Public Domain Music

[scottwat]

I'm a developer for a public planetarium and we try to do shows on a weekly basis and obviously need music to make the show's great. I would think we are a non commercial user, even though we are a public showing, its not for profitt. But my question is, are there any good, or decent free public domain type sources for good or decent music. I don't want to fire up limewire and play through the top 40 stuff, but it would be nice to have some decent music that we can use in our shows. Also it would be nice to have an easy way to download these. I have seen some sites that you have to click through a ton of links to get to each song. I would rather download a bunch and upload to my 40 gig ipod to listen to and see if I can use. Thanks!!!

[wordmunger]

I think you could make a pretty decent case that a planetarium is "educational use," and therefore you can use copyrighted music for your shows, since there is a "fair use" provision even under the DMCA. However, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know for sure.

You can also go to Creative Commons' Get Content (http://creativecommons.org/getcontent/) page, which allows you to search for licensed music (not necessarily public domain, but often authorized for noncommercial use). They also have links to other music portals, but the licensing of that music seems to be less clear.