Free Resources from the Net for (Special) Education

I use a variety of formats to create personal digital stories in order to share my rapidly growing collection of digital photos. In most instances, I like to add musical accompaniment to the slide-shows and videos that I put together. For this, I need sources of suitable music that I can use and share legally. The resource I’m highlighting today is a rich source of music for personal or classroom use.

Jamendo is a collection that currently contains 6855 albums of music by independent artists from many parts of the world. A wide range of musical genres is represented, and the music can be searched by tags such as acoustic, chanson, classical, electro, guitar, piano, pop, rock, soundtrack, etc. On the whole, I have found the quality of the musical offerings on Jamendo to be excellent.

All of the music housed on Jamendo is licensed under the Creative Commons. It may be downloaded, either by individual “song” or by album, and may then be used free of charge under the terms of its Creative Commons license. Convenient options for supporting the artist are also available on the website.

Jamendo also provides the option of creating multiple playlists for online listening. Titles may be included in more than one playlist. As I listen online, I create playlists of music that I think I may wish to consider for use later with a digital story.