Any commercial, copyrighted music added to your film requires several complicated licenses (a master license and a synchronization license) before it can be legally screened in public. These licenses can be very time consuming and very expensive to obtain.
1) You can use “royalty free” music. This type of music has already been pre-licensed to be used in film. Bucknell’s library has several collections of royalty free music and sound effects that you can use free of charge. Some of the collections are listed below:
Bainbridge Living Sound Effects Library. Van Nuys, CA: Bainbridge Records, 1993.
Call number: Y BAIN LIVING V.1/ V.2/ V.3
BBC Sound Effects Library. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1991, 1988.
Call number: Y. BBC
Film for the Humanities: Extreme Music Library. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 2000.
Call number: Y. FFH
The Hollywood Edge Sound Effects Library: the premiere edition. Hollywood: Hollywood Edge, 1990.
Call number: Y. HOL2
2) “Creative Commons” licensed music represents a second route. Creative Commons allows artists to license their work to others more openly than copyright allows. For example, a musician may license their work under a creative commons, non-commercial, attribution, share-alike license. This means you can use their music as long as: a) your work is non-commercial; b) you give credit to the musician and c) you license your film under the same license. Remember, that adding music to a film is considered making a “derivative work.” Thus, you need to make sure you do not use music that restricts the creation of derivative works.
To learn more, visit Creative Commons website: https://creativecommons.org/legalmusicforvideos
And below are several websites and artists that collect creative commons music and/or allow their music to be used for films:
ccMixter: http://ccmixter.org/
Internet Archives’ Public Domain Music Collection: http://archive.org/details/audio_music
MusOpen (public domain classical recordings): http://www.musopen.org/music
Kimiko’s Ishizaka’s Open Source version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations: http://www.opengoldbergvariations.org/
Free Music Archive: http://freemusicarchive.org/curator/video
Opsound: http://www.opsound.org/index.php
Moby’s music for films: http://www.mobygratis.com/film-music.html
Nine Inch Nail’s Ghosts (a creative commons licensed album): http://ghosts.nin.com/main/home
(Special thanks to Elena Perminova)