In this week’s tip of the week newsletter I featured sources of public domain and Creative Commons licensed videos. I’ve had a couple of people reply with questions about using music in multimedia projects. Just because a song is available to stream or download through the Internet, doesn’t mean that you have the rights to re-use it. Therefore, you should strive to use public domain or Creative Commons licensed music. That’s why sites like Dig CC Mixter are good resources to bookmark.

Dig CC Mixter offers thousands of songs that are Creative Commons licensed. The site is divided into three main categories. Those categories are Instrumental Music for Film & Video, Free Music for Commerical Projects, and Music for Video Games. Within each category you can search according to genre, instrument, and style. When you click the download icon on a file you will be prompted to copy the attribution information that is required to include in your project.

Applications for Education
Dig CC Mixter could provide you with a lot of music to save for re-use in your classroom projects. It would be time-consuming, if not impossible, to preview all of the lyrics in all of the music on site. Therefore, I would restrict my students to using just the instrumental section of the site. Or you could use Google Drive or Dropbox to create and share a collection of music that you download and approve for your students to use.

In Thursday’s webinar, 5 Video Projects for Almost Every Classroom, I will share more ideas about using music in classroom video projects.