Free Music for Students & Teachers
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Many musicians choose to release their songs under Creative Commons licenses, which give you the legal right to do things like use their music in your videos. What is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons is a new system, built upon current copyright law,
that allows you to legally use “some rights reserved” music, movies,
images, and other content — all for free. CC offers free copyright
licenses that anyone can use (without a lawyer) to mark their creative
work with the freedoms they want it to carry. For instance, a musician
would use a Creative Commons license to allow people to legally share
her songs online, make copies for friends, or even use them in videos
or other compositions. For more information, visit CC's Learn More page. Where can I find CC-licensed music? Several sites offer music published under Creative Commons’ flexible copyright licenses. Here are some:
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). Most importantly, you need to use music
that is not licensed under a No Derivative Works license. This means
that the musician doesn’t want you to change, transform, or make a
derivative work using their music. Under CC licenses, synching the
music to images amounts to transforming the music, so you can’t legally
use a song under a CC No Derivative Works license in your video.
Also, make sure to properly credit the musician and the track, as well
as express the CC license the track is under. For example, you might
include text like this at the end of your video:
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