With the release of our guide to becoming a famous Youtuber, I decided it was time to tackle some of the more practical issues, such as finding music to add to your videos.
Most of the sites linked below offer music licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0. Basically what you need to know is that music licensed under CC by 3.0 (or 4.0) is usable in any circumstances, provided you attribute, or credit the creator. Using music licensed as such means that you won’t get a copyright strike on your youtube channel, and can monetise videos to earn money (provided you attribute the creator correctly).
Before using any of the tracks, be sure to check the license. You can find the definitions for each of the six Creative Commons licenses here.
Incompetech – Thousands of pieces. If you can imagine it, it probably exists here
Kongano – Dozens of pieces with bright production.
TEKNOAXE – Hundreds of pieces… Lots of 8-bit and Techno.
Twin Musicom – Good variety for films. 30+ pieces.
McFarland BEATS – Dance and percussion heavy stuff. 30+ pieces.
James Richardson – Just a few pieces right now. historical-sounding
Leafy Lane – about 60 pieces of non-typical music
Jimmy Gelhaar – about 40 pieces, lots of solo piano
Anthony Kozar – interesting ambient pieces
Jason Shaw (audionautix) – 250+ pieces. Excellent production
Danosongs – over 70 pieces, lots of guitar
PP Songs – about 30 pieces.
Matt McFarland – over 50 instrumental pieces
Josh Woodward
Josh Molen – a few free pieces, and a lot more super-reasonably-priced ones
RFK – Often zero-cost musics
Bensound – A huge collection, with a slightly different license (No Derivatives, meaning you can’t modify the music and release it as your own)
A quick note about adding music to videos. Make sure the music fits the context of the video (Does classical piano really go with a survival games montage?). Secondly, make sure that if you add music and have voice recordings, your voice can be heard above the music.
This is the first part in a series of practical guides i’ll be writing. While I don’t currently run a youtube channel, I used to (It’s deleted now, so don’t look for it). If you have a specific question/query you want covered, let me know in the comments below, or drop me a line at [email protected].
