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5 sites to add copyright-free music to your videos

Many times I want to add a good and appropriate music to my videos, but if I don't check the license and the permission of that track I risk to obtain a copyright infringement notification from Youtube or Facebook and I have already collected it 7 times on 29 public videos. I want to explain the type of license you can use to add music for free in your videos and I have selected 5 resources that contain royalties-free music.

I am not a youtuber or a social video maker, sometimes I publish video for my articles on Youtube or for my friends on Facebook. And often I added a soundtrack to them, because a beautiful music make better the video to my audiences.

Of course I have always tried to respect the copyrights and the permissions released with the tracks selected, but probably I did not give the maximum attention to it, seeing that I collected 7 copyright infringement notification from Youtube! Nothing to be so dangerous to force Youtube to delete my account (until now).

5 sites to add copyright-free music to your videos

Licenses

There are a lot of variables and distinctions that it is not easy to summarise in an article like mine. Generally if the track/song is released with a Creative Commons license, you have to check the following descriptors:

  • ND or No Derivatives: you can't use it in your video;
  • NC or Non Commercial: you can't use it for a commercial purpose;
  • SA or Share Alike: your work must have the identical license;
  • BY or Attribution: you must give credit to the artist.

So what kind of licenses you should use in your video for sleeping easy?
I think that the answer covers only two licenses:

  1. public domain or PD;
  2. CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0).

In the other cases you have to check the abbreviations above, remembering that ND doesn't let you to use it and NC is only for non commercial purpose.

Well, after this boring preamble now it's time to list my favourite resources to find good and free music for video.

Resources

  1. The YouTube Audio Library provides free music for videos you create. Some of the music is licensed under Creative Commons and requires attribution, but much of it does not. You can click on the particular audio track you’re interested in to get the full details.
  2. FreePD.com - 100% Free Music - Free for Commercial Use, Free Of Royalties, Free Of Attribution, Creative Commons 0. This music is all licensed CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, as you can read in its FAQ:
    • Can I use this music on YouTube? Yes.
    • Can I use this music on Twitch? Yes.
    • Can I use this music on Facebook? Yes.
    • Can I use this music in a theater? Yes.
    • Can I use this music in a restaurant? Yes.
    • Can I use this music in an ad? Yes.
    • Can I use this music in a movie? Yes.
    • It is OK if I credit the musician in my film? Yes.
    • Must I credit the musician in my film? Nope - but we do like it.
    • Incompetech, or better the site created by Kevin MacLeod, with over 2,000 pieces of royalty-free library music available under a Creative Commons copyright. You can download his music also for commercial use, it is only requested to name it in this manner:
      Music from https://filmmusic.io
      "TITLE OF THE DOWNLOADED SONG" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
      License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
    • Free Music Archive, the searcher gives me 10,391 tracks that I can use for my videos and you can refine the search by genres. See the picture below.Free royalties tracks from FMA

       

    • The Mod Archive, I am a old fan of modules (XM, IT, S3M, MOD files) and there are a lot of tracks released with PD or CC0. Once downloaded a module, I suggest to convert it to MP3/OGG/WAV using Audacity and above all you can modify it with a tracker like MilkyTracker.

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    Nicola Rainiero

    A civil geotechnical engineer with the ambition to facilitate own work with free software for a knowledge and collective sharing. Also, I deal with green energy and in particular shallow geothermal energy. I have always been involved in web design and 3D modelling.