How to Get Free Legal Music for your Videos

In September, 2008 Barry Gitarts was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison on charges of criminal intellectual property piracy, the first criminal conviction of it's kind. Seriously? The federal government struck out on nabbing Osama bin Laden, but they managed to take down the dude responsible for a few thousand people scoring free Nickelback albums? If the government doesn't want people to freely download music then why call it 'piracy'? That only makes it sound cooler, like you're a swashbuckling marauder every time you download a Celine Dion single (it was for my girlfriend... I swear!).

While criminal convictions are rare in cases of media copyright infringement, record and film companies are taking action. Maybe you uploaded a video to Youtube after your last family reunion and decided to throw in a James Taylor song that Grandma loves. You go to share the link with your family and get an email saying that the sound doesn't work. At first you might think that Grandma just doesn't know how to turn the speakers on, but chances are good that Youtube has removed the audio entirely from your video due to the use of unlicensed music.

Online distribution is considered publishing and requires the use of licenses. So what's a filmmaker to do if he or she doesn't also happen to be a master musician with a home recording studio to soundtrack all of their videos?

In response to this proverbial question, the Creative Commons License was born. In 2002, modeled after open source software CreativeCommons.org began distributing work with artist-cleared licenses, making the works available for digital collaboration. Artists who grant a Creative Commons License have the right to specify whether they allow their work to be used for commercial purposes and whether they are ok it with it being remixed. Numerous other free license sites have popped up since the inception of CC licenses, constructing cooperative creative communities for artists from different mediums to pool their abilities, musicians giving music to filmmakers, writers providing inspiration for painters, a whole happy sharing community of digital commies.

Here are a few of the best sites that I've seen for finding free music for video productions. Enjoy.

CreativeCommons.org
The folks who started it all. You can search their site to find any free types of media you could ever possibly imagine.

Opsound.org
Opsound is a community of sound artists of all genres who have come together to freely share their work for collaboration. Says their website, "Listeners are invited to download, share, remix, and reimagine." The site is super easy to use, with all uploaded works browseable by genre, and with each track listing accompanied by a very accurate description of the sounds and what inspired the creator to compose it. The sounds range from contemporary to highly experimental.

Owl Music Search
Are you comletely stuck on a song that you desperately want to use, but don't have the means to get the license? Owl Music Search lets you upload a song from your harddrive, select the portion of the song in particular that you want to use, and it will find something similar for you. You can check of boxes in the search fields to only find music that has a CC license.

Free Sound Effects
Looking for free sound effects? Try one of these.
http://www.freesound.org/index.php
http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com
http://www.mediacollege.com/downloads/sound-effects/

It looks like it's time to hang up the eye patch; your pirating days are over. With these sites you now have an unlimited source for production music. Who knows, you just might be catching an artist on the rise and can one day brag that you found them first for your travel vlog. Just make sure to upload that Travel Vlog to Tripfilms.com! (gotta have at least one plug right).