MakeUseOf » royalty free

Here Are 5 Resources For Royalty Free Music

Joshua Lockhart — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 01:30:39 +0000

A while back, we received a question on MakeUseOf Answers asking where in the world one can get royalty free music. Naturally, as someone who is constantly searching for this Holy Grail, I jumped on it.

So, dear MakeUseOf readers, I felt that this is a question worthy enough to expand upon. I’m quite sure that some of you out there are wondering where to find royalty free music whether you’re a videomaker, a game developer, or one of those neo-artist stage performance poets that uses a combination of visual imagery, weird music, and the occasional bit of innocent nudity. So with that being said, I’m here to bring you some quality royalty free music.

Vimeo Music Store

The Vimeo Music Store is a brilliant tool to use when in search for music for your videos. Although there are several free items available via the Creative Commons, there are actually a few songs that you can pay for either personal use ($1.99) or for commercial use ($98). The Vimeo Music Store is a nice consolidated catalog of music from all genres, and the best part about it is that each song on the store is available to use for your videos. This way, you do not have to do as much digging. However, you will have to lurk around if you want to find free royalty free songs, and it’s a little harder if you want to use them commercially without paying a dime.

SoundCloud

I recently discovered the beauty of SoundCloud, and the fact is this – they have an entire section of their site devoted to the Creative Commons. What does that mean for you? Well, my friend, it means there is a ton of music out there waiting on you to use it in a personal project. SoundCloud also offers quite a bit of search classifications, so you can find songs with CC licenses that allow for commercial use or without the share alike option. It seems like a good deal to me, and I’ve been using their music for quite a few projects lately.

Free Music Archive

The Vimeo Music Store pulls some of their music from the Free Music Archive, but I decided to go ahead and throw it in as a separate entity for a couple of reasons. One, it seems like the Vimeo Music Store doesn’t include all of the songs on here, for it constantly updates. Two, it also seems like there is some differing information between the sites.

For instance, I used a song that I got from the Vimeo Music store for free, and on their site, it said I could only use it for noncommercial purposes. However, when I saw it on the Free Music Archive, it said I could use it for commercial purposes with attribution. Either way, both are excellent sources of music, and I would recommend this site for sure. Granted, I cannot guarantee everything on this site will be available for you to use.

Incompetech

We couldn’t have this article without mentioning Kevin MacLeod, the mastermind behind Incompetech. MacLeod’s website offers quite a bit of music for your royalty free needs, and it is absolutely fantastic. He does offer a PayPal donation system (as does AudioNautix, actually), so if you feel the need to support him, you can do so. However, his music is great for whatever you need, and there is nothing else I can really say except that you should go give it a listen.

AudioNautix

After submitting my answer to MUO answers (which included the Vimeo Music Store), I went back to see if anybody else had brought anything to the table. Fortunately, someone did, and that was MUO reader ha14, who suggested AudioNautix, another site for royalty free music. The site offers everything including tracks for cinematic works and documentaries, but what i really liked about it was simply how easy it was to understand the usage rights of this music. You can pretty much use it for anything, so… go do that. Right now.

Conclusion

These are simply my top four picks for royalty free music (with ha14′s tacked on), and each of them have quality stuff. You normally won’t see a whole lot of good music that you can use in projects, and each of these resources has a different flavor for everyone.

What other royalty free music resources do you use? What do you like or not like about the ones mentioned here?

Image Credit: imelenchon

6 Free Websites For Public Domain Images & Free Stock Photos

Tina Sieber — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 23:31:06 +0000

Public Domain refers to material that is ‘publicly available’ and not covered by intellectual property or copyrights. In today’s media, where visual art is abundant, there is a high demand for images, for example for webdesign projects. As a consequence, there are many stock photography websites where artists can sell their photographs or image designs. There are, however, also resources that feature royalty free stock photos that are in the public domain.

Public Domain Pictures

This page is a repository for public domain images. It is maintained solely by its users, who can upload and download images for free. Some photos require a model or property release, when used commercially. This, however, is a general requirement for photos. Material can easily be browsed by various categories, including professional or seasonal photos. Image tags allow an easy search.

The page for each image contains detailed information about the license, the camera used to take it, and links to the artist. The website cleverly supports the creators by offering a premium download and the option to buy the artist a coffee.

Wikimedia Commons

Most images used on Wikipedia are part of the Wikimedia Commons, a database of over 10 million freely usable media files, including public domain images. Recently, for example, the Russian International News Agency has donated 100 historical photographs from their archives. Media files can be surfed by topic, location, type, author, license, and source. Each of these categories has subcategories, to refine the search. You can also search files by tags.

The dedicated page for each features details about the item, including the permission for use and any licenses associated with the file. For most media files you will find that the copyright has simply expired and it has thus moved to the public domain.

Image After

Image After describes itself as the raw base for your creativity. The images provided on this page all underline the same terms of use, which basically are that you can use the images for anything, other than building a page that is in direct competition with Image After.

You can simply search images or use the thorough options, which allows you to sort an image category for example by size, then filter it by color. You can also search based on image tags.

Public Domain Photos

The 5,000 photos and 8,000 free clip arts on this page can be used for any purpose, including commercial. The photos are typically provided in a single high resolution. They are tagged and sorted into categories, offering you two ways to easily find them.

Stock.XCHNG

This resource for free stock photos has been so popular that not only have we mentioned it multiple times on MakeUseOf, it was also recently acquired by Getty Images.

Stock.XCHNG presently contains almost 400,000 photos and many of them are royalty free with no further usage restrictions. You can quickly view the restrictions in the availability field underneath the respective image. Some artists request to be notified or credited, others only require standard restrictions, which are defined by the Stock.XCHNG.

To download material you have to sign up with Stock.XCHNG.

Flickr

Flickr is an obvious resource, yet it is often neglected. Using the advanced search feature, you can search only photos with a Creative Commons license that allows you to use the content commercially and/or modify, adapt, or build upon the content. These two licenses in combination essentially make the image ‘public domain’ in that you can use it for anything. However, the license restriction is that you have to credit the original creator.

If you are looking for very specific images, you should check out the public domain image resources listed on Wikipedia. They feature historical images, as well as visual arts, logos, books, and more.

A site that has been recommended many times in comments to previous articles is morgueFile. Unfortunately, the site was very slow when I tested it, hence it is not properly included in this article.

For more royalty free image resources, check out the following articles:

Where do you get your public domain or royalty free images from?

Image credits: Petr Jilek

How To Use Royalty-Free Music & Effects From GarageBand [Mac]

Bakari Chavanu — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:31:49 +0000

When Apple introduced Garageband as part of its creative suite of software in iLife ’04, it gave Mac users hundreds of royalty-free music loops and effects that could used by both musicians and non-musicians alike. If you’re familiar with the over 1,000 pre-recorded cuts, you can occasionally hear them in television commercials and Hollywood shows.

Of all the iLife programs, Garageband may be the least used by Mac users, but the software is not just for creating original songs. The royalty-free loops can be useful for all types of creative purposes, including background music for family slide shows, various YouTube presentations, wedding and birthday videos, ringtones, podcast introductions and outros, opening and closing credits, news jingles, and much more.

The only extra cost you pay for loops is the time it takes discover what you’re looking for. So if you have never tapped into this resource, read the following tips and techniques.

Where To Find Them

Garageband loops are of course housed in the application itself. Since its inception, Garageband has grown with many new and often intimidating features. But if you”˜re opening Garageband ’09 or the recently released ’11 version for the first time, you might feel a little intimidated by the choices.

So to get your hands on the loops, choose File > New in Garageband. Next, select New Project and then Loops, to open them in Garageband.

On the right side panel of Garageband, click the podcast sounds panel.

These same podcast loops can be found in the media panels of the last couple of versions of iMovie, iPhoto, and iDVD, so you don’t have to open Garageband in order to access them.

Types Of Loops & Effects

There are 418 sound effects and loops to choose from to fit almost any media project. If you’re looking for short background music for a baby shower or a wedding slide show, for example, click on All Effects > Cinematic, and click the preview button for loops titled, Newborn and Patel Slide Long.

Click on the Jingles sections and you get hundreds of loops that will work great as background music for slideshows, opening and ending credits of videos, as well as podcasts.

How To Use Them

The length of Garageband loops and effects are from under a minute to two minutes long. To use one or more of them, select and drag a loop into the editor and play it several times. Go back through the loop collection and find other loops and effects that you can use to build on.

One of the reasons they’re called loops is that they can be repeated as often as you like. Put your cursor at the upper-right edge of a loop (technically called, “region”) and hold it there until the loop pointer appears. Drag to the right to repeat the loop. Notches will appear showing the beginning and end of each repeated loop.

If you have some time and a good ear for music, you can of course combine loops to make them longer. Garageband includes several music editing tools and features to help your tracks sound pristine and professional. You can slice, duplicate, edit, and mix various sound effects to into loops, as well as add fade-ins and fade-outs to tracks.

Saving Loops

To save and use your loop projects outside of Garageband, you simply choose Share in the Garageband menu bar and select, “Send Song to iTunes“. When tracks are exported to iTunes, you can access them in the Media Browser of other iLife applications.

Upon saving a Garageband project, you can also select to save it to the iLife Media Browser, which means your particular project will show up in the other iLife applications.

Loops & iMovie Titles

Now let’s take a quick look at how loops and effects can be used with titles in iMovie. Launch the program and create a new project.

Select a Title theme and drag it into the Project storyboard.
Now click on the Music and Sound Effects in the iMovie toolbar.

For the purposes of this tutorial, select the Stringers collection of effects, from the pop-up menu.
Scroll to the bottom and select the Synth Zingers 04 effect. Drag that loop to the beginning of the title clip.

Now select the longer Synthetic Design 02 sound and drag it onto the title clip. It will fit the length of the clip.

Hit the iMovie play button and you will see and hear an example of how loops and sound effects can be used in iMovie video productions.

There are no limits to using Garageband loops and sound effects. Since the iLife suite is often included in all new Macs, there’s no reason not to give them a try.

How To Search & Credit Properly-Licensed Photos On Flickr [Firefox]

Ann Smarty — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 01:31:26 +0000

Flickr is an amazing resource of creative images. It’s always been the main source of inspiration to me.

I once listed some awesome Flickr search tools that are HUGE fun to use and Nancy did a great job explaining how to upload and use Flickr photos the easy way.

This post takes a bit different focus: it attempts to make it clearer for everyone which Flickr photos they are allowed to re-use and how to easily find and credit them. Anyone who has a blog may have used images published on Flickr but not everyone knows how to properly do that.

You are only permitted to use images under Creative Commons with appropriate license.

The most common Creative Commons licenses you may see on Flickr are:

Note aside: You can read more about various licenses here, also you can hopefully understand what can and should be understood as “noncommercial” by joining the discussion here.

License/ Allowed:	Icon	Publish	Modify	Credit
Attribution-NoDerivs License		Yes (even for commercial use)	No	Yes (Required)
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License		Yes (not commercial)	No	Yes (Required)
*Attribution-ShareAlike License*		Yes (even for commercial use)	Yes	Yes (Required)

Now, with that in mind, let’s see how we can easily find and use properly-licensed images on Flickr:

1. Flickr Creative Commons Search On FireFox

1. Flickr CC (Most Interesting) (Small Thumbnails)

This search plugin by Callum MacDonald:

Searches through Flickr Creative Commons-licensed content,
Sorts images by “Most Interesting”
Forces Flickr to display small thumbnails for you to easier scroll through the search results.

Install the search plugin here

Results may be not exactly on topic (compared to sorted by relevant ones) but this search will work nicely to help you brainstorm and get you inspired.

2. Flickr CC BY Search

This one is a similar version to the above search plugin (it also forces small thumbnails and filters by Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution) but for a couple of essential differences:

It sorts by relevancy;
It is enhanced with search suggestions (powered by Google).

Install the search plugin here

This one will inspire you first by showing the related searches (which may expand your search) and then listing you small thumbnails of related images you can use on your site.

Flickr Creative Commons – Attribution Help

So we have that handy HTML code generated by Flickr that allows to quickly embed a Flickr-hosted image on any page (in any of available sizes).

However Creative Commons Attribution requires that images be credited the way the author prefers them to be and normally a person would like to be mentioned as the image creator. Besides, giving a credit to the image author is just polite.

Moreover, you often want to host the image locally – and that hosted code is pretty much useless in that case.

This handy Greasemonkey script will help you quickly grab the attribution HTML code: it will generate the proper credit HTML for you to quickly copy it to your page:

When added to a page, this will look the following way:

I am sure, as a blogger and / or active web surfer, you have lots of your own tricks and tips on finding and re-publishing awesome Flickr photos. It would be great to share some of them in the comments!

Post image by openDemocracy

Free Music Zilla – Easily Download Music From Social Websites

Simon Slangen — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 18:31:19 +0000

Downloading videos from YouTube is old news – there are effectively hundreds of online services and a full score of Firefox add-ons that will help you with this. Other social audio or video websites pose more of a challenge.

As most of you will know, your playlist controls are rather restricted in Last.fm. You can’t pause or navigate songs, never mind downloading; that’s what makes the service so cheap to use.

Downloading songs from Last.fm instead of YouTube poses a number of advantages; not least when we’re reviewing audio quality. Nevertheless, actually retrieving the mp3 files is an intricate tale, with more than enough blood, sweat and tears to mimic a war zone – Jason K. talked you through the process with Proxomitron and Firefox. Using Free Music Zilla, it gets a whole lot easier.

Free Music Zilla

Last.fm isn’t the only social music service, but they all tell a similar tale. There are different advantages to different services, but downloading the music is far from easy. Free Music Zilla, a free, light-weight Windows application, can help you with almost all of those services, including Last.fm, Pandora, Myspace, IMEEM, eSnips, MOG and iJigg.

Unlike the well-known and often used YouTube Downloader, Free Music Zilla doesn’t track down your file from the web URL. Instead, it keeps a close eye on your internet activity and sniffs out all music files that are present on the webpage.

Any Browser You Want

These tools often work in conjunction with add-ons for one specific browser. Free Music Zilla tracks your browser activity from the outside in, so you don’t need to install any additional add-ons. This enables you to use it with nearly any browser you want.

Free Music Zilla monitors only Internet Explorer and Firefox by default. If you use a different browser, you’ll have to give the application a hand. Open the Tools menu and select Preferences. Under the Monitoring tab, you can enable your browser. Locate more obscure browsers by checking Custom and navigating to your browser, or if you use multiple browsers on your PC, enable all of them.

How To Download MP3 Files From A Social Service

To download an MP3 file to your computer, first make sure your browser is enabled in the settings (see above) and Free Music Zilla is running. With your browser, surf to the social service and use it like you normally would. Once you hear something you like, switch to Free Music Zilla, where you should see the file listed; MP3 if the content is audio-only, MOV, MP4 or FLV if video is included. If you’re unsure which file to download, look at the time it was added.

You can tick off the checkbox next to a file and hit the Download button to save it to your computer. You have to especially mind the Leech Timeout column. This is inherent to the anti leech protection these social services use, and what makes it so hard to download. Once the countdown reaches zero, you’ll be unable to download the file, so try to make it fast enough.

Free Music Zilla is one of the most – no, the easiest tool to download from sites like IMEEM and Last.fm. Do you know any other alternatives? Let us know in the comments below!

3 Sources To Stream Or Download Live Music for Free

Tina Sieber — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:30:04 +0000

I have to admit I’m addicted to live music. When booking a vacation, my main concern is that I’ll miss a great show at home.

This year I’m leaving Berlin for good and it hurts to see that Gossip and Pearl Jam will perform live after I have left. I saw both bands in 2009, so I know what I’ll miss out on.

However, as I start looking around my new home I find good news all over. Shinedown are touring North America and they will play a show in Calgary at the end of May and another one in Vancouver in June. Guess where I’m headed.

The best way to refresh memories of a great show is to obtain a bootleg and re-listen to it on tape. Until about 15 years ago, it was quite complicated to get your hands on a live recording. Today, however, the internet makes it incredibly simple to stream live music free. Here are three legal resources for streaming or downloading free live music.

Wolfgang’s Vault

Allegedly the place where live music lives, Wolfgang’s Vault is one of the greatest archives to stream live music for free. Besides many unknown bands, it provides recordings from many mainstream artists. The sidebar lists the most famous performers, among them U2, Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith, and The Beatles. The available shows reach back to the early 60′s.

With a free membership, you can play the music online. VIP members receive enhanced streaming and can download several concerts as MP3.

Live Music Archive

Over 70,000 items from almost 4,000 bands can be downloaded for free from the Live Music Archive. All music is provided by trade friendly artists, who “grant fans the privilege of freely trading some of their music.” This means that all material is non-commercial, i.e. free and unsalable.

You can browse artists by name, MP3, 24-bit FLAC, lossless-only recordings, most downloaded items ever or last week and more.

To be honest, the archive is not intuitive to use. In fact, it’s rather difficult to discover new interesting bands as there is no way to browse by genre. Fortunately, it’s possible to stream most shows to a media player such as Winamp before downloading the entire ZIP file. I also like that you can search by venue or city.

LiveMetallica

Metallica has an entire website dedicated to their live shows. At The Vault you can purchase recordings of their more recent gigs. However, a handful of shows from 1982 through 2003 are free to download.

Before you can launch the advanced download manager to receive the MP3 files, you must sign in.

As mentioned in a previous article, Coldplay handed out a free live album during concerts in 2009. The album Left Right Left Right Left can also be downloaded here.

At Tiscali Showcase you can stream live music videos for free that were played exclusively for Tiscali. You’ll find videos of The Subways, Kate Walsh, The Levellers, Amy Macdonald, and Kula Shaker.

Interested in more free music? Check out my articles 3 More Exciting Ways to Discover Free Music, Top 10 Websites For Free & Legal MP3 Music Downloads, The 3 Best Free Classical Music Download Sites, Top 3 Sites To Find Free MP3 Music Downloads For European Artists, and 5 Free MP3 Full Albums You Can Download Legally Now. Finally, Tim Watson wrote about 7 Sites To Get Free Music (Legally!).

Which is your favorite live show of all time?

Image credit: Mr_Basmt

The 3 Best Free Classical Music Download Sites

Tina Sieber — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:31:16 +0000

Classical music can be an ambiguous term. It is widely used to identify the Classical period, which approximately covers the years from 1750 to 1820. On the other hand, Western art music from 1000 CE to the present is also called classical music.

The following is a list of the best classical music download sites that provide a mix of both, i.e. classical music ranging from Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods and via the 20th century to Contemporary classical music of our time.

All tracks and albums are legal to download. They are either copyleft / public domain or available under a Creative Commons license.

Classical.com

Classical.com is the classical pendant to iTunes. It contains over 450,000 tracks from 3,290 composers, which can be downloaded in exchange for a small fee.

Every week, however, an entire album is available to download for free.

As I write this article, the free download is an album of famous Strauss waltzes, available as mp3′s in 128 and 192 kbps. To download the album you must register. The form asks for an email address and password. Make sure to check or uncheck the box to subscribe or not subscribe to the newsletter, respectively.

This is a fantastic resource to discover classical music as such. Alternatively, it can be used to occasionally refresh the background music for a waiting room or office.

Wikipedia:Sound/list

This Wikipedia site is a huge repository of free classical music.

All downloads are in .ogg format. In case your hardware or software does not support .ogg files, check this Wikipedia article for information about .ogg. Alternatively, you can convert .ogg files to MP3 using FreeRIP Basic. Unfortunately, this conversion will decrease your audio quality.

Each column can be sorted alphabetically. To search a specific piece, you’d best use your browser’s inbuilt search tool. In Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome click [Ctrl] + [F] to launch the search tool.

Classic Cat

Classic Cat is the Google of classical music. The index of this classical catalog comprises over 5000 free to download pieces.

The site can be browsed by instrument, composer, performer, genre or Top X lists. Classic Cat’s top lists include “Yesterday’s Top 10″, “Classical music Top 150″, and “Top 100 Classical composers”.

Classic Cat itself does not provide the music downloads. Being a catalog, it links directly to the source, i.e. the page from which the music can be downloaded. Some pages, however, require a registration. To qualify for being listed on Classic Cat, the music has to pass some quality standards. For example, the minimum sound quality accepted is 128 kbps.

Besides audio files, you will also find sheet music, lyrics, midi, and video files.

Another music library that provides public domain classical music is Musopen. It has been profiled in our directory and I also mentioned it in my article about 3 More Exciting Ways to Discover Free Music.

Interestingly, Musopen is based on an idea from Beethoven:

There ought to be but one large art warehouse in the world, to which the artist could carry his art-works and from which he could carry away whatever he needed…

With the creation of the internet, haven’t we reached this goal already?

For what occasions do you enjoy listening to classical music? Do you have any other sources that should be listed as one of the best classical music download sites?

Image credits: jaylopez

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Media_help_%28Ogg%29

Top 5 Sites For Free Sound Effects Downloads

John McClain — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:00:12 +0000

Whether you’re working with things like video, music, animation, games, or any other media, sound is critical. The use of sound effects can make or break a project, but sometimes finding that right, good-quality piece of audio can be difficult.

Before you open up your wallet for expensive software or try to make your own sound effects, you may easily be able to find free sound effects on the Web. There are plenty of great resources available online. Best of all, it doesn’t have to cost you anything!

Have your headphones ready? Here’s the top 5 websites for free sound effects downloads.

Flash Kit

Flash Kit’s Sound FX page is one of the best places to download free sound effects. The site has over 7,000 royalty-free tracks available for download.

You can search the collection manually or browse various categories, like nature or transportation, for the sound you’re looking for.

If you come across a desirable sound effect, all of its information, including length, quality, and size, are available and you can easily preview the track before downloading. All tracks are downloadable as WAV, MP3, or Flashtrak files.

Feel free to also contribute to the archive yourself by submitting your own original sounds.

Soungle

While Soungle may look and feel like just an audio search engine, it really isn’t. The website is touted as a mega online library and it only searches its impressive growing database of sound effects.

Soungle keeps everything easy and straightforward. Search results simply include a preview, description, clip information, and if you like the sound effect, just download it. It’s as easy as that.

Soundboard

Soundboard has a massive supply of thousands of sound effects to choose from. You can either search the collection by keyword or explore the slew of soundboards, with everything from airplanes to circus animal sound effects.

Once on a soundboard page, you can listen to the playlist and download whichever tracks you like. All sound effects are MP3 files.

SoundBible

Offering thousands of sound bites and effects, SoundBible is the encyclopedia of free sound clips. The site divides its content into free sound effects or royalty-free sounds.

All the sounds are plainly listed with a preview listen button and what license each falls under. Royalty-free sounds consist of Creative Commons and public domain works.

Learn more about SoundBible in the MakeUseOf Directory.

Freesound Project

The Freesound Project is a repository of Creative Commons licensed audio samples. It’s a huge collaborative database of just sounds, so you’re bound to find what you need.

You can search through all the content by keyword or browse the popular tags. Of course, you can always contribute to the database by adding your audio samples released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License.

Still can’t find what you’re looking for? Try out FindSounds, a great search engine just for sound effects. MakeUseOf’s Directory of Apps has also got the scoop on SoundSnap, yet another resource for sound effects, however, keep in mind that the site is not entirely free anymore and you’re limited to only five free downloads a month.

Do you have a favorite website for downloading free sound effects? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: Fe Ilya

Top 5 Free Websites for Quality Copyright Free Photographs

John McClain — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 19:01:19 +0000

Stock photography is all over the place on the Web. If you’re looking for an image of just about anything, you’re bound to find that professional, high-quality photo from various online distributors and agencies, like Getty Images, Corbis, iStockphoto, or Shutterstock.

However, the downside is that all those photos are going to cost you. It’s important to understand the term “royalty-free” (RF) for those websites. RF images are not in the public domain, nor are they free to use without purchasing a license.

Luckily, there are plenty of websites for copyright free photos that won’t require you to dig into your pockets. Here’s 5 of them.

Freerange

Once you register for a free membership at Freerange, thousands of high-resolution stock photos will be at your fingertips at no cost. All of the website’s images can be used for personal or commercial projects.

For photographers, Freerange also offers Google AdSense revenue sharing when you contribute. Check out this list for more of the top websites to sell your stock photos.

Stockvault

With over 13,000 free copyright free photos, Stockvault connects designers and photographers. The photo sharing website offers all of its images for absolutely free personal or non-commercial use.

Check out more about Stockvault in MakeUseOf’s Directory.

FreeDigitalPhotos

FreeDigitalPhotos neatly organizes its thousands of photos into easy-to-find categories and sub-categories. Every image is available for free download but if you want a larger version or a high-resolution version, they’re priced at $5 and $10, respectively.

stock.xchng

SXC.hu has over 400,000 photos to choose from by more than 30,000 photographers. The website maintains that all images are free, but you must abide by its image license agreement.

Some of the site’s artists may also need to be notified about using some images, and in most cases, you’ll need to give credit to them.

Flickr

If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, you may want to actually try Flickr. The popular image hosting website has millions of images from its users who have offered their work under a Creative Commons (CC) License. All you have to do is simply pay close attention to the type of licenses each image falls under to use it appropriately.

Keep in mind that Flickr photos offered under the CC Attribution License requires you to give credit to the photographer.

Want more? MakeUseOf’s Directory of Apps has got details on MorgueFile, yet another website database for free high-resolution digital stock photos. If you’re still having trouble looking, try out PicFindr, a stock photography search engine.

If you know of any other good sites, let us know in the comments.

The Best Sites To Download Free Music

Simon Slangen — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:01:05 +0000

Someone once told me that ‘free’ doesn’t exist. Today it almost looks as if the whole world is trying to prove him wrong.

Just look at MakeUseOf, the site you’re hopefully browsing at the moment. Where in the world can you buy a magazine with (currently) 1,754 articles for free? (more if you include the Directory and Geeky Fun).

‘Free’ does exist, and it’s brought to us through the internet.

Last week we saw industry quality open-source games with Yo Frankie. This week, we’ll take a look at the audio visual side. Free industry quality movies are pretty scarce but free music can be found in many places. So, enter what in my opinion are the best sites to download free music.

Not the torrent or limewire kind; the I-take-it-without-paying-so-it’s free, but music released under creative licenses, by people who don’t think music should be a business. People who sing for emotions, not money.

Jamendo

All the music available on Jamendo is released under the Creative Commons license. This means that it can be freely listened to and used and redistributed under the same license.

The artists then get rewarded via user donations and revenues from the Jamendo’s commercial programs and partnerships.

You can browse through over 150,000 tracks by artist, album and genre, or you can use the tags for quick navigation.

All of the tracks and albums are available for download without any needed registration and can be shared over the internet using widgets.

CCHits

CCHits is a great website to find and share music under the Creative Commons license.

All the songs can be played on the spot and downloaded in MP3 format. You can browse through the different songs by date, the number of hits, or by using tags. Alternatively, you can also search through the database.

The site uses a digg-like system, in which you can ‘like’ a song. This will increase both the song’s rating and also allow you to find it easily again at a later moment.

To give songs your ‘liking’, see your listening history and your liked songs, you’ll need a Ning account. Signing up is a very quick and easy process.

The song database is somewhat limited at the moment, but this website is destined for growth. You can always help by uploading your own songs to the website.

Amie Street

Amie Street is an online marketplace for music by independent artists.

As you may have deducted from the word ‘marketplace’, not all music on this site is free, only the yet-undiscovered ones.

This is how it works: Initially, about all of the music that appears on Amie Street gets released without a price – you can then download it without paying a dime. However, as the popularity of the piece increases, the price goes up.

The trick is to browse the new releases, and find the musical pearls between them. Note that signing up is required to download an album.

Another great feature is that you can earn credits by recommending songs to friends – up to 98 cents per song – which you can use to buy some of the premium songs. The retail price of these premium songs never goes over 98 cents apiece either.

Check out our earlier story on Amie Street.

ccMixter

ccMixter hosts many a capellas and samples which can be freely downloaded and resampled by remixers. The samples can be ordered based on various categories, popularity, beats per minute, or can be looked through using search queries and tags. In short, a great place for DJs and alike to find free samples.

A lot of these remixes have also been reposted on the website, for video-makers to use or music lovers to enjoy. Among these remixes are some really high-quality works, that even most people with less interest in the genre (like me) will enjoy.

Newgrounds

Just like flash games and movies, lots of royalty-free songs are released daily on Newgrounds by aspiring musicians.

The author must be credited upon redistribution, and the music can only be used for non-commercial purposes. If you just want to play it on your computer though, there’s even less you need to worry about.

The major part of the songs consist of house and trance music, but pop, rock and even classical music is represented. Though a lot of the songs are only good to use in flash games and movies, there are also a ton of songs that wouldn’t look out of place on the average radio station.

Do you know of any other good site to download free legal music? Do you want to share a song with the other readers? Give your opinions and suggestions a nice home in the comments section below.

Picture Credits: marimoon