You can also get royalty free music included with software and postproduction software packages. Most of the music is looped, however. Sony Sound Forge throws in free music on top of 1,000 free sound effects. Pinnacle is another package that throws in free music and sound effects.
The composer of my 22 minute production was asking where I got the music for the one minute trailer of my film, its from freebee music thrown im from a software package. The music is looped. It is not really cut for the images on the screen. It's always best to get music that moves with the images on screen.
Finally, my favorite source for music is local musicians. I love original scores and sometime they will work for free or close to it to have their music in a movie.
Though it's oftentimes a hit or miss situation, you could try diving into the audio portal in newgrounds.com.
I find some really good stuff there on occasion but make no mistake it did take some searching to find what I needed.Once I did though, I just asked the artists and so far they've always given me a green light to use their stuff, only asking for a mention in the credits
My personal favorite is Free Music Archive. Not everything there is free for commercial use, but you can search for CC-licensed work that is. There's some fantastic music from a lot of great indie bands included there.
There seems to be some confusion in the original post as to what Royalty Free music is...
All that means is that the artist is not paid a royalty every time the music is used. What you need is "Free licensing" for music.
There seems to be some confusion in the original post as to what Royalty Free music is...
All that means is that the artist is not paid a royalty every time the music is used. What you need is "Free licensing" for music.
Yes, that's true. You don't really need royalty free music for your project, you just need cheap synchronization and master use rights. That's the best way to go. If you're searching for truly royalty free music, you are bound to find a lot of lower quality music. If you use music that is not truly 'royalty free,' you won't have to pay the royalties - the performing entity (theater in non-US, broadcast or cable station, etc.) will pay the royalty through a blanket license with the PRO (ASCAP, BMI), not the content creator.
It's fully searchable with a large amount of metadata (instruments, genres, moods, etc.). Many of the tracks also have stems and/or alternate versions. For certain projects, I'm willing to license them for very cheap. It's technically not 'royalty free' since, if you were to use it and you were able to get your project on a television or cable station, I would collect royalties for it. However, this would be of no cost to you as the project creator.