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."

-

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

FAIL Blog video - Awareness Fail

I just happened across a very funny blog through a tiny link at the bottom of the page on technorati.com. The theme of the blog is apparent once you browse through a few posts. The basic idea is to capture life when things go very, very wrong. The post I saw was of a very funny video called Awareness Fail, which is a very appropriate title.



As you go about your day today, please do pay attention...to everything.

Find more videos and films online

Recently, I posted about where to find completely free, public domain videos available on the web, that you can use for commercial or educational purposes. I want to expand the list in this post to include sites where you can find royalty-free videos, film and stock footage to watch, share or to incorporate into your projects.


World's largest pencil - Watch more Funny Videos

The difference between this and the previous list is that these are not in the public domain. There is a clear copyright holder and you must acquire rights to use the videos. In some cases (such as the stock footage sites) the content is not free. Acquiring a license to use the footage might involve paying a one-time fee vs. an ongoing royalty (hence, royalty-free). The good thing is that royalty-free footage is expressly designed for commercial use, so once you purchase the appropriate license you can use the film or video footage without worry.

In most cases though, the videos on the sites listed here are free to stream or watch. Nearly all of the sites feature community ratings of video content. Some sites (not the ones listed under Government and Public Interest) have videos that feature ads. If you click on the ads the filmmaker or video producer will earn a few cents for each click. In other cases, film and video producers earn money from the number of impressions (page views) their videos receive. On that note, you can also think of many of these websites as places to share video, film or stock footage that you already have, and potentially earn some cash in the process!

Some of the video sites, like YouTube, even let you embed the video on your website. There are programs out there that will let you turn streaming content into downloadable video which you can watch on your computer, burn or whatever. (I'll probably post in the future about those.) The main thing is to make sure you have read the fine print carefully and respect the rights of the creator or copyright holder. Now, with the disclaimer out of the way, here is a pretty broad list of sites where you can find quality video and film on the web, broken down by category.

Royalty-free stock footage:

Ecofootage.com -
Thousands of royalty-free video stock footage clips on environmental sustainability.

iStockVideo -
A division of iStockphoto. Footage includes film, video and digital computer animation. Difference pricing models available -- pay as you go, subsription, and corporate accounts. Footage includes film, video and digital computer animation. Difference pricing models available -- pay as you go, subsription, and corporate accounts.

Pond5.com -
Another royalty-free stock video footage site.

Shutterstock footage -
Clips start from $10 each and can be downloaded in many formats including DVCam, BetaCam, and HDCam.



Film and Video Shorts, Independents, Animation:

Atom Films -
Comedy videos, film shorts and animation. If you want to find a laugh online, this is the place to go.

Blip.tv -
A new class of entertainment is emerging that is being made by the people without the support of billion-dollar multinationals. Our mission is to support these people by taking care of all the problems a budding videoblogger, podcaster or Internet

Break.com -
Attract quality films from budding filmmakers. Films are short-form, about 10 minutes.

Metacafe -
Independent online video community specializing in short form (90 second) video clips created by new talent and established industry professionals.

Motion.tv -
Get linked to the work of animators, video and motion picture graphic artists.

Turn Here -
We're setting the standard in creating professional-quality short format Internet video (typically 1-4 minutes) that is unscripted, authentic and compelling. - local film


Social Networking:

BuzzShed -
Social networking around science and technology videos.

Flixya -
Social networking and video combined. Also designed as a way for people with videos to make money.

Joost -
Social networking around video watching online.

Revver -
Sticks ads onto user video clips, and then pays the user a share of the clicks. They also deliver video to cell phones via Verizon.


YouTube -
The big dog of online video sharing. More than a third of all online video watching happens on this site.

Yuwie -
Another social networking/get paid to post video site.


Instructional and article directories branching out to include videos:

AssociatedContent -
Article and video directory. You can find information on almost anything here.

eHow -
Another how to site. Has a video channel.

ExpoTV -
Video product reviews.

Hungryflix -
Site designed to deliver video to mobile phones, pdas, ipods, etc. You can find video of all kinds--feature films and shorts, music videos, documentaries, television, sports and how-to videos.

Intructables -
A how-to site featuring mostly articles with images, and some videos.


Government, Education, Culture and Public Interest:

Capitol Hearings (a service of C-SPAN) -
You can go catch videos of U.S. Congressional hearings broadscast on CSPAN and covered in the news.

C-Span Video Library -
C-Span's broadcast archive.

Grapeflix -
Documentaries and educational video on-demand service.

Library of Congress webcasts -
You can find films on biography, history, performing arts, education, government, literature, religion, science and technology. A very cool resource. The featured video the last time I visited was an hour-long performance by Stevie Wonder of his (20-years in the making) pop-classical concerto, "Sketches of a Life," celebrating his winning the second Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Not something you find everyday--unless of course you visit the site!

NatureMedia -
Nature videos hosted by this international weekly journal of science.

Hope you find this a useful list of where to go when videos are wanted and a kickstart to your online video hunting journey. Of course, if there are great sites you know of that are not on the list, feel free to share them in the comments below.

I just found a cool new service for linking to videos on web. It's called NoSpoiler.com, which you can visit here. The idea is that if you want to send your friends a link to an interesting video on YouTube (or Google Video, Break.com or Metacafe, all of which are supported), you replace the actual videolink with a special link that will make the video appear on a blank, comment free page.

Why would you want to do this?

Because of the comments! The author's motivation was getting an email from a friend saying, "Check out this video, but don't read the comments. They're spoilers." In that case, the friend was referring to the common fact that the comments often reveal the contents of the video (especially the best parts or secrets to magic tricks, and so forth) before you even watch it, spoiling the experience.

I have a totally different reason for liking the NoSpoiler.com site. My beef with YouTube is the rampant offensive and racist comments that make me sick and which they allow to sit and fester and pollute thousands of YouTube videos. I've taken to purposely avoiding the comments section and have sent my own warning emails to friends, like, "Check out this video, but avoid the comments if you don't want to get offended." So, this is a handy solution until YouTube (now Google, in fact) decides it wants to clean up the community space. That's probably not going to happen any time soon. Until then, there's nospoiler.com. Have you found other sites that provide a similar service? Post your findings in the comments below.

Free sources of videos on the web

This is an ongoing list I am compiling of free sources of video on the web. As an educator needing video for classroom use, I have a very strong interest in this subject! Although some companies will allow use of media content for educational purposes, not all do and there is a well established market for universities to purchase videos from publishers.



Courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

So, what do you do when you need videos but don't have the budget for it? The sites below allow you to use content for free-for educational, artistic, commercial purposes and more. Still, you must always look at the license for the use of the content, even if listed on a site that says the media is free for everyone to use. Is it public domain? Copyleft or Sharealike? Creative Commons? GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License)? I'll put up a post in the future about the types of free use licenses out there and what constitutes fair use of protected content. In the meantime, let's stick to the stuff that the creators have voluntarily given to the world to use:


Wikimedia Commons
From the site: "Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to all...Unlike traditional media repositories, Wikimedia Commons is free. Everyone is allowed to copy, use and modify any files here freely as long as the source and the authors are credited and as long as users release their copies/improvements under the same freedom to others." They feature over 90,000 media collections and over 4.7 million files. Each file has its own page specifying conditions of re-use.


Internet Archive Moving Images Archive

This is a library of free movies, films, and videos. The Internet Archive is the home of the Wayback Machine where you can browse 150 billion archived webpages going back to 1996. In the Moving Images Archive, although most files are free to use, "the person who uploads an item usually provides information about what can and cannot be done with the item. This is usually through setting a Creative Commons license." They have a great FAQ page that answers all these questions and provides detail technical help on how to play, encode, stream, burn, etc. the files you find. Sweet!

*Note: I agree with them that the best free media player out there is VLC Media Player, which works on both Windows and Mac OSX/9 operating systems.

TED.com
"Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world." I have searched for archives of famous or popular talks on YouTube, but haven't always found what I was looking for. This beautiful site features some of the most inspirational speeches and talks given, which you are free to use! This is a goldmine for instructional use, but I can imagine creatively using this content for many other kinds of endeavors.

National Geographic Videos
I have made great use of videos from National Geographic, by connecting my portable computer to the audio visual system in the classroom. The downside is that you have to be connected to the Internet to watch them. However, the technically savvy among you will figure out how to burn the videos to DVD or on to flash drives. On the site, you can watch hundreds of free videos that feature animals, nature, environmental issues, culture, world music, weather and more, including user submitted videos.



Videos from the US Government

Don't forget the US Federal Government! Many of the publications and other media produced by the government are in the public domain. Use this portal to find actual public domain videos from the Federal Government. Categorized from A to Z, there are more videos than you can imagine, from NASA to career videos to wildlife and so very much more. "Most of these videos are available for use in the public domain, and you may use and reproduce them without permission or fee." [Update: All of the Federal Government public domain videos formerly on Usa.gov are now on the Federal Government's YouTube channel.]

However, you still need to check the disclaimer or copyright notices on each link provided. Still, this page is the best place to start. If you search on your own, you might get into trouble as not all federal government publications and productions are free to use. You must check for copyright notices in the file itself. Often images in a public domain text are copyrighted. Also works created through grant funding or by agencies funded by the Federal government (vs. being part of the government) are typically not public domain.