Royalty Free No Copyright Music for All Your Projects | Hacker News Reader

Royalty Free No Copyright Music for All Your Projects

wowa.me

195 pointsmassier78 comments

Hi, humbly said: I am the maker of this project - wowa.me (beta) I’m working on it beside my job and three children - towards a dream I had 3 years ago.

I am aware that "Unsplash for music" is a very high goal and I am far not a good coder. Nevertheless, I believe in being able to get closer to this aim TOGETHER.

That's why I'm looking intensivly for qualified feedback like: - what are main issues to solve? - what are basic features to provide? - is „staying ad-free“ a must? - do you think a kickstarter crowdfunding campaign would be appropriated? Etc.

Warm regards and a big Thank You from Germany.

Wlad

Thanks for creating this!

One thing I noticed: I just wanted to buy you a coffee, but the help-me-stay-add-free button at the bottom kept moving away because of infinite-scroll :)

Regarding staying ad-free, I'd say it really depends on what your goals are and what your actual product is. I'm not a specialist (by far) but I'd first try to validate the market fit before trying to raise funds (Kickstarter or however else).

thanks a lot, appreciate your feedback! You are right, for now there are not so many songs, but in future it will be annoying to scroll down to get to the footer. Will try to create Footer-less Website.... Thanks so much

Three children, nice. :)

:-)

Hi Wlad! This is great, and I'd consider contributing, but I'm not sure that making the domain name the same as your artist name encourages that.

I thinking of this almost every day but not sure 1. do you mean changing the URL but leave the name? 2. do you think I can still change it? thanks.

I'm not sure which is best for you, or how established you are as an artist. But if the website is early days then changing the url/product name would be least harmful. Or just submit your own tunes under a pseudonym if it's royalty-free. I think my concern as an artist is that you might make it big and take back the domain name.

I think domain is not so important - the project can run with any domain even if I would take it away. What I love about it is just that its short. What I hate, that you can think its related to me personally. I dont want to be in the foreground.

What do others think about URL and Name - should we change it?

With it sharing your artist name, it makes me suspicious (I don't think you are doing this, but if I randomly stumbled across the website I would) that the goal is to promote mostly your own music, and create an ecosystem around that. I don't have a problem with that at all, but in my mind, it's a very different goal than Unsplash for music.

Wowa and friends vs open music platform.

Regardless, I think it's a great idea and look forward to exploring it more. If you do change the URL, please make sure this redirects, or has a link to the new site so I can find it again!

Hi thanks for your thoughts. What should be changed at least in your opinion to prevent being suspicious about that matter? thanks

Nice!!

How do you compare to https://incompetech.com/music/ or rather, how do you plan to distinguish yourself from the existing grandmaster of royalty free music?

Kevin MacLeod is awesome and an inspiration. I think incompetech is only MacLeod music or? I would love see all different artists - "unsplash for music" simply :)

I would think just making more/different styles of music available would be sufficient. MacLeod's work is great, but it's already been used in so many podcasts and YouTube videos that it fairly leaps out at you when you hear it.

The song.link links are broken for me, some redirecting to Kleinstadt from JNGS, other to other files. Seems pretty random.

you have to click on "DOWNLOAD" to get the song below you find the artists which provided the songs e.g. JNGS...

That is pretty confusing - I didn't expect to land on a specific album/single/song download page after clicking the "band" name.

I think you are right, it should land on artist page. Thanks

You are legally obliged to have an imprint on your site.

you're right, I will add it. thanks

I think you're off to a Great Start. I love the selection of music pieces and the interface is easy to use and clean. There's a good emphasis on Quality over quantity, which I appreciate.

Here are some features I would like: 1. Allow downloads without having to change windows. 2. If the song is already downloaded, the UI should indicate that: so i know what I've downloaded and what I haven't. 3. Perhaps, make some recommendation for an offline music player that defaults to downloaded location. Explanation: For those of us who are just getting started with offline music, it's hard to find a player that can play the music.

And, don't forget your primary value prop: Offline/royalty free music is awesome because it doesn't use Data and its free.

Thanks!

Honestly, I was expecting the music to be extremely weak. The third item I hit was fire. The design is clean, no bs; Sold.

Suggestions:

1. add autocomplete to your search box. 2. make it easier for people to give you their email address (i.e. least intrusive as possible modal that disappears after an email address is submitted). 3. pressing play on one player should pause any other players.

wow, thanks a lot. appreciate it. Will definitely add those features. Didn'T you get the subscribe modal/pop-up in the right down corner?

May I suggest 2 improvements: 1. a volume slider 2. I think in 99% of use cases it would be better if one track stops playing once you start another one

Interesting project, I directly put it in my list of cc0 content which I can use for my tiny side project games

Hi thanks! 1.Not sure about a volume slider - always saw this as avoidable for simplicity and UX. 2. You absolutely right. Its a must. Was to complicated so far... we'll see

I used to be with you on the volume slider being redundant, but at least a few times lately, the more video editing I do, the more I find that I am constantly having multiple windows open, often playing things simultaneously, and wanting one thing to be significantly less loud than another.

Edit: also, the tracks that I’ve listened to are great! I’ll definitely be looking here for a future project. Thanks for doing this, and I wish you success in keeping it going and making it profitable!

Awesome. Love all those honest feedback. Also to you success with your projects.

Quote from the license text : > This license does not include the right to compile music from WOWA to replicate a similar or competing service.

I think this clause coflicts with CC0, or prevent bundling into FLOSS (e.g. GPLed one). Am I wrong? For example, Pixabay's image, which has such a clause in the license, was recently banned using with WordPress theme (because WordPress is GPLv3). I am getting very nervous about such a clause, but I know CC0 is weak for trolls... Annoying.

Hm, Do you think its not CC0? Unsplash has same words: https://unsplash.com/license

I added this one to make it even clearer: "So you can be safe and sure: You can make commercial projects by using all music on WOWA, you just can't sell the music as it is or create another "WOWA" with this music."

Thanks

The issue is you're claiming three incompatible things

- 'no copyright'

- 'CC0'

- 'you just can't sell the music as it is'

It is not possible that all of these things are true at the same time.

For example by claiming CC0 you have waived 'all of [your] rights to the work worldwide under copyright law', but then you try to assert the right to tell me not to sell them? How do you think this works?

Still, the act of compiling them can be protected no? It might even be copyrightable as a collection.

ok, maybe you are right and thats the reason why unsplash changed it from "CC0" to "unsplash license".

if I read the official CC0 Page it fits completely https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en

I will study the topic even more and provide a suitable declaration. https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode

thank you

Thank you for your reply.

IANAL, but yes, I think your license is not CC0.

CC0 is "public domain". It is intended to abandon all copyrights. So if you want to publish music under the license, you can't argue any restriction.

And, Unsplash license is currently not CC0. It WAS originally CC0.

I like your philosophy, so I want to agree with you, but I cannot help concerning about licensing issues on FLOSS or mix-in usages...

References:

https://medium.com/unsplash/why-we-moved-from-the-creative-c...

http://wpandlegalstuff.com/unsplash-gpl-compatibility-concer...

https://make.wordpress.org/themes/handbook/review/resources/...

great Infos and Links, will dig deeper in all this...thanks

It might be helpful to check out Icons8. They seem to be operating under a similar idea to what you're looking for. Their licensing page is here: https://icons8.com/license

I think they also have a great business model in general.

This is great, high quality stuff. Added to my list of free resources.

One nice to have feature would be to stop the currently playing track when I click on play.

Worth submitting it here:

https://github.com/neutraltone/awesome-stock-resources

You are right. Thank you!

How to add it to this github?

Just make a pull request.

Thnx

https://jamendo.com/ competitor?

Not free for commercial projects.

Fully free.

"WOWA is licensed under Creative Commons Zero which means you can copy, modify, distribute and use the music for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the creator or us."

Jamendo? Just filter by license, you can use commercially what is not -NC.

Aah, ok, they must have changed that it's been many years since I was last there - due to the licensing.

and this one forces you to create an account before you can download which might be fine if you're using it for a long time, but it adds friction for when trying out new services

Very cool project. Worth noting that it's not just a webpage that compiles a bunch of CC-0 tracks, but the OP/author himself is the composer/producer of many of the tracks, so kudos to him for sharing his music for free.

There's not a ton of tracks now, but it might be useful to add a genre label and bpm, alongside the track names, to make it easier for people to narrow in on what they're interested in.

you are kind - thanks a lot! great Ideas - will come definitely.

Hi HN Community, I want to thank everybody participating in this discussion about „Unsplash for Music“ (beta) :-) This is my first experience on HN and I have to say it was fascinating and enlightning. Thanks for all the qualified feedback, corrections and kind words.

To give appropriate thanks to you all, I decided to provide a new exclusive free short track which I posted privatly. You can find it here: https://www.wowa.me/private/182444650937/tumblr_pm6riikWf31u...

For me - I’m gonna roll up my sleeves now and implement some of the feedback on the website with the help of some of you contacted me and offered their support.

All the best.

T H A N K Y O U !!!

I'm excited! It's not the first time I see a project like this, so I hope you gain a lot of traction.

One thing that I immediately thought about: I'm preparing to ramp up a (non-tech) YouTube channel and I'm a bit worried somebody will claim ownership of any do-whatever-you-want free music I would use to de-monetize or copyright-strike my channel. I know big sites like Epidemic, AudioJungle or Audioblocks have some sort of legal structure in place to protect their commercial clients. Any thoughts on that?

EDIT: I can't grammar.

You are absolutely right. I found many Projects and YouTube Channels in the past which were claiming "no copyright" music but have either many different crediting rules in small print or have claimed ownership via YouTube or Soundcloud.

As a Music Artist I found out early, that Music-Copyright is not trivial - just because someone says a song is copyright-free and submit it, it really is - still someone else can claim ownership rights on parts of the song etc.

I realized that I can't easily get some songs from the internet and put them online. I decided to give my own music away for free as I can assure the rights and I only used license free material in the music. In the hope others will follow.

To answer your question: All submitted songs to wowa.me will be checked and reviewed one at a time on quality and ownership. I use tools to ensure this song is not already registered etc. Furthermore every submitter has to accept terms of submission.

But you got me on two important things: 1. Submitting System needs to validate email-realness via double-opt-in or so.

2. How multiple commercial usage can work? Example: artist uses the free beat/soundtrack and publish this new song (with vocals) to all platforms (spotify, itunes and youtube network) Question: Will YouTube copyright mechanism take effect if another artist uses same free beat with other vocals?

thanks

Do you also need to upload your songs on YouTube to prevent someone else from doing that and copyright striking every video that uses them?

I will uplaod the music to youtube later but I will not add them to "youtube network id's" as this would prevent also you / the user from using the music in your videos.

So I think we will concentrate on unique soundtrack music which is not suitable for putting vocals on top but everyone can use them in videos, apps & co. of course remix and them etc.

Great idea! How do you plan to "scale" it? Will you personally review every song that is submitted? And I guess related (though probably a "worry about it later" problem too) but how will you verify that some troll isn't just posting other people's work as their own?

Thanks! For now I use a mix of personal review and copyright mechanisms from soundcloud. Personal check is important to ensure quality.

Scaling will be supported by AI and more personell in future I assume. Thankyou

See also: http://opengameart.org

Firefox logs a lot of messages like

> The resource at “https://assets.tumblr.com/client/prod/standalone/audio-ifram... was blocked because content blocking is enabled.[Learn More]

> The resource at “https://assets.tumblr.com/assets/scripts/tumblelog.js?_v=633... was blocked because content blocking is enabled.[Learn More]

Basically all is left is a white page with some unstyled text and DOWNLOAD links, which let me download MP3 files.

Of course I could click in the address bar and disable content blocking for this site, but that's an all or nothing switch and I'm not sure I want tumblelog.js I didn't inspect it but its name doesn't inspire trust.

Congrats on the launch!

Not sure if this is the HN effect but i'm unable to play anything unfortunately - I can click play on multiple songs at a time with lots of crosses appearing ( presumably to stop playing - i'm not sure? ) but with no sound actually playing

Thanks a lot! Hmm, Could you please tell which browser and device you are using so I can double check?

Thanks

Sorry for the late reply i was on chrome but just had another try and it works now! Although I do still find when I click play multiple times everything plays over each other - so I would prevent that if you're looking for something to fix :)

Great. Yes will definitely do that. Thanks a lot.

The site definitely needs to be redesigned to actually work if someone has noscript running, because it can't possibly look like this by design, and I'm not "allowing all" just to see what it's really supposed to look like.

you have been asked about scalability, and you have not answered. I do not know if it really is a serious project, or a project with which you wish to self-promote.

In as much as, take care of your https, you expire next month.

And the numerous cookies that are implanted, including those of a counter that you have hidden somewhere, those of tumblr, those of doubleclick, yahoo ..

Adblock blocks an item Which apparently is also hidden somewhere. Because when I deactivate it, I can not reach what it is.

This is a tumblr? Turned? Too much for a site with 19 songs.

Likewise, it is appreciated as something that is free. I'm sorry for my English. Good luck with the project.

hi. I'm not sure if I understood everything but I will try to answer: Regarding scalability: I think in the far future scaling will be possible through implementing AI, optimized and automated processes and a bigger team working together on that project. But honestly I am much more focused on quality than quantity for now and things like "understanding all legal aspects" etc. But of course in future I will work on having more different artists from different genres on the platform with growth capacity. -- Regarding "self-promotion": As I stated in other reply, I just started giving my own music for free as I realized that this is the only way to start assuring copyright restrictions. It should not be about me primarly. I also consider changing the Domain-URL from ".me" to a ".com" to support this. -- Regarding all technical issues you mention - wow really helpful thoughts but I am not a pro by far. None you mentioned is in any way with bad intention - the opposite, I tried eliminate all unnecessary stuff from a tumblr template to get a clean website. If you have concrete improvement ideas please contact me directly via mail - really appreciate your thoughts!

For now I'm already starting to work with some of you who offered to support the project technically and to build it on a more scalable solution. stay tuned (newsletter) Thankyou!

Really interesting I was going to have a go at producing some theme music / cues for actual play podcast I am in using live and this is a fab looking source.

I had to double-take at the domain since I have owned the wowana.me domain for five years now

A lot of that music is really really good. Want to contribute but man, they set the bar high!

Hi - cool thanks! What do you exactly mean by this?

I mean I'd be a little embarrassed to submit my own. These samples are sick. They are every bid as good as pro sample packs.

Needs more Kevin Macleod!

That would be great :)

Awesome initiative, I'd love to see some classical music!

Haha - thanks, I will see - thank you.

Great idea, love Unsplash and use it all the time.

Thank you.

This is a great reference, are there others?

Timeout HN Hug of death ;)

is there a similar site for sound effects?

Nice kiss

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