Where To Find Royalty Free Photos/Music?
- Amy Smith Muise & Alisa Gonzalez
- Nov 7
- 4 min read
Understanding Copyright and Media Use
How do you know whether you can re-use something that you find on the Internet? With the rise in public creators, it’s common to wonder about the permissions and copyright status for images, music, and other media.
In this blog post, we’ll focus on questions about how to find royalty-free resources that you can use in educational media you intend to distribute widely.
The general topic of copyright is much broader. There are special guidelines for limited educational use, as well as for niche uses such as reviews and parodies. To understand those topics, a good first read is the NMSU Library’s Copyright Essentials. It explains what types of works are and are not copyrighted and what rights owners have with the use of original works.
Below, we’ll discuss just the use case where you are creating something you want to distribute online, and need to find images, music, or other media to include.
How to Find Images and Other Media for Educational Distribution
Not every image you find online is free to use. Even for educational distribution, you need to choose images that you have permission to use, such as public domain, share-alike, or images created by NMSU employees.
Photoshelter
The albums below provide photos free for use in NMSU educational and outreach materials (no attribution needed). These photos were taken by NMSU employees as part of their job, and they are available for use by others within the institution. For those in the College of Agricultural Consumer and Environmental Sciences, there is an ACES-specific Photoshelter with many agricultural and Extension-type photos. There’s also a broader NMSU Photoshelter with photos on many topics, including photos suitable for promotion and recruitment activities.
The ACES Media Support site is a good resource for guidance on educational media production. The “ACES and NMSU Resources” tab includes links to various helpful sites, including a number of royalty-free repositories.
The web service Flickr maintains a searchable database of photographs free of copyright restrictions, sourced from many libraries and digital collections around the world.
The NMSU Library also keeps a list of repositories for open source resources:
Federal Agency repositories
Federal agencies often have public domain image repositories, some of which are listed below:
USDA-ARS
NASA
USGS
National Archives
Department of Fish & Wildlife
Library of Congress
Smithsonian
(click the button "Free to Use (CC0)" before searching)
Nonprofit resources
Wikimedia
A good resource for public domain or Creative Commons images on many topics is Wikimedia Commons. This is a part of the Wikipedia platform where people deposit images and document their licenses. You can choose to search only for public-domain (no-copyright) images, or for images with specific licenses. Creative Commons licenses often allow non-commercial use as long as you attribute the author of the image.
Public Domain Image Archive
The Public Domain Review maintains a curated collection of out-of-copyright images. It's searchable by category, and includes detailed information about the use status of each image and where the original is held (such as at a university or library). It's fun to browse, even when you aren't searching for anything in particular!
Getty Museum
The Getty Search Gateway is another great resource for interesting historical images, providing access to more than a hundred thousand images in the public domain.
OER Commons
For academic needs, the Open Educational Resources Commons may be useful. OER Commons is not specifically for images, but you may find some there. These resources are covered by Creative Commons licenses that allow educational use (check for attribution requirements).
How To Find Royalty-Free Music for Video
Social media platforms
Social media platforms often provide music options as a background to video reels or compilations that you create within the platform. Using this music is often the easiest way to add a soundtrack to your videos, especially if you’re just looking for background music. However, the selection is limited, and the music can only be used on that specific platform.
Music repositories
In addition, several online music repositories may offer royalty-free music for video or other media backgrounds. These music tracks may be more flexible for release on multiple platforms, or if you want to match your edits to the music.
One option is Pixabay, which is an archive of royalty-free music. Check out the general pixabay license here. since it's a sharing site, individual creators might put additional restrictions on the tracks, so you need to check the terms for each track you want to download and use.
Open Verse is another open source repository that may have resources you can use.
(Click on an image to take to a page where the music file is available.)
Another option is Soundstripe. A free account on this site will only let you preview tracks, but once you’ve found something you like, you could consider whether signing up for a paid account is worth it.
For paid options, YouTube Premium is another service that allows you to download royalty-free music.
Original content
For projects with a longer lead time, consider reaching out to local musicians to see if they would be interested in creating a soundtrack for your product. Although it’s sometimes possible to find people who will donate their time, always assume you'll pay for what an artist produces, and negotiate the rate upfront! Many community members would love the opportunity. (If payment will be made through NMSU, they will need to go through the process to become a vendor.)
Conclusion
There are many ways of finding images and music to enhance your educational media products while making sure to honor terms of use and acknowledge sources. If you have questions about specific media resources, please reach out to the NMSU Library’s AskUs service, or consult Extension specialists in the Department of Innovative Media Research and Extension.
Written by Amy Smith Muise, ACES Webmaster, Department of Innovative Media Research and Extension, and Alisa Gonzalez, Education and Social Sciences Librarian, NMSU Library.