Royalty-Free Resources

It can be challenging to find copyright friendly images and music for projects. It might be tempting to use an image found on Google or your favorite song in a school project, but it's not necessarily ethical - or legal - to do so without permission from the creator or owner of the work. If you want to use a copyrighted image or recording, here are some guidelines to go by.

• Use 30 seconds or 10% of a sound recording, whichever is less
• Use a copyrighted work only for a project that has to do with your class's curriculum
• Show your project only in the class for which you made it; you may keep and share your project (with the music/images) as a part of a portfolio indefinitely

These sites provide you with links for royalty-free music and sounds. These sites are aggregators, or lists of other websites you can use. As you look through these resources, there may still be restrictions so make sure to read the site's guidelines carefully:

• Sound Cloud Royalty Free Music Clips
• CC Mixter Royalty Free Music
• Creative Commons Search
• Wikimedia Commons Music
• UJam (create your own songs!)
• Free Play Music
• Looperman

You may not be able to access all of these sites at school, because our computer filters do not allow you to access sites from which you can download files. However, you can download music/sound files at home and save them to a Flash/USB drive, or attach them to an email.

These sites provide you with links for images, pictures, and photographs that you can use without worrying about violating the owner's copyright. There may still be restrictions, so please make sure you read each site's guidelines carefully.

• Creative Commons Search
• Wikimedia Commons Pictures and Images
• Public Domain Images

• The Guidelines for Classroom Copying of Books and Periodicals
• Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Media

Even though the above websites offer you copyright friendly music and images to use, you still must properly cite any resource you use in a project.