Free music platforms can be messy – hard to find the good stuff – but worth searching. Some platforms offer free mp3 quality and charge for HQ versions – these sites are better organized, see first example.
(Watch out: terms of use might change on this pages once a while)
Freesound.org offers a huge archive of free sounds (registration for free)
opsound.org is dedicated to open source culture offering free sound & music
Netlables by archive.org. You can search by tags and keywords, most audio seems to limited to 30 seconds free sample.
archive.org millions of books, films, music and more on this huge open source page
digccmixter.org great archive, searchable by tags, but navigation very simple & basic
Bargus.org small archive
CChound.com – under repair
Stampede.it cool page, but just a few free audio files besides commercial offers
More CC music links here on CreativeCommons.org.
Free Mp3
Icons8 mp3 for free, but 44.100 Hz version for 2o$ monthly subscription
For school projects and small independant projects mp3 quality for free might be sufficient (and you still can upgrade for HQ quality, if needed). Genre and themes are well organized like in better sites, but the quality of the compositions of most tracks is rather poor.
Royalty free music: what to learn by commercial sites
There are constantly new music sites for filmmakers popping up, offering royalty free music for a flatrate price (monthly subscription price to access huge and well organized libraries for unlimited use), the most famous are Soundstripe and Artlist. Having a look on this commercial sites help to learn more about how navigation of a well organized film music library looks like and what to expect from better pages for free music (in the future).
epidemic sound recommended by my friends, I didn’t try it yet. It has a free one month trial, monthly plans starting from 15 $ per month for social media use, but expensive for companies (149 $ per month)
Musicbed, starts with 9 $ a month for social media use, used by travel filmmakers like Bryn North in Mongolia
Jamendo mp3 for “free” for test editing, watermarked, HQ for payment
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More links to free music on the website below (german wesbite, but listing many international sites in English)
There are HUGE archivs of free music on Youtube:
Introduction to sound design
sound design on TED:
More ond sound design