Step-by-Step Guide: Easily Add Music to Your Next Virtual Workshop, Lesson, or Meeting
As a workshop facilitator, I always enjoy adding some much needed brain food (read: energy) to the room — such as during kickoffs and silent activities — with a bit of light background music. In a virtual setting, however, that can be slightly challenging with seemingly no simple way to play high-quality music for all participants without serious distortion.
Fortunately, there’s an easy way to add music to your next virtual session that anyone can do with just a bit of time and know-how!
Here’s what you’ll need:
- Windows 10 (we’ll be using the advanced sound options introduced in Windows 10 to direct our music output to the right place)
- Microsoft Teams (or your favorite virtual meeting tool)
- Spotify (or any media player)
- VoiceMeeter (this will let us bring multiple audio sources together)
- Microphone (to add your voice)
Overview
Typically, when someone wants to play music during a virtual collaboration session, one might share audio from their speakers over the microphone (leading to a slightly garbled mess) or may share their screen to play music directly from a browser session (better!), but both may yield just so-so results. Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply play your Spotify music for attendees without any headaches? And wouldn’t it be even more amazing if you could do so while keeping your microphone open for clear, continued communication?
Today, we’re going to do exactly that by simply combining your audio from Spotify and from your microphone into one single input that will broadcast on Teams. Here’s what that looks like visually:
Put slightly more technically, we’ll be using the Advanced Sound Options introduced in Windows 10 to allow us to direct our audio output from Spotify into VoiceMeeter, a virtual audio mixer, along with our voice input from our microphone. The result will be a virtual audio output from VoiceMeeter that we can set as our Microphone on Teams to easily feed in both voice and music simultaneously without having to switch back-and-forth or lean on any crazy workarounds — all with great music playback quality on the participants’ side!
Let’s dive in and explore step-by-step how to do exactly that.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Step 1. Install VoiceMeeter
VoiceMeeter is a great program from VB-Audio which works like a real-world audio mixer: you can connect multiple audio sources (a microphone, media player, etc.), tweak their individual audio settings (such as volume), and then output the combination of sources as a single audio source. This is how we will feed all of our audio into Teams as just one input.
Start by downloading and installing VoiceMeeter on your computer from this site, following the instructions provided during installation.
Step 2. Feed Spotify into VoiceMeeter
NOTE: We’ll be taking advantage of Windows 10’s advanced audio options so please be sure you’re running Windows 10 on your computer to proceed.
If running, close VoiceMeeter for this step and open Spotify.
Next, access your Windows 10 Advanced Sound Options by going to:
Start > Settings > System > Sound
Once in your Sound Settings, scroll to the Advanced Sound Options section and select App Volume and Device Preferences.
In this screen, you’ll find your master volume as well as individual volume and Output/Input options for each running app.
Using the dropdown menu, change the Output on Spotify from Default to VoiceMeeter Input.
And with that, we’ve just fed our first audio source into VoiceMeeter! (Don’t worry if Spotify is playing but you no longer hear any music — we’ll adjust that in the next step.)
Let’s hop on over to VoiceMeeter to continue…
Step 3. Set Up VoiceMeeter for Spotify and Microphone
Open VoiceMeeter and familiarize yourself with the layout. We’ll begin by setting up our audio output device so that we can continue listening to Spotify as we work.
On the top right of the screen, select A1 in the Hardware Out section. From the dropdown list, select the device you want to use for listening (such as your built-in speakers or headphone jack, etc.). Select whichever device you would normally use to listen to audio on your computer to set this as your main output.
If you’re playing Spotify, you should hear your music again now that your speakers have been set.
Next, select Hardware Input 1 on the left side of the screen and set it to your microphone’s input source.
You might get a bit of annoying feedback (like an echo!) on your speakers — simply select the A in the circle on your microphone input to stop the noise.
This button toggles whether you hear audio from the device set for A1. The B button just beneath it controls whether audio is sent to your virtual output. (More information on the A and B buttons found in the follow-on Tips and Tricks post!)
At this point, you’ve now connected both your microphone and Spotify to the mixer. We are nearly there — time to bring it all together in Teams!
Step 4. Setting Your Audio Input in Teams
In Teams, go to your Settings and navigate to Devices. (You can also perform this step while in a meeting by going to your Device Settings panel).
Using the dropdown menu, set your Speaker to your preferred device for listening to meeting audio.
Next, set your Microphone to VoiceMeeter Output (VB-Audio VoiceMeeter VAIO).
Now, Teams will use the audio coming from VoiceMeeter in your meeting — which will be a combination of your voice from the microphone and Spotify!
While in Device Settings, you’ll want to be sure to set Noise Suppression to Off when playing music. Even when using VoiceMeeter, Teams is just too good at isolating voice from background noises (including music) and any noise suppression will result in music not playing well — or at all — on your participants’ end. (More on that in the Tips and Tricks post!).
Step 5. Party!
You are now up and running with Spotify connected to Teams. You can now easily play high quality background music for attendees and participants from Spotify without missing a beat!
Best of all, you are able to fine-tune the mix of music and your voice by adjusting the individual volume levels so that you can be sure each participant is able to enjoy the background music while hearing your prompts and keeping focus.
Now, before we run off, there are a couple of important tips and tricks to really optimize the experience and boost your productivity — including how to optimize music fidelity in Teams, advance controls for VoiceMeeter, and why it is key to use only royalty free music in your sessions — so be sure to give them a look over in the follow-on post:
Tips and Tricks for Using VoiceMeeter to Add Music to Your Virtual Workshops, Lessons, and Meetings
That’s a Wrap!
Just like that you are ready to rock n’ roll with music in your virtual workshops, lessons, and meetings! Thanks to Windows 10’s Advanced Sound Options, VoiceMeeter’s ability to bring together multiple audio sources together into one output, and a bit of Teams magic, we can now enjoy high quality music playback to energize participants and enliven dreaded silent activities.
Special thanks to MicSpamming for the useful primer on getting started with VoiceMeeter.
If you have any suggestions on ways to improve this flow or any slick tips and tricks of your own, feel free to let me know! I’d love to update the post with your ideas! Similarly, if you run into any issues, don’t hesitate to reach out — I’m here to help.
Thanks so much for reading — I hope you’ve enjoyed this guide and look forward to hearing about the cool things y’all do with this new found power!
