Hi Folks,

I’m about to begin a small project creating a couple of short videos to help promote a outdoor festival I’m involved with. Now we all know that key to a good clip is a good tune. My question is what’s a good way to source this? Obviously I intend to respect copyright. I can’t imagine every clip I see online has been created with a music budget though. Is it a case of contacting small bands and asking for a favour? Because as an illustrator I know how annoying this can be when you’re on the receiving end. Are there sites where you can source loyalty free music or what? Any advice or pointers would be very welcome.

Tried Bandcamp? Most artists have their contact details on their page.

Thanks for that, I’ll add it to the list. I think I’ve heard of bandcamp. I bet it’s something every human on earth is aware of apart from me.

Now we all know that key to a good clip is a good tune… Is it a case of contacting small bands and asking for a favour?

So why not acknowledge the importance of their (potential) contribution and just offer to pay them?

What type of festival is it? if it’s a music based festival then just ask the musicians for permission. If not, then I’m sure I’ll have something from our vast library of non-MCPS royalty free tunes. Failing that, there’s loads of royalty free libraries online now.

Three Fish – you’re exactly right. By favour I don’t mean ask for a freebie but not knowing the price of such things I’m worried that the little we can offer will still be classed as favour. In which case I’d rather not insult the performer(s). I absolutely think musical contribution to such things is of huge value. We just can’t afford huge prices.

It’s not a music festival. It’s a festival of outdoor activities.

For one I did a few years back I used a ninja tune track. I just got in touch, explained what I was doing and they let me use it licence free for a couple of months. Worth a try.

<goes off in search of ninja tune cd upstairs>

Anything here of interest?

Philips/Dezeen used one of my tunes and it was a finalist for a Webby award.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaymHLcJwj4[/video]

Hi schrickvr6, thanks for getting in touch. I’m not sure what direction we want to go with yet (we’re a committee so everything is a group choice) but I suspect we’ll be wanting to go a little less electronic and a little more traditional. It’s not a taste thing, I just think what we want to communicate might be best represented this way. If you were offering to help us out / get involved, I’m really very grateful.

Use the advanced search on soundcloud to search for Creative Commons stuff. You’ll spend hours searching for good stuff but if you go by number of plays it helps.

Or vimeo has a music search library you can use royalty free…

I’ve recently bought two albums as a result of hearing the artists on Trans Provence and Trans Savoie videos, both where mentioned in credits. I’d you check these edits on Vimeo they also note the music licence site they used.

I just noticed this today too. Having followed a few leads from here and, as you say, following sites/services mentioned on other bike vids I’ve found more than enough to be getting on with. I think it will come down to budget and finding that special little something.

If you are going to publish your video to YouTube most rights holders will allow you to use their music. The only condition being, the rights holder will claim the audio from your video and directly monetise any views of your video. So when you get a claim notification from YouTube make sure you accept the claim and you’ll be free to use the music (in most cases)

One more thing, in the titles to your video credit the artists and put a buy link to iTunes.