Royalty Free Music, Royalty Free Music Sample Downloads, and Public Domain Music

If you are looking to add music to your own video productions for educational, commercial or personal use, the following information should be of use:

PD Info: This site contains a directory of public domain songs, music and sheet music, and royalty free music recordings that can be licensed. Music can be used for your business, orgnaization or personal use. Site also features information on public domain music copyright law and other reference books.

If you are looking for 'public domain music' then see PD Info's page on public domain music. They point out that there is currently no such thing as public domain sound recordings in the United States and discuss the history of why this is so. According to their legal analysis, the earliest any sound recordings will be in the public domain in the U.S. is the year 2067. However, there are a couple of sites that claim their mp3s are in the public domain. If worried, try to contact the song owners and/or seek out legal advice.

If you are looking for music to incorporate directly into music and video projects:

1. No Cost Royalty Free Music Downloads

SoundSnap - 5 free music sample downloads a month. Paid monthly subscription if you need more.

SeaBreezeComputers has a list of sites with no charge royalty free music under creative commons attribution license.

Each site and artist has different licenses (e.g. some let you use their works in commercial productions and some do not.). Also, all use of such music requires attribution that recognizes the artist. They suggest donating to artists if you do benefit from the use of their music.

Some of the sites include Musopen.com, Incompetech, SoundClick(register for more access), Free Production Tracks, and OpSound.

Open Source Music lists songs created with open source music software whose creators have licensed their songs for public use or through creative commons attribution. Also features links to publicdomain2ten.com and music2ten.com

PublicDomain4U (according to PDInfo, use at your own risk). Features blues, folk, jazz and country, and roots American music.

Wikimedia Commons Sound Category. Tough interface to navigate. Can see lists of files by category, some sounds are lumped into general audio category. Various creative commons licenses. Files in midi (.mid) and .ogg format. Still have to check if the song itself is in the public domain before using a recording in a commercial project.

Wikipedia has a list of full length copyleft/public domain musical works spread throughout Wikipedia and on Wikimedia commons (see above site). There is even a volunteer project to catalog free music.


2. Royalty Free Music Downloads

Royalty Free Music Library - $39.99 for individual songs. The more songs you guy the lower the price per song.

PDInfo Royalty Free Music Downloads and CDs - Professional Musicians - Live Instruments - High End Studios - Superbly Mastered. Individual songs for $19, CDs for $55. Varied pricing for different products and product combinations.

Music Bakery - 14.97 and up per song, $59 for CDs, $1.98 for sound effects (can buy whole CDs)

For educators, many sites make no cost royalty free music available for use.

See RoyaltyFreeMusic.com's site for educational users.

3. Resources for creating music in a home studio:

MakeTunes.com

Audacity open source music editor.

Even more public domain and Creative Commons videos

More and more places online are becoming archival repositories for hard to find media, including public domain or otherwise free to use video through Creative Commons attribution.

See this post of 9 public domain video sources at webtvwire.

There were a few I hadn't yet mentioned in the earlier post on public domain video. On closer inspection, a number of films are not released under public domain, but under a Creative Commons license specifying certain rights. Most Creative Commons works don't allow your to use the work for commercial purposes, but this also varies by license. Although most of these are public domain or otherwise free to use, make sure you check the fine print before using any of them in a commercial project. You've been warned!

Here are the new video resources:

B Movie public domain madness at Openflv.org (make sure you select videos tagged public domain. The link takes you to those tagged videos.


iMovies at blogspot has a catalogue of free to download or stream public domain movies.


Another entry into government public domain is at The National Archives, hosted on google.

There is even comedy public domain video at PDComedy. Think cartoons and old TV shows.


Classic high quality videos on the DivX platform can be found at Stage6.

You can find 1000 legal downloadable movie torrents (a thousand of them) at public domain torrent.


And more movies can be found at Entertainment Magazine's free movie catalog (EMOL.org). The site also includes free foreign films and foreign language movies.

Public Domain Videos from the US Government

There is another source for public domain video from the US government on the web. This was posted on boingboing.net in Feburary 2009:


"Public.Resource.Org released a 1/2-terabyte public domain stock footage library. This is 438 high-resolution MPEG2 files we obtained from the federal government. The footage ranges from WWII Disney productions to Army training films to Fish and Wildlife Service documentaries of wilderness areas."

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Here is a straight link to metadata and mpeg2 files.

If you follow the above link the readme.txt says, "Welcome to the bulk data depot for government video. All of these mpeg files are high-res and public domain. You will find most of these videos on YouTube and on the Internet Archive."

The purpose of this archive here is bulk download, e.g., for people looking to build a public domain stock footage library.

On YouTube, start here:



On the Archive, start here:



On Public.Resource.Org, start here:


There are other ways to access these files:

Public.Resource.Org data are also available via:
- BitTorrent at http://torrent.resource.org
- FTP at ftp://bulk.resource.org
- HTTP at http://bulk.resource.org