Need Music and Sounds for your next Project?

​As more and more teachers are having their students use tools like Chromebooks and iPads to make videos and multimedia projects, they are finding themselves needing music in the end to make the final project just perfect. Like gravy on that perfect Thanksgiving meal, music on a project just makes everything better! 

​The problem is that teachers often don't know where to guide their students to go find music. Below I've added five sites where you can spend time time searching and listening. Have fun digging in! I would recommend downloading several of these to a folder your students can access. Then have them give credit to the creators when they publish to YouTube or wherver else you choose.​

But teachers go off into this world of music and sound effects many aren't familiar and aware of copyright law and the concept of Creative Commons. 

We need to be careful saying things like "hey, AC/DC's Thunderstruck would be a great song to add to that video you made!" Careful... you don't have the RIGHT to use that song. Let's practice a little Digital Citizenship ourselves by learning a little, and being aware of, USAGE RIGHTS. 

Most of the music you will find in the sites whch I am sharing in this post fall under Creative Commons but just look at this image and you will see how many types of ATTRIBUTION there are are which makdes this a bit of a confusion landscape. 

Here is the legal language from Creative Commons regarding this license:
"Can I use any song with a CC license on it?

Almost — you need to make sure that what you want to do with the music is OK under the terms of the particular Creative Commons license it’s under. CC-licensed music isn’t free for all uses, only some — so make sure to check out the terms (you can find these by clicking on each song’s license icon)."

Oh, and one last comparison with gravy... tell your students that just like gravy, you should ADD IT AT THE END. Kids often get side tracked in the middle of a project by looking for music or sound effects, tell them to wait until your project is done.

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Jamendo
Jamendo is all about connecting musicians and music lovers from all over the world. Artists define what rights they grant on their music through their choice of license. For example here is one of my favorite artists I found on Jamendo: https://twitter.com/WladimirKucin 

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Ben Sound
All of these are from one artist, Ben Sound, but it's a pretty amazing collection! 

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Free Play Music
This service probably has the largest collection of music out there to use. Educators can use these for free but take note that thier licensing says that is is "for in-classroom use ONLY." which means, you can't upload and share on the web. 

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Fiverr
This is different from all the rest. It is a service in which you hire someone to create something for you. The link above is to their Music & Audio section where you can find artists to connect with for your project. I used this and was quite happy with an intro for my Social Studies podcast. You can listen to the music here on one of our shows. 

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Free Sound
"Freesound aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under Creative Commons licenses that allow their reuse" These aren't really music clips but mostly sound effects and loops. For those students fo your really interested in making their own, this is a HUGE site to dig into. 

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This blog post is only showing you places where you can go to FIND music. I will have a future post about how to use tools to make and edit audio like:
Audacity
Garage Band
Soundtrap
Soundation
​Twisted Wave