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Altphotos (3558 Public Domain Photos)

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We very much like the quality of the photos on the Altphotos website.  However, there is no indication of who authored these photos and/or how they were obtained.  That always makes us feel a bit uneasy as it makes it harder to confirm the authenticity of the licensing.

cc0.photo – Public Domain Photos

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This site’s name, CC0, is telling, as it’s a reference to the Creative Common 0 license, which is the most unrestricted license possible (public domain).

Their website contains the photos of one person and two of their relatives.  It’s not the largest collection out there, but it has nice photos and is well worth a visit.  Thank you to Raffael Herrmann et. al. for releasing their work into the public domain.

Pexels

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Looking for free stock photos and videos used to be a pain.  There were a few small places that had limited collections but good luck finding what you needed.  Thankfully the landscape has changed and we now have larger collections available.  Of all the sites that offer free photos and videos, I know of none easier to use or with a larger collection than Pexels.  Simply put, you should know about this site.

YouTube Audio Library

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You can locate the YouTube Audio Library in the Creator Studio section of your YouTube account or access it directly via this link.

There are many high quality music tracks available for you to use on your videos for free, even if your videos are monetized.

Please note that some audio files in the YouTube Audio Library are marked with a different license and require attribution.  The rest require no attribution.

youtube_attribution_rules

YouTube doesn’t speak to whether or not you can use these tracks elsewhere, and that’s probably because it varies by track and license.  To keep life simple, I only use these tracks on YouTube, but if you want to do your homework you can track down the original author of a track and see if they have released it elsewhere and clarified the licensing.

Note that you may have to be logged into YouTube for the link above to access the Audio Library to work.

 

Incompetech

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Incompetech, the website that hosts the music of Kevin Macleod, is a great place to obtain royalty free, quality music (attribution required).  The music is cinematic and is designed to accompany film.

The music is free to use and for 20 euros you can purchase an extended license which provides you with:

  • You don’t have to name the author in future projects you create
  • You’ll get an official document as proof
  • You can download the song as a wave file
  • For many songs you get additional files

Check the Incompetech website for their terms as I have only highlighted the main ones here.

You can visit the original Incompetech website or the Incompetech section of the filmmusic.io website.

In regards to YouTube specifically, note the following that they have listed on their website (but as always check their website to see if they’ve changed anything since I made this post):

All in all, Incompetech is a great resource for cinematic music for filmmakers, but the music may not be subtle enough for things like podcasts or the background track of a YouTube video.