How to Play Music on Google Meet Without Sharing Your Screen

Presenting a tab is the usual way to play music in Meet, and it puts a big shared screen in front of everyone. If you only want a song under a quiz, an intro or a birthday, the sound can go through your microphone instead. The question is what a call does to music on the way, so we measured it.

Can you play music on Google Meet without sharing your screen?

Yes, through a virtual microphone. Google Meet has no audio-only share: its help page says that presenting a Chrome tab shares that tab's audio, and a window or the full screen needs "Also share system audio" turned on, so audio always comes with a presentation. A virtual mic skips that. Meet hears it as your microphone, so the music plays to everyone with your camera tile unchanged.

Soundboard is a free browser tool that plays sound clips into your microphone for calls and streams in Chrome. The Facecam extension turns it into a microphone called Facecam Virtual Mic, which Google Meet, Zoom on the web and discord.com can pick like any other mic. Your own voice still goes through it.

Does music sound bad through a mic in a call?

Through a virtual mic it sounds like the song; through the speakers and a real mic it sounds like a phone held up to a radio. Calls in Chrome normally run your real microphone through echo cancellation, noise suppression and auto gain, which are tuned for speech. In our test that processing cut everything above 16 kHz: the top band arrived 61 dB below the middle of the song, against 25 dB with the processing off. Cymbals and the air around the vocals were gone.

The Facecam Virtual Mic mixes the music in after that processing, so it doesn't touch the song. Every band from 60 Hz to 20 kHz arrived 1.8 to 2.1 dB below the file with the processing on and the same with it off. That even drop is the Soundboard's sound volume, which starts at 80%.

One thing no route fixes: calls send music as a voice call. Our test call sent about 31 kbit/s in mono, Chrome's default, and the Soundboard mixes stereo files down to mono before they reach the mic. Wide stereo songs lose their width, not their sound.

How do you play music through your mic in Meet or Zoom?

1. 1

   Cut the part you want

   Each sound can be up to 30 seconds. Trim the intro, chorus or jingle you want to play in any audio editor and save it as an MP3 or WAV.

2. 2

   Add it to the Soundboard

   Install the Facecam extension for Chrome, open the Soundboard on facecam.ai and click Add sounds. Files stay on your computer.

3. 3

   Send it to the virtual mic

   Click "Use these sounds in calls", then choose Facecam Virtual Mic as your microphone in Google Meet or Zoom on the web.

4. 4

   Play it during the call

   Start the clip from the Soundboard section under More in the extension's menu, or from a keyboard shortcut you set at chrome://extensions/shortcuts. Talk over it if you like: your voice goes through the same mic.

How do you play a whole song for everyone?

Present a Chrome tab. The 30-second limit makes the Soundboard right for intros, stings and short clips, not a full track. For a whole song in Meet, open it in its own Chrome tab and present that tab: Meet's help says a presented tab shares its audio by default. Everyone sees the tab, so pick one with nothing private on it.

Want the music without the singing, for karaoke or under your own voice? Facecam's Vocal Remover splits a song you upload into its vocals and its instrumental with AI and gives you both as MP3 files. Cut a 30-second piece of the instrumental and put it on a pad.

What didn't we test?

• Meet's and Zoom's own filters. Our call was a WebRTC page in Chrome without the apps' own noise cancellation. Meet and Zoom can filter music further, so check their noise settings if a song sounds choppy. We didn't sign in to either.
• A real room. The speakers case used a copy of the song mixed into the mic feed 20 dB down. Real speakers and rooms vary.
• Desktop apps. The Facecam Virtual Mic works for websites in Chrome. In the Zoom desktop app, pick Facecam Virtual Microphone from Facecam for PC and Mac, or use the app's own sharing options.
• Copyright. We used a song we made with an AI music model. Playing a commercial song to a call or stream is a separate question, and a streaming platform may mute it.