Free Music For Your Productions At Apple.com

by , 10:00 AM EDT, October 17th, 2001

How does high-quality music for your web site or video production sound? Good, eh? Well, it is lurking quietly on your iDisk on Apple.com.

Open your iDisk at Apple.com, and look in Software/Mac OS X Software/Extras/FreePlay Music/ There you have it, lots of music, pop, techno, hard rock, "acid jazz," country...

There is little or no information from Apple that we can see (would it have been so hard to put in a ReadMe in the folder, Apple?), but a little research turns up that the music is from FreePlayMusic.com, which is a company with a seemingly strange business strategy: they give away their products for free. If you read their terms, you will see that the use of their music is free for personal use, and even for most commercial uses too! Apparently they plan to earn their money on royalties via Koda and other such agencies that collect royalties for musicians from radio stations and the like. (Which is why it is only free to use if there is some kind of broadcast involved, not just distribution on DVD, CD, or video tape.) From the company's FAQ:

1) Who can use FreePlay Music?
Anyone who produces programming or advertising for radio, television, satellite, wireless or Internet media is free to include FreePlay music in his or her production. Anyone producing any kind of Programming for personal, non-commercial uses may do so as well. A manufacturer or distributor of electronic hardware will, however, require a signed license before distributing FreePlay music on that hardware to consumers or to other businesses. A license will also be required by anyone who sells or licenses copies of FreePlay music to a third party.

We have listened to a few samples (starting with a personal weakness, hard rock), and it sounds good. It is generic instrumental "songs," and most of them short, but this is not your department store "muzak", it has bite and professionalism. Go get it.

The Mac Observer Spin:

With Apple pushing Desktop Video production, availability of royalty-free music for the use of hobbyists and Web-based users is pretty important. By making the music available through iDisk, the company is making an outstanding effort to foster that market and provide its customers with a great service. We really just can't overstate the importance of this resource. Will this dethrone the pop music industry as we know it? Certainly not, but it will provide a way for people with limited or no budgets the ability to provide quality soundtracks to their Digital Video productions.