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Free CD-Quality Music

Posted by timothy on from the get-yourself-a-foley-box dept.

Scaife writes "I make a video project for school each year, and this year we want to produce it on DVD and sell it. The only catch is that we don't have the time or money to get copyright permissions for the 100+ songs we use for it. I'm wondering if there is a large repository of CD-quality royalty-free music somewhere. Whenever I try and take one of the royalty-free MP3s available on the web and use it on a DVD, the quality is awful as it pops and hisses. I suppose this is because of the lossy compression. Any ideas?"

6 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Re:pops & hisses? by Meowing · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A less-than-great decoder can cause that too, and a really common mistake is to assume that because a player is popular, it must be a good one. There's lots of good stuff out there, lots of crap too. This applies equally to commercial and open-source offerings.

  2. Hit up local bands by n1ywb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd hit up all your up and coming local bands for cheap rights. They'll usually do anything for exposure, maybe even let you use their stuff for free.

    --
    -73, de n1ywb
    www.n1ywb.com
  3. Re:pops & hisses? by Meowing · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One big problem for a long time was that a lot of (badly) "optimized" versions of the reference Fraunhofer code were in circulation. There were also some commercial outfits (I think Xing was one) that tended to put out just plain buggy libraries. All this code ended up embedded into lots of front ends.

    So it's definitely worth pipng the mpeg streams into a variety of decoders to see if the results improve.

  4. Easy peasy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Just have your video point to *.mp3, and it'll play whatever is on the guy's computer. It'll make for a surreal experience the next day...
    "You know the part where that song ..."
    "No, it's that song by..."
    "No way!"

  5. Master Zap by Apreche · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's an awesome dude called Master Zap. He's got some of the best techno tracks I've ever heard. I listen to his stuff all the time, and he gives it away for free at www.z4p.com and www.mp3.com. He also has CDs. He's looking for a job too. He's the kind of guy who can probably hook you up.
    There are also tonss of college kids who make music with keyboards and PCs in their dorm rooms. I know of about 5 just in one or two colleges, I'm sure there are tons more elsewhere. Just find one of them and have them help you out. Even better, just head to a local dance club and talk to the DJ after he's done, if you like his stuff.
    If you want rock, find a place with a live band. Or find one of those shitty cover bands and have them play shit for you. They'll do anything for a little bit of green.

    --
    The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
  6. A few thoughts by _iris · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm pretty sure you don't need to pay royalties if it will only be used for school credit.