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Content is king, especially online course design and video content are one of the most engaging ways of delivering content. This is especially true for video courses, it’s pretty obvious that you are going to need to license a lot of music.
Buying a song from iTunes or a CD will not do it. When you do that, you are really buying a license to listen to that music.
So what are the options?
The concept of Royalty free music (or stock music) is often described in different ways: “Pre-licensed Music Library”, “Pre-licensed Stock Music”, “Single Fee Music”. Royalty-Free Music provides a very convenient solution to use music in your video productions. It doesn’t refer to a specific type of music or broadcast lengths. Everything is available, from classical orchestrations to animated cartoon compositions.
Royalty free music promotes the use of legal music. All video producers, especially with commercial content (i.e., courses) should be aware that using music illegally could lead to the banning of the content and even legal actions.
So, a simple way of avoiding this is by accessing legal Royalty free music. Many people think that the term royalty-free means that no license or fee should be paid to the music copyright owner.
On the contrary, Royalty free is the music that you only pay a one-time license fee for, and you do not pay a per-use royalty to the composer or publisher.
For example
– If you want to use a song in a series of instructional videos, you don’t have to purchase additional licenses every time you make a new video.
– If you put that video on YouTube, you are not required to pay any royalties for a certain number of views.
Such a license usually determines:
Consequently, it is vital for someone to read carefully the terms of use and become familiar with the different kind of licenses on the marketplace they’re purchasing the music.
Apart from the benefit that you only pay once, there are also other advantages with Royalty free music:
Royalty free music misconceptions
The first misconception is that Royalty free music is copyright free music. However, there is nothing like copyright-free music. Any person who creates music is the automatic copyright owner. In cases where the owner of the copyrighted music allows it to be used for any purpose, the music might be free, but it is not devoid of copyright.
The second misconception states that Royalty Free Music is poor quality and cheap music. The truth is that the quality of music available for royalty free music composers is just top-notch nowadays.
Ultimately, the quality of royalty free music is determined by the musician. Also, Royalty free music can be licensed at any price. You can find Royalty Free music for $30 or $600, also depending on the licensing model and quality.
Where can I find Royalty free music for a video course?
To help save you time, we’ve put together a list of places that we use to get stock music. You can find and download royalty free music for video courses, intro videos, marketing or audio lessons without any worries for copyright violations.
Some of those places also provide a Marketplace, where you can request the kind of music you need if you’re tired of searching for music and want music delivered to you. So here they are:
Audio Jungle
AudioJungle is part of Envato Market where you can find top-quality music. The site currently is hosting more than 600.000 tracks and sounds. All of which you can find by browsing through more than 40 categories of music and sounds.
The site supports a keyword search, weekly summaries of the most popular items, user-compiled collections, looking through portfolios of top authors and also a community of audio composers and producers.
Jamendo
Jamendo is a platform, worth checking out. The music available in Jamendo’s library covers most music genres, so there’s something for everyone. The quality of the music is impressive.
It hosts more than 200,000 tracks from music artists. Artists and listeners can network through the platform. The free service includes social networking functionalities with:
Pond5
Pond5 is a platform where apart from music you can also find video footages, after effects, pictures, illustrations and 3D models. Concerning music you can browse through 30 categories of tracks and 36 categories of sound effects, filtered out by certain filters: Uplifting, inspirational, loud, calm, summer and tension.
You can also sort music by duration, date of upload, artist, number of sales, page views, and price. When you find a track, you can download a watermarked preview.
The Music Bakery
With Music Bakery you can easily search and download royalty free music. The platform hosts tracks from studio musicians and plenty of real acoustic instruments. The user can select tracks from 20 different categories and also choose by mood (confident, dramatic, energetic, etc.) or by style (classical, country, new age, etc.). The site advertises itself by saying that it provides music that can be used anywhere (including TV).
Premiumbeat
PremiumBeat, a Shutterstock company, provides exclusive, high-quality tracks and sound effects for use in new and traditional media projects, including videos, films, apps, games, and television programming.
The user can choose tracks from 35 genres, 25 different moods and filter them by track length, artists or instruments and add them to personalized playlists. Those playlists are easily shared with colleagues and collaborators.
Shockwave Sound
With Shockwave Sound it’s effortless to find the music you want through a very friendly user interface. In this platform music tracks are categorized according to the music genre, mood, production types, prominent instruments and artists.
The user can also discover CD collections and sound effects.
Shutterstock
Shutterstock has crafted a music-specific search and discovery experience that is easy to use. The user sees a waveform and can filter music, which helps to make a preview decision before hitting play.
In Shutterstock, you can find 26 genres of music and 45 types of music moods. You can also choose from a variety of themes and tempos. They also mention having a persistent audio player that won’t interrupt listening experience as you leave the page.
Royalty free music free of charge
Pond5 Public Domain Collection
It’s the same platform as Pond5 we described above. However, it is a place where users can find and download thousands of historical media files for their projects completely free. The only disadvantage of his platform is that you have to register to get your free track.
Free Music Archive
Free Music Archive indeed provides completely free music tracks, which you can sort by filters (ex.Blues, Classical, Country, etc.). When someone previews how the tracks sound they realize that quality, variety and artistic aren’t at its best.
However, someone could find the song that matches to their project. In this platform, you can also immediately download music files without the need for registering.
FreePD
FreePD is also a site from where you can instantly download completely free music tracks. The user can select from 10 different music themes (romantic, comedy, horror, epic-dramatic, etc.). Again music quality and imagination are not of the highest standard … but it’s free.
Digccmixter
Digccmixter is maybe the best of the free platforms we met, as there are a variety of sounds and tracks, which you can filter by genre, instrument, and style and also download instantly in your computer without registration. The quality of the tracks seems quite good for a free service.
That’s all from us! We hope you enjoyed this article and found its information useful for creating your next video course!
If you are looking for a comprehensive guide on the subject, then our Ultimate Guide on Creating Online Courses should be your next destination.
Further reading you might find interesting:
Anthea is a Course designer and Content Creator for the LearnWorlds team. She holds years of experience in instructional design and teaching. With a Master of Education (M.Ed.) focused in Modern Teaching Methods & ICT (Information & Communications Technology), she supplements her knowledge with practical experience in E-Learning and Educational Technology.
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