This page contains information about using copyright and royalty-free music, as well as resources to create your own music for multimedia projects.
USING PRE-RECORDED MUSIC
COPYRIGHT, ROYALTY-FREE, LICENSING, etc.
Unless you create your own music, you ABSOLUTELY MUST have permission to use music in any multimedia project. Simply adding a song you like, be it commercially made or not, is insufficient reasoning to include music. While there are many terms and phrases applicable to including music, the majority of information relates to licensing. The following is a brief breakdown on common licensing terms.
Copyright - is the legal protection granted to creators of original works.
Royalty-Free - Royalties are payments to creators for their original work whenever used, and sometimes using music may have the designation of royalty-free, but that may still require a single up-front payment. The royalty free aspect may mean for repeated uses or further distribution.
Creative Commons - is a special form of copyright license that is used by creators to indicate that the public may use, share, and sometimes even build upon their work.
Premium - often premium content means you must pay for that content, and potentially pay for every time it is heard, used, or streamed.
Fair Use - allows for the reproduction of copyrighted work for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.
Attribution - requires a user to give attribution, or credit, in exchange for using the song. Proper attribution in a video includes giving the name of the Artist, Title, Source and the License (CC BY).
MUSIC & SOUND DATABASES
BELOW ARE RESOURCES THAT MAY CONTAIN FREE, ATRRIBUTION, OR COPYRIGHT PERMISSABLE CONTENT FOR YOUR PROJECTS.
APPLYING MUSIC TO A PROJECT
Like most media, editing music is all about layering, timing, and adjusting. Whether you are adding music to a video or podcast, or simply trying to create something for fun, music is emotion, and you should try to focus on what emotion you are trying to evoke when making music for multimedia.
Below is a brief episode from The Student's Podcast about using music in a podcast, but the same principles apply to video as well. Listen for the emotion that develops a person talking, to create an aesthetic that's more powerful and impactful.
CREATING MUSIC FOR MULTIMEDIA
Anybody can create music, and you do not have to have formal knowlwedge, or be a musican to create music.
NO MUSIC KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED
Using a combination of loops, samples, beats, instruments, effects and layers you can coordinate sounds together in music, and create your own song.
Creating your own music is extremely fun, but it can also lead to endless editing and time spent focusing on minor discrepancies, which shouldn't be your focus. Music for multimedia shouldn't necessarily just be a complimentary element, but it is important to remember that music in and of itself is the objective. The objective to creating music is both to tell a story and evoke emotion and tone.
EASY MUSIC CREATION TOOLS
CHROME MUSIC LAB
SOUNDATION
Soundation is a browser based DAW that accommodates cloud collaboration and MIDI integrations. The program is free to get started and use basic functions, however some advanced features require a paid upgrade.
ADVANCED MUSIC CREATION TOOLS
Logic Tutorials
Audition Tutorials
AI-Powered audio creation that includes MIDI file exports, genre & time based selection, and allows for 3 free downloads per month for the free user account.
