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The Public Domain - Free Music

What is the public domain:

The public domain is any creative material that in not protected by intellectual property laws. Just because you can freely access a song, does not mean it is in the public domain. Works in the public domain can be used freely without permission or licensing (paying royalties). 

After a certain amount of time, all works will enter the public domain. The current copyright term is 70 years after the death of the last surviving author. This term has changed so many works have different terms currently. Some works may be entering public domain sooner (if they were not renewed originally). Generally, any work published during or before 1925 is part of the public domain. Songs from 1926 are now entering public domain.

Where to find works in the public domain:

It would be impossible to find all of the work in the public domain in one place because there are so many works that are not available online. Luckily, there are some websites that have a significant number of works, specifically music, in the public domain. Below I have listed four of my favorite websites to use for music, all of them are to access free but some also require subscription/payment.

Musopen: Link

  • This website is great because not only can you download the sheet music for free, it has free streaming classic radio. The only downside is freemium users are limited to 5 downloads per day and you cannot listen to the high-definition recordings.
International Music Score Library Project: Link
  • This website has free downloadable sheet music. It also has a helpful search engine feature if you're looking for a particular song. Unfortunately, sometimes the pieces that are uploaded are not part of the public domain. The paid membership will allow you to listen to commercial recordings.
Freesound: Link
  • This website is unique because it is for sound recordings uploaded by users (not sheet music). It has a large library of samples, sounds, music, loops, and other recordings free to listen and download. Another great feature to this website is the active community and it allows for a variety of files types to be uploaded/downloaded. This website is primarily for musicians who want to add to their own music or share it with others. 
Open Music Archive: Link
  • This website allows free downloads for recorded songs. It has a search bar so you can look up the titles, genre, time period, etc. It's generally easy and has to same music function as Soundcloud. Similar to Freesound, this website only offers recording downloads but only for mp3.


There are a lot of other websites that have a library of public domain works. I believe these are the best for downloading sheet music and sound/song recordings for free. 






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