Film music

I spent much of today scouring the net for some music that will eventually be used in a film project that I'm developing. We're not talking pirated stuff here. We're talking about music either released into the public domain or under an appropriate Creative Commons licence. There are lots of versions of the Creative Commons licence that an artist can release their work under. I'm looking for work released under one that will allow me to make derivative commercial works - films - with few strings attached. My preferred choice is the By Attribution Licence.

There are quite a few tracks available under the By Attribution Licence but locating them isn't easy. Soundclick has a good selection but the search process involves visiting every artist's site and looking through their list of music to see if some are released under the licence. Most aren't and many that are aren't appropriate for what I want to use them for or are downright crap. If only Soundclick had a search parameter for searching by licence.

The Creative Commons website itself has a basic search function that provides listings of websites that reputedly have music (and other material) released under Creative Commons. Unfortunately, most of the sites don't have downloadable music, although it does have a link to the website of a brilliant musician named Derek Audette. I used a piece of his music in our film The Audition.

But getting back to the point of this post, and yes it does have one other than babbling on about copyright licences, while I was searching through Soundclick I noticed a familiar pattern amongst its listings. Soundclick has a category called Film Music, that is a sub-genre of Classical. Most of the stuff in there is exactly what I'm after, but unfortunately most isn't released under an appropriate licence. In fact many of the so-called pieces of Film Music are released under a Creative Commons licence that prevents derivative works. Isn't that kind of defeating the point of Film Music?

By the way, if anyone knows of any good repositories of public domain/by attribution music or any budding artists that want to see their work used in film then drop me a line (I'm particularly looking for symphonic pieces). As I said, I spent a sizable portion of today looking and I only found two tracks.