Creative Commons loving composer Kevin MacLeod has a shed load of free top quality music clips for private and commercial projects on offer, the only requirement being a small attribution link. The clips are in a variety of categories, ranging from film soundtracks to reggae, jazz, rock and world music, and they’re tagged with differing moods to make it easy to identify the right piece for your requirements. Lots of different lengths and very high production quality too. You can even make a CD of the clips and sell it without paying him a penny, as long as you include a named attribution back to his site.
This is a superb example of why Creative Commons is so powerful. He gets wide distribution (and lots of whuffie love from schools, non-profits and people in general) which in turn helps his professional service gain customers. Win-win. The future.
Why do you alllow people to use your music and don’t charge for it? There are many reasons. The cost for me to share music is low, and the benefits are high. There are a lot of schools with no money, and plenty of film makers who want to have music – but can’t afford to clear copyrights from the existing systems that are set up. I believe that copyright is badly broken , so I chose a license that allows me to to give away the rights I wish to surrender. We really have no hope of overturning the existing copyright situation, but we can and are creating an alternate body of works that are able to compete with them. In time, I hope that Creative Commons (and similar alternatives to standard copyright) will be common and successful enough to be the dominant choice for artists’ new creative works. If you hold tightly to your creative works, they become impossible to share. If your art isn’t experienced by people, it serves no purpose in society.
