Music for YouTube - Some Alternatives
Rules & Regulations
[divider line_type="No Line" custom_height="30"][dropcap]F[/dropcap]inding music for YouTube can be tough (same for all video sites but I'm talking about YouTube as the most well known and arguably the most highly regulated). Copyright laws are so strict (yet mostly fair) and frequently grey that true channel owners are probably, if anything, overcautious around this subject for fear of potentially losing what could be a revenue generating venture that has years of hard work in it. Background music at a shopping mall or a 5 second clip used as a demonstration in a video could lead to a strike by the almighty Google lawyers (a little simplistic but you know what I mean).
Even when you pay for music to use on a project, it's likely that such usage will force the disabling of the 'monetize' feature within your channel and also pass on any (or a portion of) any such revenue to the copyright owner of the music. So regardless of the rest of the content or production of a video, the use of someone else's music prevents you from earning a penny. That seems a little odd.
Alternatives
- If all you need is some background melodic sounds, I suppose you could write your own. It's unlikely that most people have either the time, hardware, software or inclination to bother doing this.
- The second option is the free offering from YouTube. Considering the size of YouTube, these are limited and never sound great. They always have a hint of commercial production music about them (funnily enough) and remind me of lift music.
- Thirdly are the sites like The Audio Network (lower price / good choice / average quality) and The Music Bed (higher price, more specialist, great music)
It's nice to find that there are people out there who are willing to write true royalty free music.
SoundImage
Please note that this post is really more of a promotion of another site. It's not anything that I'm affiliated with, just something I found and was fascinated by. Fascinated because of the ongoing effort that goes into it with arguably little reward other than the knowledge that someone else is being helped. Eric Matyas maintains Soundimage which is a site that contains free music...and lots of it. So how good is it? Well, it's good enough to support a video or short film project. It's not all amazing and it does have the feel that it's created using a limited set of equipment (you're not going to find a full symphony orchestra piece here) but it is truly free with the only request from Eric being that you credit him on your website and/or project if you do use some of his music.Take a listen here and support what he's doing. The massive 'corporate' size and power of YouTube means copyright will always be an issue. Google can and will take down your channel and you will not be able to say a word about it. It's just not worth the risk.What other good sites are out there that offer this type of service at such a sustained level? Let me know in the comments below.