Catherine Padfield, Community Broker for Bridgend and Rhondda Cynon Taff comments that,

“If Neil has no problem getting online, then take a look at Pro Music, and new international initiative to promote legitimate online music (www.pro-music.org/copyright.htm)

Also www.royalty-free.tv/rftv/copyright_advice.htm seems to have user-friendly advice.

If accessing these is a problem, get back to me and I’ll summarise what’s on the pages.

What I was told in recent Digital Story Telling training is that it is safer not to use anything subject to copyright without permission, including pictures sourced from the internet, and school & other professional photos. I understand that it is a myth that you can use 30 seconds of music without breaching copyright – this is something the BBC has some sort of agreement to do apparently, but only applies to them.”

Also have a look at http://copyrightservice.co.uk/protect/p07_music_copyright

Information about Music & copyrights can be found at this link where you can get a free information sheet.
http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/  
 http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/cw/docs/edupack.pdf
See section 10…quote "What about work published on the Internet? It makes no difference how the work is stored or published,copyright law still applies."        ...(and also section 8. IX)
Safer by far to use Royalty free music & sounds.
The sites listed below offer royalty-free music that is totally free - download tracks right away and use without any fee. Please make sure to pay special attention to the stipulations of any Creative Commons-licensed music, as certain CC licenses require attribution to the original author or prohibit commercial use of the material
partnersinrhyme.com
brainybetty.com
incompetech.com
jamendo.com
openmusicarchive.org
opsound.org
ccmixter.org
thefreesoundproject
The following sites offer music that can be used royalty-free after a certain base fee is paid:

stockmusic.net
royaltyfreemusic.com
shockwave-sound.com
smartsound.com
opuzz.com
 

Hi Aimee and Ian,

Thank you both for the very informative replies,

 It has always been stuck in the back of my mind the laws associated with copyright in music, like you have both stated I think its the best idea to use royalty free music.

We have quite a lot of people visiting our Cyber Zone and also our website asking about how to copy music. Now i can relay the correct information to them, (there will be a few sad faces I expect !).

I think it may be worth investing in a few royalty free cds for digital story telling and DVD work, ie photoshop premier elements, Muveemix, etc.

Off the subject slightly, if anyone is looking for graphics on projects and want some free stock pictures, visit http://www.sxc.hu/

Thanks again for your help with this,

All the best,

Neil Williams

Digital Inclusion Worker Briton Ferry West

I had a further thought since posting;

Microsoft have a superb free tool for Digital Story-Telling, very similar to Muvee "Auto-producer"

You basically point it at a load of photographs and it makes it into a story, panning and zooming on the shots you gave it to make it a bit more lively.

There is also a feature which allows you to add music, which, it effectively writes for you, allowing you to tweak certain parameters, including mood, rhythm, etc.

You can go to microsoft.com/downloads or use this link.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=92755126-a008-49b3-b3f4-6f33852af9c1&DisplayLang=en

Another option would be to create your own music - incredibly MUCH easier than you might think, especially if you use one of the samples editing packages, which I call "Music by Lego" as you simply add blocks of sound-bytes to build your tunes. There are several of these packages, but the one I know best is E-Jay. They have several flavours, such as Reggae, Dance, Hip-Hop, etc.

I even compiled some tracks of my own and converted them to MP3 to listen to in the car.

http://www.ejay.com/

If you have any kids who are interested in music, this will keep them occupied for hours.

regards, Ian.