YouTube Audio Gallery Offers Royalty-Free Tracks

You know all that hullaballoo about piracy and people not respecting copyright? It’s a major – and very real – issue, although there are always different sides to a story. I remember watching the recent movie about Napster and how the music industry went up in arms against them. I also remember thinking that there could have been a better resolution to that problem, and that while I do respect the concepts of copyright and royalty, there should be a happy medium.

Enter YouTube Audio Gallery. It’s not exactly a solution to the whole music piracy issue, but it is one step closer to making everyone happy.

The YouTube Audio Gallery revolves around a simple concept: royalty-free tracks are offered for download and use. For free.

Currently, there are 150 tracks which are available, and the brilliant thing is that content creators can use these tracks anywhere they want – they are not restricted to YouTube.

The idea for the YouTube Audio Gallery was brought up earlier this year, but as can be expected, Google had to deal with some issues – specifically, finding artists who wouldn’t mind sharing their tracks to the public without getting paid for it. As things stand, 150 tracks are peanuts. There are millions of tracks out there, and Google is still in the process of reaching out to artists to agree to share their music via the platform.

To find the YouTube Audio Gallery, when you’re signed in to YouTube, you’ll see a link to Creation Tools and the Gallery. It’s as easy as clicking on the link. You can then filter out music using parameters such as instrument, genre, length, and mood. Not that you will really need that at this point with the amount of music available!

If you’re an artist, and you want to share your tracks, check out the submission form.

By the way, I don’t need to tell you that you won’t be finding Metallica tracks in the YouTube Audio Gallery, do I?

[Images via churpchurp & YouTube]