DMCA - What is it? Why is it bad? How do we avoid it? Plus DMCA Safe Music!

DMCA - What is it?

[DMCA] is an acronym for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It is a U.S. copyright law which addresses the rights and obligations of owners of copyrighted material who believe their rights under the U.S. copyright law have been infringed. Necessary? Maybe. Should we adhere to it? Of course we should! How though? By abiding by copyright law.

TLDR: Provided is a list that is thoroughly vetted for terms and conditions and licenses that explicitly grants a user the allowance to use certain distributed music for either commercial/non-commercial usage. Whether it be in streaming, recorded content, or game development. They have been manually verified before being added to the list and, at the moment of publication, should be fine to use. Links for double checking the information are also provided. If you wish to skip past the rest of the content in this blog to get to the list you can.

DMCA - Why is it bad?

So why are DMCA strikes/takedowns bad? Well, for one it gets your content pulled from being viewable. The big thing though is it can potentially get you banned, and in a worse scenario, fined and jail time. Sadly, life is not monopoly and we don’t really get any get out of jail free cards. Alrighty then, is that all? Yes, no, maybe?

DMCA - How do we avoid it?

The key question to answer might be ‘how do we avoid DMCA strikes and takedowns’? That has an extremely easy answer, obtain the rights to do the things with the music and sounds. How do we do this? That is a good question and one I can answer. Within terms of services, or licensing agreements, there is laid out details of what can be done with music. For instance, a specific set of terms I look for before adding to this list is, 2-The premium license allows you: Project for commercial or non-commercial distribution without limitation for: -Streaming (example YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Twitch…). Yes, I know that is a mouthful to an extent, but what you need to see is it explicitly states that with a ‘premium license’ you are given the right to use the music commercially. A big boon to this is that it also includes specifically streaming. This license prevents the copyright holder from being able to take down and or monetize your stuff because they have granted you these explicit rights with their music. The key terms are for commercial use and if it includes streaming or video content then even better!

Conclusion

In final, this is a big thing, especially so since a lot more musicians and sound creators are acknowledging the need and reach that streaming and other content creation have. Thus, we receive better licensing defining that we can use certain music for streaming, youtube videos, and game development. Whether this will put enough strain on those top 100 playlist copyrights or not, who knows? What it will do is show that there is value in our endeavor to find DMCA-Free stuff, whether it is for purchase or not, and that will help the collective growth of this type of music.

Thank you for your time

Thank you very much for your time, please leave a like, subscribe, the heart thing or what is it on these blog posts? Oh.. right, we don’t get those here.. maybe later? Now with my little jest out of the way, here is the list of DMCA-Free music that I have curated.

DMCA - Safe Music

The following is a list of DMCA-Safe Music, Tunes, Sound effects for usage on things like live streaming, youtube videos, and game development. This list is based on facts that it provides necessary licensing to battle any DMCA claim and should be safe from receiving DMCA claims as long as you follow the requirements set by the provider. Some are paid options and some are available for free with requirements like citing and credits being given (please read their terms).

DMCA-Safe Music