Where can I find free legal music to put on YouTube videos?
Gramophone (photo by Taras Kalapun - CC-BY)
If you use a commercial recording as the soundtrack for a video that you upload to YouTube, you risk the removal of the video or the stripping of the soundtrack if YouTube determines that your audio track is not properly licensed. By choosing appropriately-licensed music you can have a soundtrack that’s free, legal and guilt-free.
A great source of legal music is Jamendo. Most of their music is avilable under one of the Creative Commons licenses. The most useful of these is the Creative Commons Attribution License (abbreviated to CC-BY). You can use CC-BY music freely, even commercially (e.g. on a website that includes advertisements).
You are allowed to share and remix any CC-BY work, provided you attribute the work (provide credit to its creator). You can browse hundreds of CC-BY-licensed albums from this Jamendo page. Here’s a page from which you can access Jamendo music under other CC licenses.
The Internet Archive also has a great collection of Open Source Music, mostly licensed under the various Creative Commons licenses.
For your YouTube video, you might also want sound effects. The Freesound Project has a great collection of downloadable sound effects. The ones I checked used the Creative Commons Sampling Plus license, which lets you freely use them to create commercial or noncommercial mashups, provided you credit the creator.
You could also check out ccmixter, although most of their music is available for non-commercial use only.
Kevin MacLeod has released as large collection of his music under CC-BY.
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You can also use music form Royalty Free Music Libraries such as themusicase or opuzz for use in You Tube Videos or home productions. Music available on these sites is suitable for productions.
The term “royalty free”, as used on those sites and elsewhere, generally means that you pay a fixed licensing fee rather than per-copy royalties. It’s neither free-as-in-beer (“gratis”) nor free-as-in-speech (“libre”).
The term “free” in “royalty-free” means free of ongoing royalties collectible through performing rights organizations such as BMI, ASCAP, PRS etc. The one time license fee allows you to pay one fee and use the music in your project for the duration of the contract. On sites such as stockmusic.net the duration is unlimited (for life), so you are free to sell and distribute your video/project in perpetuity.
What you say is true, but it’s not what is understood as “free” by the average YouTuber.
Also, the license may be for life, but these licenses typically have all kinds of restrictions (e.g. the license does not transfer if you sell the rights to your video, or you can’t include the licensed media in a collection of similar media).
In my opinion it’s best to stick with media that is free (as in speech), i.e. you can do what you want with it. If it’s also free (as in beer), that’s even better.
One advantage of using stock music sites is that by paying a fee to a reputable company you have a license agreement which clearly outlines the terms of usage. I would argue that it is dangerous to use free music without some sort of license agreement. Also FYI at sites such as stockmusic.net there are no restrictions on what you can do with your video. It can be broadcast, licensed and distributed worldwide in perpetuity without any additional costs. The “pay once, use forever” model has been adopted by both the stock image and stock music industry as fairly standard.