Creating the Soundtrack of Your Science

Music plays an essential role in movies, theater and yes- even protocols! (See this week’s Technique of the Week)  However, unless you’ve got a rich uncle with connections in the music industry, you may want to forget about adding “Stairway to Heaven” to your “How to pH a solution” video…

The issue is the copyright.  It’s understandable why artists don’t want people using their videos without asking.  It would be like showing up to a conference and seeing someone presenting one of your old posters.  So are you left to bust out a kazoo and start making your own tracks?

Thanks to the “copyleft” movement, the answer is “no.”  Copyleft is defined by the Free Software Foundation as “a general method for making a program or other work free and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well.”  An obvious play on “copyright”, a copyleft actually starts by declaring that the work is copyrighted.  Distribution terms are then added to the copyright, which gives everyone the right to use, modify, and redistribute the work as well as all future versions of it.  In this way, the music and the distribution freedoms are legally bound.  Creative commons is a nonprofit corporation that provides free licenses to help artists mark their work with the distribution terms they desire.

There are a number of resources out there for free dowloadable music.  Of course, to protect yourself, be sure to take a look at the terms and conditions before downloading and using music from any site.

A Google search for “royalty-free music” will give you a bunch of sites that will charge you $70 for some pretty terrible synthesizer tracks.  For everyone’s sake, avoid those.  Here are a few sites that will help you get started producing the soundtrack to your life in and out of lab!

Jamendo
Our favorite site.  Easy to use, easy to browse.  And the songs sound like real songs, not elevator music versions of songs you never liked in the first place.  It has an internal player so that the music streams without having to open iTunes or another desktop player.

PodsafeAudio
Songs download into iTunes or other player.  Takes a little while longer to browse, but has some good music to choose from.

ccMixter
For the DIYer.  This site has a number of samples, remixes and a cappellas that can be used to create your own song.  If you like playing around with editing music and videos, this is dangerously addictive (“Maybe my transformation video needs a cricket sound, a baseline and an accordian…”).

There are certainly plenty of other sites out there.  Let us know what you’re using – your likes and dislikes.  What’s your favorite site for copyleft music?