Play background music in a Zoom meeting without sharing your screen
Notes:
The instructions below will show one how to play background music in a Zoom meeting without sharing a screen. This is useful at the start of a meeting while presenters are setting up (to make the meeting more lively), during breaks, or at the end of a meeting.
How to share music on Zoom
- Open Zoom and start the meeting.
- With your Zoom meeting window open, select Share Screen from the Zoom control bar (at the bottom).
- In the modal window that appears, select the Advanced tab, click on Computer Audio and then Share.
Zoom will now share whatever audio your computer is playing. Play music in Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, iTunes, etc.
Everyone in the Zoom meeting will hear your music without seeing your screen.
Zoom audio not working?
Here's how to prevent common errors when playing music on Zoom
Sharing audio only in Zoom is straightforward enough, but there can be some potential hiccups. Here are a few tips to make sure your musical meeting goes well.
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Do a trial run first. If you've never shared your audio, you'll need to install a special audio driver. Consider trying it out in a test session before using it for real because you don't want to be dealing with drivers during a call (It only takes a minute or two, but it'll be awkward.).
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Check your volume levels. Sometimes people will have trouble hearing the music or hearing each other over the music. It's hard to tell this is happening, as the host, so be intentional about it: ask someone else on the call if they can hear both you and the music. You can adjust the volume in your music app or your system volume until things are just right.
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Consider using headphones. Occasionally, people might hear a weird echo when you're sharing audio. As the Zoom DJ, the simplest way to prevent this is by wearing headphones.
Done with the music? You can stop sharing your computer's audio by clicking the red Stop Share button at the top of your Zoom window.
The stop share button in Zoom
