Copyright-Free Music

I found this site the other day while surfing the blogosphere, and I thought it would be appropriate to post it given BionicTeacher’s recent post on the forum about Freesound. Feel free to chat on the forum about that one, as well as Free Play Music, a rather ingenious collection of music with virtually free use for education. Specifically free use for “Educational, Non-Commercial use (limited to student use on school grounds and classroom – non broadcast).” That means as long as it’s being used in an educational capacity (projects, movies, slide shows) and is not broadcast outside of the classroom, it’s all free of charge according to their terms of use. This is a great resource for students looking to jazz up presentations without having to worry about “ripping” or “burning” copyrighted material for personal use. Or use it with older students in a music appreciation or composition class. They could practice cutting out loops, and remixing the tracks into new music using music editing software like Cakewalk or Garageband.

You can search their database by style (Ambient, Classical, Funk, etc.) or by feel (Dark, Grand, Moody, etc.) for music. After finding your choice they even go so far as to provide two versions of the song; MP3 for those comfortable with the older format, and AAC (a newer format which provides better sound than MP3). They have previews for each piece, so you can listen before you download. And that’s the best part; downloading is just as simple as clicking on the file with no need to login, register, or “sign up” for those annoying e-mail lists.