Music and sound effects
Steaming or downloading music from unofficial sources is illegal - but there are lots free and legal ways to stream music. If you want to download music or use it on your mobile, you may want to consider a premium service. Many of these offer student discount.
Music for personal use
Free websites and apps
The services below offer free music streaming supported by advertising. This means that as long as you have access to the internet, you can freely listen to music legally interrupted by the occasional advertisement. As these services do not support downloading on free plans, they can use a lot of bandwidth if you are using them on your mobile.
| Service | Offers | Web address |
|---|---|---|
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Vevo
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https://www.vevo.com/ |
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Spotify (free)
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https://www.spotify.com/ |
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Deezer (free)
|
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https://www.deezer.com/ |
Premium options for students
It can be cheaper than you think to legally access the latest music. This page lists some of the top UK services for legally subscribing to music.
| Service | Offers | Web address |
|---|---|---|
|
Amazon Prime Music
|
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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prime https://www.amazon.co.uk/student |
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Apple Music
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https://www.apple.com/uk/music/ https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT205928 |
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Spotify
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https://www.spotify.com/ https://www.spotify.com/uk/student/ |
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Deezer
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https://www.deezer.com/ |
Sourcing sound and music for academic work
If you are working on a project that requires sound effects or music, it is best practice to avoid copyrighted material.
Although fair dealing means you can use copyright material for some academic work, it can be confusing and avoiding copyright material altogether means you can freely circulate your work without breaking the law.
Most of the sound clips you find on a Google search are not usable without breaking copyright. The websites below provide access to thousands of music and sound clips that you can freely use in your work. It is important to check the licence of each audio file carefully as some will require attribution and some may not let you adapt the clip as you require. It is really important to avoid copyrighted material in anything you intend to publish.
Don't forget - if you are using any sound effects or audio clips in academic work or presentations, it is good academic practice to still cite your sources.
Confused by copyright licences? Make sure you check our handy guide.
| Service | Offers | Web address |
|---|---|---|
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Free Music Archive
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https://freemusicarchive.org |
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YouTube Audio Library
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https://www.youtube.com/ audiolibrary |
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Pixabay
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https://pixabay.com |
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ccMixter
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http://ccmixter.org |
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SoundCloud
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https://soundcloud.com |
