Where do you get music for your Vimeo/YouTube videos?
February 7, 2014 5:18 PM   Subscribe

I want to get into video making and was wondering where people get their music from. I've noticed that some YouTube partners go to SoundCloud to pick up remixes of licensed songs to get past the copyright infringement--is that okay?

My question is a two-parter.

1. Where are good sites to source your music from? If I start a YouTube account, I might enable monetization sometime down the road but probably won't be making very much money off of the videos so I'm not terribly keen on paying for the music. Recommended websites with Creative Commons licensed material that's okay with commercial use would be greatly appreciated.

2. I noticed that some Youtube Partners (people who make their living off of Youtube, like in the tens of thousands) source from SoundCloud. The music they use sounds really awesome but when I go visit the SoundCloud page, nothing on it indicates that its licensed under Creative Commons. When I do a search for Creative Commons work on SoundCloud, none of it sounds quite as good as the non(?)Creative Commons music found by these Youtube Partners. Although I don't know whether or not these Youtube Partners specifically reach out to the individual SoundCloud artists for permission, I doubt that they do.

Many of those songs are remixes of various songs. Others sound like they might be original pieces, though I'm not sure. Is this sort of thing accepted practice? It seems like these Youtube partners make a lot of money (and have been for years) by doing this, but it just feels weird to me since I can't find any evidence that there's a Creative Commons license on those songs, though they do always credit them in the description box.
posted by bluelight to Computers & Internet (3 answers total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
I can only offer a suggestion for your first question: A few full-time Minecraft Youtube channels use Kevin MacLeod's royalty free music.
posted by selton at 6:43 PM on February 7, 2014 [1 favorite]


Creative Commons Search
CCMixter
Free Music Archive
Internet Archive- Community Audio

I think most of these let you search by different CC licenses including the ones that are "okay with commercial use". It is often under the advanced search.
posted by 2ghouls at 7:08 PM on February 7, 2014 [2 favorites]


The Vimeo music store or the YouTube audio library seem like good places to start.
posted by Betelgeuse at 7:32 PM on February 7, 2014


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