3 Free Music Sites for Teachers and Students
Part of empowering students to create content requires providing them with copyright-friendly sources of media to use in their work. While many sites provide free images for use in student work, it can be difficult to find free music that students can use in their projects. The 3 free music sites below provide a great selection of songs that students can easily download.
Free Music Archive
All of the music available on this site can be downloaded for free. You can browse songs by genre in one of 15 categories including rock, hip-hop, classical, jazz, and more. Most of the audio on this site falls under a Creative Commons license, but I have found some songs that are designated as “download only” and wouldn’t be suitable for use in student projects. Luckily the license type for all songs is clearly indicated, and they even provide a very helpful licensing cheat sheet.
Musopen
Musopen is a “non-profit focused on increasing access to music by creating free resources and educational materials.” They have a large catalog of music that can be downloaded for free and used without copyright restrictions. You can browse songs by composer, performer, instrument, time period, or form.
Royalty Free Music
To be clear, royalty-free music doesn’t necessarily mean it’s free. You may still need to purchase a license to use the songs. However, the kind folks at Royalty Free Music provide teachers access to an awesome collection of songs for classroom use for free. They just ask that you complete a simple application, and place a link on your school’s website to RoyaltyFreeMusic.com (a media resources page is appropriate). It seems like a reasonable request for higher quality tracks that normally start at about a dollar each.
Looking for More Resources?
Check out my earlier posts:
- Free Stock Music for Student Projects
- Free, Copyright-Friendly Images for Education
- Find Copyright-Free, Properly Cited Images for Student Use
- Three Ways to Search for Copyright-Friendly Images
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