Absolutely, Totally Royalty-free Music

When colleges or universities partner with commercial entities, it can be a win-win situation. The Ball State University Copyright Center collaborated in a successful partnership with the online commercial music resource, Award Winning Music (AWM).

AWM, located in Medford, Oregon, offers commercial royalty-free music and sound effects for educational purposes including music that can be used for PowerPoint presentations, distance education courses, creative projects, multimedia projects, electronic portfolios, and in support of any other curriculum-based instructional activities. All of the downloads are MP3 files and have excellent sound quality.

AWM is a leader in providing commercial music that is heard in major motion pictures and television programming. Their clients include Warner Brothers, Universal Studios, Xerox and Intel. Through the generosity of its president, Shaun Harris, Award Winning Music provides totally free music and sound effects for Ball State University and any other educational institutions.

Ball State students and faculty can access AWM royalty-free music and sound effects through the University Copyright Center by going to their site, www.royaltyfreemusic.com and, about halfway down the right column, you will see this “Music Promo Logon” where you will be asked for a username [ballstate] and password [allfree] in lowercase letters.

Currently, there are 105 sound effects and several selections of music from these genres:
Background Music and Music on Hold
Corporate Presentation
Acoustic
Documentary, Film, Television, News and General Production
Sports, Action, Corporate and Drama
Hip-Hop / Urban
New Age
Euro / Techno / DanceRock

For each selection, choices are to [Play Sample] Download: [Full Track] [60 Second Segue] [30 Second Segue]

According to Mr. Harris, there will be more content added to the site. Ball State students and faculty are encouraged to take advantage of this free music partnership, download your free music and sound effects and enhance creative endeavors.

This article was published in The Library Insider May 2006, pg. 4.