Adding music and sound effects to your video and animation projects undoubtedly helps to bring stories to life. From setting the mood of a romantic scene to making the hairs stand up on the back of your neck in a spooky film, music and movies go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong!

In some films the music and sound effects are arguably just as famous as the actors’ performances and storylines. Mention the films Jaws, Star Wars, Jurassic Park or The Wizard of Oz to someone and the movies’ sounds and songs might well be the first thing they think about.

HUE Animation Studio includes a selection of sound effects in the kit such as burps, race cars and guitar riffs… but to help you find even more, we have compiled a list of the best websites for sourcing sounds and pitch-perfect music for your cinematic masterpieces!

8 hand-picked places to find free music and sound effects!

1. FreeSFX is a brilliant website where you can find all sorts of super sounds from beeps, bops and whistles to farmyard animal sounds and blood-curdling screams! To use the sounds you just need to sign up for an account and link back to their website in your video credits.
2. Initiated by artists Eillen Simpson and Ben White, the Open Music Archive is a collection of music works that are freely available in the public domain due to expired copyright. This music can be used by anyone in the UK for any purpose, completely free of charge!
3. Eric Skiff makes awesome ‘8-bit’ style ‘chiptunes’ which sound as though they have been created for classic video games. You can use Eric Skiff’s music in your projects free of charge as long as you provide attribution and link back to the website in your video credits.
4. YouTube’s audio library is a great resource offering a sizeable selection of songs, sound effects and backing tracks. The library is updated regularly meaning that there’s always plenty to choose from. It’s easy to search for tracks and filter the results by genre, mood and instrument. You can even filter tracks that do not require attribution, that you can use as you wish without crediting the source.
5. Benjamin TISSOT, also known as Bensound, is a composer and musician based in France who has been creating music for more than 10 years. Bensound allows people to music from the website free of charge as long as you credit bensound.com and the name of the track you used.
6. Wikimedia Commons has a vast collection of music, historic audio recordings and sampled sounds. It’s not particularly easy to search the collection but there are some absolute gems to be found hidden in the archives including Summer from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (available to use with attribution) and the only known recording of Alexander Graham Bell speaking (in the public domain in the United States). Audio files downloaded from Wikimedia Commons library are often in ogg format so you will most likely have to convert them to mp3 or wav format before you can use them in your projects. This can be done easily using an online file converter app such as Convertio.
7. NASA has an incredible selection of space sounds and audio recordings freely available to download and use for educational and informational purposes. The collection includes historic clips of astronaut communications such as ‘The Eagle Has Landed’ and ‘Houston, we’ve had a problem’ as well as abstract noises and spacecraft sounds, perfect for making out-of-this-world animations! Discover NASA’s audio library on their website and Soundcloud account.
8. BVKER is a music producer based in Germany who offers a fantastic selection free foley sound effects and random sounds you can use for your film project, podcast or music. The “Footsteps” foley library is filled with 700+ high quality wav files, including laser sounds, spooky ambience, snaps, claps, swooshes and swishes that are just perfect for animated videos. The Footsteps library is licensed as CC0 which means that you can use it for your own movie, sound or game productions (or anything else) without any need to credit the artist.

If none of the links above are hitting the right note then why not get creative and have a go at making your own music, songs and sound effects? Using your HUE camera’s microphone you can record audio clips directly into your animation projects and we have a handy guide to show you how.

Now that is music to our ears! 😃🎵✨

Please note: While all the music and sound effects we have compiled in this list are completely free to use, many of them have Creative Commons (CC) licences which means you might have to provide attribution to the artist by crediting them in your video project in some way. Audio files that are in the public domain are free to use without attribution but sometimes they can only be used in specific countries. Always check the licence details! 😇

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