If you do video very long, eventually you’ll run into the question of music. Things are going really well right up until you need to start adding texture and emotion to your video. Things come to a screeching halt. All of the good music is super expensive it seems, so you’re left with a difficult choice:
- You can use copyrighted music and hope no one notices.
- You can hire a composer to write original music.
- You can get permission from a musician friend to use some of their already recorded music.
- You can find some royalty free music.
I know, none of those seem like great options, unless of course you are good friends with a great musician. If that’s you, well . . . then you can just go away and never come back (does my jealousy show much?). And option 1 isn’t something you really want to consider. For most projects, this leaves option #4. Gross, you’re thinking. Royalty free music is like the mosquito on the food chain of film and video scores.
I get it and I’m not going to change anything with this one little post. We have found some decent places to find music, though, without spending your whole production budget just on music. I’ll give you my top three.
1. Incompetech.com. Music by Kevin MacLeod. There’s quite a bit of music on this site and it’s pretty well-organized. You have to pick through a bit and some of it sounds fairly electronic and keyboard-like. I’m a fan of acoustic guitar sound and there’s not a lot in that genre, but there are some great pieces that sound really professional. You can listen to the song before you download it and the usage agreement is quite film-maker friendly. In fact, the cost is really reasonable and it’s usage is on the honor system. This means that you can download and use without paying or getting permission or giving credit. That’s just a punk move, though, so don’t do it. We should make sure that we reward sites like this and not take advantage. You can read about the usage here. He can also be hired for original composition. It’s a great “one artist to another” site.
2. Digital Juice’s MusicBOX collections. Digital Juice is a site that has a few resources for the video maker. The music that it sells is decent and is a one-time only payment for the rights to use the music as much as you want. Even better is that you can isolate and use as few or as many tracks of a song as you’d like and they come in 15 sec, 30 sec, 60 sec versions. Awesome because you don’t have to figure out how to edit the tracks.
3. Music Bakery. Music Bakery has some good music and decent rates. You can purchase usage by the song and download or you can by cd’s by genre for about $77. Not a bad deal in the world of royalty free music.
Honestly, it wouldn’t kill you to meet a couple of musicians that are trying to break in and get their stuff heard. You can get some great music at a more than reasonable cost. Contact a local studio and see if they have any connections for you. Friends of friends are good for that, too.
But if that fails to bring results, try out one of these sites. My guess is that you’ll find something that works for you.
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