So to save yourself from getting banned, sued, or just having your video full of hard work removed, here are a few of my favorite sites to find free music. This is not an all-inclusive list, but if I’m missing any big ones, feel free to let me know and I’ll add ‘em.

Incompetech – Operated by the Great Kevin MacLeod. He also has some nifty stuff on there like sheet music and graph paper.

CCMixter – Music and a lot more – geared towards making remixes, so there are lots of great loops and samples.

Music Alley – Formerly music.podshow.com. A GREAT place to find lots and lots of creative commons music. You need an rss feed to sign up (but who doesn’t have one of those anymore?) and it’s a hair tricky to navigate at first, but the number of songs available blows the mind. Totally worth the effort.

Jamendo – Great site that allows you to download entire albums from contributing artists.

Audionautix – Not as robust as some of the other sites, but what it does have is absolutely awesome.

DanoSongs - Again, not as much content as some of the big guys, but goods stuff nonetheless.

Archive.org – USE THIS LINK! No really, this is the motherlode. Archive.org is the intenet repository for all things copyleft, creative commons, or public domain. You will also find video footage, and all sorts of othr goodies, and it’s all easy to download. Probably one of the coolest and simultaneously most overlooked sites on the net.

FreeSound – Focuses on “sounds” as opposed to songs, but still – mega awesome site. If you’ve ever needed foley or audio effects for your videos, this is an invaluable link. PS – there are some sorta music-ish things there.

FreePD – From that nefarious genius Kevin MacLeod comes yet another awesome site. As opposed to incompetech, which is creative commons licensed, these songs are completely public domain. This is yet another reason why we love Kevin

Remix.Kwed – Somewhere along the lines, this C64 site morphed into another great site full of outstanding free music.

TBT Music – A few good songs on here. Hope you speak German.

Newgrounds – More hiphop style stuff, but lots of good tunes. Be warned, there is background music playing by default when you go to the site (you can turn this off)

Simuze – If you don’t speak Dutch you might have a tough time understanding everything on the site, but hey, the music is great!

Section Z – An online music community. Good free stuff there.

OPSOUND – Piles and piles of free music. Enjoy!

Jamglue – Another site that caters towards remixing music. CAREFUL! This site doesn’t police their content too well, and I’ve found some copyrighted stuff on it. Make sure you know that what you’re using is good before you use it!

Audio Farm – Another site chock full of awesome free music.

Okay, so those are the only ones that come to mind off the top of my head. I know there are more out there, but that should get you started. One word to the wise: respect the creators of these songs. If their license doesn’t allow derivatives, that means don’t use it. If they say no commercial use, YouTube partners & other monetizers should at the very least ask the artist for permission first. I’ve done this before and the artist was happy to allow me to use his song.

Good luck, and happy filmmaking!

Creative Commons Rocks!