How to use Adapt: Epidemic Sound’s AI-powered soundtracking tool

What is Adapt?

Adapt is an AI-powered tool that lets you customize Epidemic Sound’s world-class tracks, tailoring elements like mood, length, genre, style, and instrumentation. One tool, limitless soundtracking possibilities. Stop searching for the perfect track and start customizing it yourself.

Instantly supercharge your workflow by describing the sound you want and asking Adapt to make it a reality — no technical audio skills required.

Want to tweak a track’s vibe to match a scene, calm it down to make room for dialogue, or play around with the instruments? Adapt’s got you covered. Whether you’re a solo creator or an international brand, Adapt helps everything you create match your intent.

All adapted tracks are safe to publish across any platform, just like other Epidemic Sound tracks. Adapt is available to all Epidemic Sound subscribers. If you’re an Enterprise customer, ask your Customer Success Manager for access.

Previously part of Epidemic Sound’s program for experimental tools, Labs, Adapt is now available in your Epidemic Sound workspace.

How to use Adapt

Here’s how to access and use Epidemic Sound’s Adapt tool.

1. Log in to your Epidemic Sound account

You’ll see the “Adapt” tab in the main navigation. You can also access Adapt through trackrows, the player bar, track pages, and stem mixer. Clicking “Adapt” from any of these locations opens the Adapt workspace.

2. Search for the track you’d like to adapt

Several sample tracks appear in the Adapt workspace. If you want to use a different track, click “Search for a track” above the sample tracks.

Use the free text field to search for a track, or browse the tracks below the field. Click the “Play” icon to preview the tracks, scroll through their waveforms, and search to your heart’s content. Once you’re happy with your selection, click “Adapt.”

3. Your track’s waveform appears in the Adapt workspace

Your track is presented in segments, which can include elements like the intro, verses, choruses, bridge, and outro. Each of these segments can be manually rearranged via drag-and-drop, or deleted.

If you rearrange or delete track segments and want to see them as they first appeared, click “View original” at the bottom of the page. You can also click the “Reset track” icon above the waveform.

4. Click “Adapt music” and choose the stems you want to adapt

This opens the Adapt music panel below the waveform. Now you can select the stems you want to adapt.

Not familiar with stems? Each Epidemic Sound track is broken down into stems like melody, instruments, bass, and drums. Giving you access to stems makes it easier to fine-tune the sound, and Adapt enables you to make changes to one or more stems, to achieve the effect you want.

All stems are selected as the default option. To change the stems you’d like to adapt, check or uncheck them to the left of the free text field. You can adapt one stem, a few, or all of them — whatever works for you. Note that you can’t adapt a melody stem if a track has vocals. For tracks with only one stem — a solo piano piece, for example — you can’t adapt the original stem, but you can add more stems to it.

5. Describe how you want your track to feel

After you’ve selected the stems you want to adapt, use the free text field to describe how you want your track and/or stems to feel. Or choose from the presets below. We’ll create new stems based on your instructions.

The presets are great starting points, but if you want to get the most out of Adapt, you’ll need to describe what you want in more detail. Learn how to prompt Adapt like a pro further down in this article.

6. Let Adapt work its magic

When you’re ready, press the “Submit” button to the right of the free text field, and let Adapt work its magic. Note that each adaptation uses credits, which are included in your plan and renew on a monthly basis. The number of credits used for the adaptation appears next to the “Submit” button.

When your track is adapted, it appears as a new waveform. Use the “Stems” dropdown on the left-hand side to view how the individual stems have been adapted, and see which versions you prefer. You can toggle to the original stems by clicking the “O” button next to the adapted stem. Or use “M” to mute and unmute individual stems.

Both the adapted and original track previews are available in the “History” panel to the right-hand side, so you can toggle between versions.

7. Adapt again, if you like

You can adapt a track as many times as you like. Note that all adaptations are applied to the original track, so you can’t adapt a track that’s already been adapted. All of your adaptations will appear in the “History” panel, so you can easily listen to and compare them.

8. Download and use your adapted track

Once you’re happy with your adapted track, you can download it from the top-right corner, just above your waveform. This downloads the track to your device as a WAV or MP3 file. You can also download individual stems.

You can now use the adapted track in your content, just as you’d use any other Epidemic Sound track.

How to adapt a track’s length

Now that you’ve learned how to adapt music, it’s time to learn how to adapt a track’s length. You can adapt the length of a track after you’ve adapted the music, or adapt the length and then the music. The order is up to you.

Here’s how to adapt a track’s length:

1. Follow the first three steps of the previous section

Go to Adapt, find your track, and open it in the Adapt workspace.

2. Click the “Adapt length” button below your track

This button sits next to the “Adapt music” button you found in the previous section.

3. Find the right length for your track

Select a preset or a custom length. Presets are available at 15, 30, and 60-second intervals. If you’d like the track to stretch longer than the original, that’s no problem — the “custom” option lets you adapt the track for up to five minutes. You can also make the track loopable.

4. Adapt the track and download it

Adapt and download your track as you did during the previous section. Length adaptations don’t use any credits. And as an Epidemic Sound subscriber, you’ll have unlimited downloads.

All your adaptations are available in the “History” panel on the right-hand side. You can switch between them, compare them, re-edit them, and re-download them. You can also compare your work-in-progress with the original track at any time by clicking “View original” or “Reset track.”

How to prompt Adapt like a pro

Want to prompt like a pro? Here are some best-practice tips and tricks for using Adapt.

1. Describe the sound, not the change

Adapt works best when you describe the sound you’d like to hear, rather than general changes to the track. Let’s start with a basic prompt:

“Strings, dreamy, hopeful, chill.”

This prompt may be simple, but it’s clear enough for Adapt to understand.

2. Use tags to describe genre, mood, instruments, and themes

Include tags from Epidemic Sound to describe genre, mood, instruments, and themes. This gives Adapt more context, since it understands those tags.

You don’t have to use tags exclusively from Epidemic Sound — they’re just there as a guide. Once you become more familiar with Adapt, try your own.

Alternatively, describe the use case where the track will appear: “funny YouTube video,” “travel vlog,” “automotive ad,” and similar top-level descriptions. Here's an example:

“Heavy & ponderous electric guitar and synth, with an epic, cinematic mood, in an industrial metal style.”

This prompt gives Adapt more to work with, describing which instruments should be included, what the mood should be, and the desired genre.

3. Use emotive, descriptive language

Music makes people feel things, which is why tracks can be adapted based on emotion. How do you want it to impact your audience? Tell Adapt.

Use clear, precise terms. For example, “tense, dark, and sophisticated” gives more context than “scary.”

A healthy mix of the above steps can transform a track. Take the prompt below, and apply it to your chosen track:

“A jazz noir style featuring upright bass plunging through sudden tonal shifts, guitar coloring each modulation with sharp textures, sparse cymbal taps, and saxophone lines bending like shadows across a streetlight. The mood is tense, dark, and sophisticated.”

The description outlines the sound, uses tags as a guide, and lays out some emotive, highly descriptive language.

4. Tell Adapt what the track will be used for

If you feel you can’t express your prompt with a musical description, that’s OK. You can always describe what the track will be used for. For example, something like:

“Cinematic, epic soundtrack for a Scandinavian crime drama.”

While the prompt isn’t as detailed as the previous example, it still delivers results.

5. Don’t like the results? Keep trying!

Some users find that adapted versions sound best when they stick closer to the original track’s genre and mood. They may discover artifacts and elements they didn’t expect or want, while other users don’t face these issues.

If you don’t get the results you want, keep trying. Experiment. Start with the tags as a foundation, and build your adaptations from there. Add more detail, reword things, and explore different prompt variations.

Like every AI feature in the Epidemic Sound toolkit, Adapt was developed in collaboration with our community of artists and creators. These tools were built to empower human creativity, not replace it.

Adapt makes our artists’ work even more accessible, paying them through our yearly $1 million Adaptive Soundtrack Bonus when their adapted tracks are downloaded.