Worried about having to pay BMI or ASCAP fees if I used music in a podcast or video that I was thinking of making. Then I found the solution: UniqueTracks.com
UniqueTracks.com provides pay-once, use-many royalty-free music. Their website is very searchable. If you need music for a rainy scene, or a happy time, just plug those words into their search-engine and it will find a couple selections for you to preview. Purchasing can be done with most major credit cards. The download starts once payment is confirmed.
The previews are in Flash, QuickTime, and RealAudio. My browser (Safari on a Mac) seems to work best with Flash. I’m glad they provide many choices.
If you prefer CDs, they have discs that give you a variety of themes all in one place. For example, Themescapes has tracks that are “Uplifting, Motivational, Festive, Contemplative, Mysterious, Good Times, Sensual, Action, Inspiration.” Cool, eh?
You can see which music I selected here.
Comments are music to my ears. What do you have to say?
There are actually several sources of good quality royalty free music. Unique Tracks has an excellent library, as does Productiontrax.com, Soundrangers.com, Sounddogs.com, and the Music Bakery. The Music Bakery has several long-time favorite CD collections. Soundrangers has a wide selection of SFX, beeps, and noises. Productiontrax.com now offers FLAC Audio format (which means lossless audio encoding and decoding to any format) and has an affiliate program now which pays out a percentage of the purchase price to the referrer -- and anyone can sign up for free! You can go for the great selection of music, and now earn cash by telling your friends. Productiontrax.com
I'll up you one more. I don't have a lot of music on my blog, but all of it is available for free download and free commercial usage. No fee. All you have to do is ask. It's just a side hobby for me.
Check it out. http://ghostnotes.blogspot.com/
-Bill
An additional source that offers excellent royalty free music is RoyaltyFreeMusic.com. In addition to an extensive catalog of roaylty free music, they also have an assortment fo programs that provide royalty free music, at no cost, for education based projects. Their entire catalog can be reviewed at http://www.RoyaltyFreeMusic.com/clips.html .
RoyaltyFreeMusic.com
Hi Thomas,
I share your passion for royalty-free music. Compared to all the music we have access to, royalty-free music makes up a small fraction of that. It was from this that I decided to create my own music. First, I just did it for myself, but now I'm creating music for podcasts, radio, TV, games, presentations, etc. We just launched playitfree.com in March 2006. Podcasters (and others) can buy a full-length CD for under $30. A full, expanded edition with nearly 4GB of 24bit wav files is also available. Since you were on the topic, I figured I'd give you another site to find royalty-free music that doesn't drain your budget. Have a great day!
I highly recommend Opuzz.com. Excellent royalty free music provider I've use a couple of time and we've become pals too. Vivian confirms that their music is podsafe since this article is about music for podcast.
Kim
Eternity Garden
Hi Thomas,
I came across this discussion and wanted to confirm that our music may be used in Podcasts.
Here's our clarification:
"Using intro or outro music in a podcast is not the same as putting the file on a website for people to download. If it is part of a podcast, it is an integral part of an audio file and a listener cannot extract and download the music clip on its own."
My best to you and all your readers!
-Jack
Royalty Free Music downloads and CDs from The Music Bakery.
Jack Waldenmaier, President and Executive Producer
musicbakery.com
Slicktracks.com has some great royalty free tracks available. You pay a one-time fee of between about $5 - $40 for unlimited commercial use of a track (depends on the track). No royalties to pay!