the tone of voice, ensuring it perfectly aligns with your brand’s identity.
Flexibility: Need to update a message or change the music for a seasonal promotion? No problem. You can make changes quickly and easily without relying on a third party.
The 3-Step Guide to Creating Your Custom On-Hold Track
Ready to get started? Here’s a simple, three-step process using some of our favourite AI-powered tools.
Step 1: Create Your Backing Track with Soundraw
The foundation of your on-hold experience is the music. It sets the mood and should reflect your brand’s personality—whether that's calm and classical, or upbeat and modern.
We start with Soundraw, an AI music generator that creates unique, royalty-free tracks in minutes.
How it works: Simply choose a mood, genre, or tempo you like. The AI will generate a beautiful, 2-minute instrumental track for you.
Our Tip: Don't just stick with the first version! Play around with the intensity and instruments. Soundraw creates music with a natural ebb and flow, featuring quieter sections that are perfect for placing your voice messages. Once you’re happy, export and download the track.
Step 2: Generate Your Voice Messages with ElevenLabs
Next, it’s time to add your custom messages. These are your opportunity to inform and engage your callers. You could share opening hours, promote a new product, or simply thank them for their patience.
For this, we use ElevenLabs, a powerful and incredibly realistic AI voice generator.
How it works: Find a voice that fits your brand (there are plenty to choose from!). Type your message into the text box, and the AI will generate a crystal-clear audio file.
Our Tip: The technology behind these tools has improved immensely. Modern AI can handle complex words, numbers, and dates flawlessly. Write out 5-10 short narrative snippets and download each one as a separate audio file.
Step 3: Mix it All Together with Audacity
Now you have your music and your voiceovers. The final step is to combine them into a single, polished audio file. For this, we recommend Audacity, a free and powerful audio editing tool.
How it works:
Start a new project in Audacity.
Import your music track from Soundraw.
Import each of your voiceover files from ElevenLabs.
Drag the voiceover clips and place them in the quieter sections of the music track.
To ensure the voice is clear, slightly lower the music volume during the narration. A good starting point is to reduce the music track by 10-20 decibels (dB) wherever a voiceover is placed.
Listen back to make sure it all flows nicely.
Once you’re satisfied, export the finished track. You now have a professional, custom on-hold audio file ready to be uploaded to your phone system!
The Future is Even Simpler
While this method gives you incredible control, technology is moving fast. There are now emerging all-in-one services that allow you to do all of this right from your web browser.
But by learning the simple process above, you gain a deeper understanding of how to create a truly bespoke sound for your brand.
Give it a try - your callers will thank you for it!
Here's two we made earlier...
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