Getting Free Music and Art for Flash Work

Free stuff like music and photographs is good, right? You bet it's good! There's nothing like getting some really cool music to make your Flash movie great, or at least a lot better.

It's been said that if an animator has to choose between making a movie with so-so animation, but great music and sound effects, and making a movie with great art, but cheesy sound or music, choose the movie with great sound and music. Your audience will tolerate the poor art rather than poor sound.

Now, where can you get free stuff that is copyright-free, the art, tunes and photos that you can use in your Flash movies that are all copyright free?

Many Flash animators go ahead and use copyrighted music from famous artists and run the risk of their work being discovered by that artist or their attorney and getting into copyright infringement trouble. Most of time they get away with it as their work doesn't get all that well known except in parts of the Net, but there's no need to risk it.

Free music!

Good sounding music can be hand on the Net for free on certain websites such as www.cnet.com and www.flashkit.com, the great website for Flash animators. Flashkit always has quality sound loops/music lasting from a few seconds to up to a minute in length in all kinds of genres, such as heavy metal, rock, classical, country, etc. Very often the composer or artist will offer their music for free in exchange for mentioning their name in your work for PR. A very good deal indeed!

If you are into peer-to-peer file exchange, you will often find free promotional music that is offered as public domain just so the artist can get some PR as mentioned above. If you can correspond with them via e-mail to get their permission to use their music in your animation, they will probably happily agree to let you use it to give them more exposure. Quid pro quo works!

Almost all classical music is public domain.

I like using a lot of classical music like from Beethoven and Liszt which are so old they are in the public domain. Music composed and performed before 1921 are in the public domain forever and can be used without fear of copyright infringment. I use MIDI a great deal to play classical music and record them here in my studio as wave files for my animation work.

A lot of music, and movies by the way, made AFTER 1921 are also in the public domain simply because some lawyer goofed up by forgetting to file the proper renewal paperwork. For instance, the Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed movie, It's a Wonderful Life is in the public domain even though it had been made and copyrighted just after world war II. Why? Someone messed up, forgot to renew its copyright and it went public domain about 20 years ago.

Some detective work on the Web can turn up the names of songs that have likewise gone public domain and are free for your work.

Free Stuff From Uncle Sam!

One thing that many animators don't know is that the United States government as well as state governments turn out free music and photographs all the time and they are all copyright free by law. You may wonder, does the U.S. government perform and record music? Yes! All the time, and every bit of it free.

You have heard of the Marine Corps Band of course. But did you know that the other branches of the miliary have bands and vocal groups and they make available online their music as mp3s? For instance the U.S. Air Force has a number of vocal groups such as the Singing Sargeants. I've downloaded many of their Christmas songs for my animation work. As it is done by employees of the U.S. government, it is free.

Free pictures!

It is the same with photographs as well. And Uncle Sam has millions of photographs available online. For instance, think of the number of photographs that NASA has taken as well as numerous films and videos. ALL of these are copyright free; they are in the public domain. All space photographs from government astronomical observatories are the same way, free. Videos seen on the NASA channel on TV are free.

Those war scenes of air battles, naval battles and so on were shot by military photographers or cameramen. Public domain.

Remember, websites with a .mil or .gov on the end of the URL contain copyright materials unless they are using material donated to them by a private individual, whereupon the government site will mention this. Material done by a private individual ARE protected. State university websites may also contain public domain material done by their staff. This is probably different for private schools.

As time permits, I will post URLs of more sites that offer free music and photographs, so check back once in a while! Cheers!