Welcome to the Free Music Archive (Beta)

At the Free Music Archive, our waveforms come in all shapes and sizes – and we like it that way. We know you're using a lot of our music in your short & feature-length films... but what about the super-short ones you're cranking out? In this age of six-second videos, microblog entries and trending videos of miniature Asian cuisine, we find we’re struggling to keep up when it comes to the musical small stuff. So, for the next few weeks, we’ll be taking entries for the Free Music Archive’s first ever microSong Challenge. 

Get your tiny instruments together (or oversized ones, or ones that are juuuust right), grab a recording device, and add your itty bitty masterpiece(s) to our collection! Every microSong will be licensed under a Creative Commons Zero license so that it can be freely used by anyone in a video, remix, extraordinarily brief performance art piece, or whatever else they may choose.

So, do you have a few seconds? Help us come up short! 

The Challenge begins on January 26th & runs through February 20th. 

Need more inspiration? 

WFMU and the Free Music Archive are proud to present a new season of Radio Free Culture, a weekly podcast exploring issues at the intersection of digital culture and the arts. 

In this episode, Cheyenne Hohman, RFC host and current Director of the FMA, spoke with Alex Winter, director of "Downloaded" and the upcoming documentary, "Deep Web." (And known to some as Bill S. Preston, Esquire.) This week's episode discusses online privacy, the ongoing Silk Road trial, and some of his motivations for telling the stories of the strange and diverse characters behind the digital upheavals taking place all around us. 

More information about Deep Web can be found at its website, DeepWebtheMovie.com. 

Check out the podcast here, or subscribe to the podcast here (via iTunes).

Hi FMA'ers! 

If you make videos, or you make music for videos, or you just like learning new stuff, tune in tomorrow to our webinar! We'll be allowing a few guests in to our Hangout and then broadcasting for everyone else. 

The webinar is here, on YouTube. 

Special guest and Creative Commons expert Elliot Harmon will be co-hosting with Cheyenne. We'll show you around the Free Music Archive (including where to find license and contact info for artists), run through the basics of Creative Commons licenses and how to use CC tracks in videos, and show you how you can license your work under Creative Commons (spoiler: it's easy!). 

We're looking forward to seeing you there! If you can't make it, we'll be archiving the webinars so you can watch later. 

Next week, we'll host one for K-12 teachers, and in early February we'll have one for you musical types. 

Hooray!