FAQ
Can I use your music for free?
Anyone can use my music for free as long as you credit me. Keep reading for the restrictions
Can I include your music in my video game?
Yes, you can! As long as there's proper credit
Can I use your music in my film/TV show/Radio?
Yes, you can! As long as there's proper credit
Can I use your music in my non-profit project?
Yes, you can! As long as there's proper credit. Except if the main purpose of your project is to distribute this music in a bundle or compilation, whether for free or not
Can I use your music in my for-profit project?
Yes, you can! Keep reading for a few restrictions, but only a very small set of uses are restricted.
I want to use your music in this Youtube video I made. Is it ok?
Yes! As long as there's proper credit (i.e at the end of the video or in the description, we'd prefer both)
I want to place ads in this Youtube video I told you about, and perhaps make some money.
It is ok! As long as there's proper credit (see previous question)
Restrictions
What are those 'restrictions' you're talking about?
Basically the restriction is to prevent other sites or physical media from competing with us with our own themes. For example you cannot include the music in a bundle or compilation just to distribute random stuff (i.e. 250 themes in a CD, or a compilation of random demos, software, pictures and music).
For example:
A website that plays our music in the background and sells a spa session: OK
A media player that includes a few tracks as sample themes: OK
A software application that uses our music in the background (i.e. a video game): OK
A software application that uses our music for interactive purposes (i.e. a rythm video game): OK
A website where you can download music, including ours (like Soundcloud, freemusicarchive.org): NOT OK
A software used as a backend to sell our music: NOT OK
Can I resell your music?
No. You can't do that.
I want to upload your music to Soundcloud/Bandcamp
Sorry, you can't do that; unless the track was heavily modified or remixed (and proper credit is given).
I want to help you guys! I want to mirror your site!
Sorry, you can't do that. If you want to help us, you can Donate or tell your friends through Twitter and Facebook.
If you wish to support us with additional bandwidth from your servers, contact us.
I use your music in my Open Source Software, but it is included in a Debian repository (or Ubuntu, or RPM-based, etc)
There is no problem in our music being packaged with software included in OSS repositories.
My software uses your music, but we store it just as regular ogg/mp3 files in the installation folder
It's ok to include the files unhidden or without access protection. However the software must be using the majority* of those files at some point as part of it's normal operation, otherwise it starts looking more like a bundle or compilation.
* We understand that during development cycle some files get dropped yet still somehow manage it's way to the installer even after being deployed. That's why we say "majority" and not "all" of the files
Legal
Do you own the rights to the music in this site?
Yes. All the music in this site was produced by me.
Do I have to put the credit where people can see it?
Yes. Credits vary between media, but in general a credit needs to be placed such that a person who wants to know where the music came from should have no difficulty in finding it. A reasonable effort may be expended (e.g. clicking on a credits option) but the credit should not be obscured.
What if I cannot credit you?
The license page section called Type 2 contains information about other licensing options.
Can I change or remix your music?
Do whatever modification you want, but you MUST make it clear that you made modifications of your own. It's not necessary if you just fade in/out or cut and splice
Can you provide us the ISRC numbers of your tracks?
We're not providing ISRC numbers for the time being. Keep an eye on it, as we're evaluating this possibility.
Personal
Why are you doing this?
The question is why not? I'm a 60 year old father. I'm currently unemployed. I always loved music and composed as a hobby. A year ago my son introduced me to a MIDI Controller and a DAW. He's making a video game project and was in need for a soundtrack.
I was reluctant at first, but I was amazed at what a DAW could achieve. We don't have many fancy software because it's expensive, so we're trying as much tricks as we can, combining synthetized music with live recordings with the little equipment we have.
I want my music to be heard. Get critic and feedback from a real audience, and mainly from professional peers. There is no point in having those pieces sitting there in the Hard Drive. My son made a few video games, and one of the very first ones used high quality music from some guy called Kevin MacLeod. He helped my son a lot; and may be, I can do the same for someone else too.
There are many more reasons to it, for example we believe in being kind to others, and we also believe there are many ways to harness and monetize modern ways of sharing music. The old traditional model is just not for us. I could keep writting an entire page about the reasons.
Technical
Why Ogg format?
My son handles that stuff. He says: "Ogg has superior quality to MP3, and is patent free. Adding MP3 playback capabilities to a software application means that they'll have to pay for patent royalties. This forces many projects to reencode the files to Ogg. Also embedding into a video means the audio is probably going to be reencoded, so we prefer if you get the maximum original quality in the first place"
High quality? Some of your downloads are 220 kbps!
According to my son: "Whether that's considered "high" or "low" quality is highly debatable. What we can tell you is that we encode all sound files using -q9 setting VBR (Variable rate), which is 320kbps. Because it's VBR, the site is showing you the actual final bitrate. If it were constant bit rate, it would show 320 kbps for all tracks"
Why not FLAC or WAV?
Hosting may be relatively cheap, but it isn't free. If there is enough demand for it we may consider adding a paid service to download the FLAC versions.
I'm having issues with the online preview
We use the HTML5 audio tag controls. You're going to need a recent browser. We recommend Firefox and Opera as we've tested them thoroughly. Chrome should work too.
Internet Explorer 9 has shown significant errors while trying to use HTML5 controls. Apparently it doesn't like custom CSS for the default controls, and it also won't load if preload is set to none until the user right clicks on the empty space and hits play.
We've also managed to test Opera Mobile for Android 4.0 and it works correctly.
Other
Is there any sheet music of your themes?
It's not within my plans to release sheet music.
Will you compose original pieces only for me for free?
No, sorry.
Will you compose original pieces for me if I pay you?
If you need scoring services, you can contact Horacio M. Goldberg (me).
Do you know of any other places I can get good music for free?
Yes, Kevin MacLeod @ incompetech.com is our favourite. He's really awesome
