The Best Places To Get Royalty-Free Music & Sound Effects

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Dec 08 2008

Posted at 12:11 am under best of the year, web 2.0

Now that my students are getting more comfortable making online slideshows, they’re also getting more interested in including music (and sound effects) into their creations.

Some of the online slideshow sites listed in The Best Ways To Create Online Slideshows already have music that can easily be incorporated into user-created slideshows, but with Flowgram you have to upload your own. There are quite a few sites with royalty-free music available, and a great resource to identify a bunch of them is Mathew Needleman’s Royalty Free Music And Images post.

However, I’m also looking for the easiest and most accessible sites that can be used by an English Language Learner or anyone who is not particularly tech-savvy. So I’ve pulled a few from Mathew’s list, and also included several additional ones. Mathew’s list, though, continues to be one of the best ones around and I’d encourage you to check it out.

I don’t really give details about the sites I’m listing here because they’re all very similar — the music and sounds here are royalty-free and it’s just an easy matter of searching and downloading them. Of course, credit should be given to the source when they’re used in online projects. I’ve also tried avoiding sites that have obvious content not appropriate for classroom use, but something might have slipped by me.

I also don’t believe that any of the sites here require any software download or registration.

Here are my choices for The Best Places To Get Royalty-Free Music & Sound Effects:

MUSIC:

The Free Music Archive is the latest addition to this list. It currently has 5,000 free tracks available for download, and it’s super-easy to use — no registration is required. You can read more about it at Read Write Web. (Jerry Swiatek notes that there is some music here that is not appropriate for classroom use).

Classic Cat

Musopen is the latest addition to this list. It describes itself this way:

“Musopen is an online music library of copyright free (public domain) music… Put simply, our mission is to set music free.”

Public Domain 4 U has music available for download from before 1922 that is now in the public domain.

SOUND EFFECTS:

Soundsnap

Soungle

Free Sound Project

Absolute Sound Effects Archive

Sound Jay

My Sound FX

Find Sounds is great. They don’t guarantee, though, that all their sounds are copyright free.

I’m adding Sound Bible to this list. You can read a post at Free Tech For Teachers to learn about this excellent resource.

Mashable has just posted a great piece, 26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog. I’ve already included here many of the resources they list. However, they also listed some sites that are new to me. I’m also sure that a ton of additional sources will be accumulating in their comments sections. Because of that, for now, instead of just selectively adding some of their sites here, I’m just including a link to their whole post.

I just learned about Audience Sounds from Nik Peachey. It has a nice collection of sound effects that are easy to navigate, listen to, and download. In addition to using them in student or teacher “creations,” another way I’ve used these kinds of sound effects is as a way to build student vocabulary. We first review what each sound effect is called; then the class is divided into small groups with each group having a small whiteboard; next, I play one sound effect; next, I give the class thirty seconds to write down what sound effect it is. People show their boards, and the teams that get it correct win a point.

You might also be interested in these other “The Best…” lists:

The Best Music Websites For Learning English
The Best Online Sites For Creating Music
The Best Online Karaoke Sites For English Language Learners
The Best Online Sources For Images

I’m also adding a direct link to Darren Draper’s excellent post (including additional resources) called The Educator’s Guide To The Creative Commons.

As always, feedback is welcome.

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21 responses so far

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21 Responses to “The Best Places To Get Royalty-Free Music & Sound Effects”

Jonah Longbowon 09 Dec 2008 at 2:44 pm 1

Thanks a lot! i found Soungle very useful!

[Reply]
Markon 17 Dec 2008 at 4:25 am 2

keep in mind that soundsnap recently went to a paid subscription model. You can download a few sounds for free but it is no longer the way it used to be.

You can also get a bunch of free royalty free music here:
http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/pir/free_music_loops.shtml

plus free royalty free sound effects here:
http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/pir/PIRsfx.shtml

this blog post free royalty free music clips every week or so:
http://www.royaltyfreemusicclips.com/royalty-free/royalty-free-distribution/royalty-free-music/

[Reply]
Check it out! 12/18/2008 | Feed for the Brainon 17 Dec 2008 at 11:15 pm 3

[...] The Best Places To Get Royalty-Free Music & Sound Effects | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of … [...]
David Holmeson 12 Jan 2009 at 6:08 pm 4

For a comprehensive listing of free and legal sound sample collections, audio applications and open music resources see http://www.squidoo.com/freesounds

[Reply]
Geoff Harveyon 16 Jan 2009 at 6:20 am 5

Royalty Free Music can be previewed and downloaded for free at our site : http://www.purple-planet.com

[Reply]
Royalty Free Music for Educators | InfoTeacheron 12 Feb 2009 at 3:25 pm 6

[...] sent me this link to Larry Ferlazzo’s blog. This entry has a collation of royalty free music. It looks like good blog, and I am going to peruse further and [...]
Chrison 23 Feb 2009 at 11:32 pm 7

I think you’ll find http://www.mysoundfx.com a new and excellent quality source for free sound effects and free background music. Please let me know what sounds any of you may be looking for. I do my best to add requested sounds.

[Reply]
Jayon 24 Feb 2009 at 11:11 am 8

Great list! I use http://freeplaymusic.com/. There are some restrictions, as long as you are using it in the classroom you should be ok. Another is http://freemusic.freeculture.org/

[Reply]
Ayjayon 03 Mar 2009 at 3:03 pm 9

Another great site for royalty free sound effects is SFXsource.com at http://www.sfxsource.com and also a totally free site is http://www.freesoundeffectsandloops.com

[Reply]
Jakeon 03 Mar 2009 at 7:54 pm 10

My absolute favorite is http://www.sfxsource.com … SFXsource.com Sound Effects, cool interface, tons of great material

[Reply]
Get free music and sound effects for your presentations and instruction | Hello (a blog from Stratepedia)on 09 Mar 2009 at 8:45 am 11

[...] a bit of music or sound effect for your next presentation or lesson? Check out this nice list of free audio download resources compiled by Larry Farlazzo, and ELL/ESL/EFL teacher who looked specifically at sites for folks who [...]
Tyleron 09 Mar 2009 at 10:58 pm 12

I’m a member at a great royalty free music and sound effect website called RippleAudio: http://www.rippleaudio.com

It has some great unique music tracks from very talented artists!

[Reply]
» Dove scaricare musica ed effetti sonori gratison 10 Mar 2009 at 12:00 pm 13

[...] Larry Ferlazzo , Mathew [...]
Ryanon 10 Mar 2009 at 5:01 pm 14

you can get 18,000+ RF tracks from grammy and emmy winning artists at AudioMicro http://www.audiomicro.com and we also have a collection of over 50,000 sfx, all from $5 to $1 each depending on the size of your purchase

[Reply]
Links From The DEN Diigo Group (weekly)on 05 Apr 2009 at 9:51 am 15

[...] The Best Places To Get Royalty-Free Music & Sound Effects | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of … [...]
Guyon 13 Apr 2009 at 5:09 am 16

Hi Larry,

Its also worth using search engines to search more specific needs. There are a lot of royalty free sites out there and they will all tell you they have thousands of tracks. If you know what type of royalty free music you want, rock, rap, ambient etc. you can search these to get more specific results.

You can get, for example royalty free ambient and relaxation music at http://www.AmbientMusicGarden.com.

Its also worth checking out the terms of use. Royalty Free is a term that can mean something different between sites.

[Reply]
Do Royalty Free Terms Really Cover What You Need Them To Cover? | Electronic Music Library's Blogon 13 Apr 2009 at 5:39 am 17

[...] Larry Ferlazzo’s article on Royalty Free Music & Sound Effect Sources raised a couple of thoughts on hunting out the best royalty free music I have. [...]
Dan-Oon 09 Jun 2009 at 11:03 pm 18

Hi Larry,

I hope you don’t mind if I mention my site http://www.danosongs.com where I license all my music for free under creative commons royalty free.

Thanks,

Dan-O

[Reply]
Bjorn Lynneon 31 Jul 2009 at 2:03 am 19

I’d also like to recommend http://www.Shockwave-Sound.com for some high quality royalty-free music. They’ve been online since 2000, add new music several times per week and every track is hand picked for quality so you know you’re getting good stuff.

Also, for royalty free sound effects, individual sound file downloads rather than whole DVD collections, I’d recommend http://www.1Soundfx.com . Hope this helps.

[Reply]
Royalty Free Music Sites « TPES Technology Integration Portfolioon 12 Aug 2009 at 4:35 pm 20

[...] August 12, 2009 Royalty Free Music [...]
links for 2009-08-28 « Donna Murrayon 28 Aug 2009 at 7:34 pm 21

[...] The Best Places To Get Royalty-Free Music & Sound Effects | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the… another one of Larry Ferlazzo's awesome "best-of" lists! (tags: music audio blogpost free sounds podcasting elementary middle high resources) [...]