This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Let's talk today about music. Let's talk about copyrighted music from famous artists or well-known artists, or even if they're not famous or well-known, if you are a musician and you've copyrighted your music, it actually belongs to you. Copyrighted music actually belongs to artists. You can't just borrow it and use it for your own commercial purposes, which is of course perfectly logical if you think about it. But I also understand why people are confused because of the world that we live in, like with all the streaming services, like YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, so many others, you're like, well, music is everywhere.
Music is accessible, music is free. I can listen to it at any point. I can access it wherever I am and such. But the issue is with those streaming services, at least with Spotify, Pandora services like that, artists are still being paid. They may not be paid very much, but because of advertising, because of paid memberships, like there is a model for that.
Like those services have worked out some kind of licensing agreement. So if you're out there and you're like, well, I've found the perfect track from YouTube or John Legend or Lizzo, you can't just actually go and use that track for your business without having a license for it. And that's why, for example, most podcasts, including this one, use music that is specifically produced for commercial licensing. So today's caller has been hosting a series of virtual events to connect with other moms interested in entrepreneurship. And she'd like to play music in the background.
How can she do this legally, but without paying for it? Because she doesn't want to pay, but she also wants to make sure she's following the laws. I respect both of those goals. So let's talk about it in this episode. Shout out to our sponsor.
And then where can you find free music for a paid event? [Music]
Hey there, Chris, it's Jen from LA. And I'm a longtime listener, first time question asker. I really like the new format, by the way. My question is, where can I find free music to use?
I've been hosting a series of virtual events to connect with other moms interested in entrepreneurship. And I'd like to play music in the background during one of our collaborative work sessions. Since this is a paid service that I'm broadcasting, I realized I probably shouldn't just throw on a stream from Beyonce, even though I did it once. Shh, don't tell. Where can I find music I can use for free without getting into licensing issues?
Thanks, Chris. - Jen, what's up? Thank you so much for listening from LA. Appreciate that, great question as well. And your secret is safe with me and all of our listeners, of course.
Reality is you're probably not gonna get in trouble for something like that. I mean, which is why we're talking about it here. But to be safe, imagine that this is a growing business and you do want to make sure that you're actually not running afoul of any copyright laws. Which, as I said, is an issue. You can't just use anybody's commercial music.
I keep waiting for Beyonce to cut a track for Side Hustle School. I've had my request in for a while. But I'm guessing I probably can't afford her. So for this show, we have a license with a couple of different databases and services where our producer, Chuck, hey, thanks, Chuck. Appreciate you.
He's able to download and add tracks in various places. So we keep all this music in a Dropbox folder and he's able to access it and mix it. I don't know all those different services, but here is one that I've been using recently on Money Tree TV. I started this new service on my YouTube a little while ago. You can see that at youtube.com/chrisguillebeau.
And the service is called Epidemic Sound. So you can go to EpidemicSound.com and it's a membership model. They've got tons of tracks that, you know, amateur musicians out there are recording in all sorts of genres. You can search and filter based on all kinds of variables, including beats per minute, including what instrumentation you want used, all kinds of stuff. It's really good.
And so that's a membership site. I think it starts at like $15 a month or something. And if you cancel the membership, you actually get to keep all the tracks that you've downloaded, which almost sounds too good to be true, but that is in fact what they say. So I don't have any affiliation with them aside from, you know, paying them, but that site is EpidemicSound.com. There are also a lot of other public domain and stock music resources out there.
Just know that that's what you wanna be looking for, stock music where you can pay for a license or that's very, very clear it is free for the public use, including commercial usage. Just make sure you read carefully to make sure it's okay to do that. All right, listeners, if you got a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions where you're featuring them throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects. And of course, when Beyonce is ready to do that theme track for Side Hustle School, we will debut it right here on the podcast. So be sure you are subscribed.
Thank you so much, everyone. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
