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    Incompetech

    incompetech.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2009

    Kevin MacLeod's site offers free royalty-free music and printable graph paper PDFs.

    Visit blogRSSHN submissions
    GamesCulture & Society
    What HN says

    HN commenters point to it as a source of royalty-free music for games, videos, and hobby projects, run by a single musician.

    Stats for nerds
    34HN people shared it
    6linked in comments
    19story points
    Jan 2026last shared
    2010people per year2026

    Top posts on HN

    1. 1
      Free Online Graph Paper / Grid Paper PDFs
      5 people · 14 points · first shared 2009 · 11 comments on HN
    2. 2
      I Could Care Less
      4 people · 2 points · first shared 2010 · Discussion on HN
    3. 3
      Royalty Free Music for your Startup Video or Podcast.
      2 people · 1 points · first shared 2010 · Discussion on HN
    4. 4
      A Catalog of Amazon Box Dimensions
      1 person · 1 points · first shared 2015 · Discussion on HN
    5. 5
      Lunch at the Hewlett-Packard Cafeteria
      1 person · 1 points · first shared 2016 · Discussion on HN
    6. 6
      Music
      4 people · first shared 2018
    7. 7
      Homepage
      4 people · first shared 2012
    8. 8
      Royalty free
      3 people · first shared 2015
    9. 9
      Music
      2 people · first shared 2014
    10. 10
      Kerbalspaceprogram
      1 person · first shared 2021

    What HN people wrote when they linked it

    • matthewdangerJun 2012

      Very cool resource and there are some great tracks here. I'm excited to see how you expand the library to accompany all kinds of different projects, even beyond games.

      I'm quite a fan of royalty-free music, actually I just finished up a project using 100% royalty-free music from Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com/). He uses a creative-commons license for all of his work, but makes the bulk of his money through private projects brought on from exposure.

      Our project was for an immersive reading experience for The War of the Worlds, which meant we needed lots and lots of different types of music for all the story arcs. Shameless plug if you want to check it out: http://e-mersiv.com/apps

      Again, I think you could definitely have a market for more than just game devs out there, your pricing model is attractive enough to be used for short videos, ebooks, etc.

    • ijkApr 2013

      Music copyright is incredibly messed up, even compared to the rest of copyright. I was doing research for a project I'm working on, and it's nearly impossible to determine if any 20th century recording is in the public domain unless the author explicitly declared it as such.

      YouTube (and by extension Google) are actively making this worse with automated ContentID. There are many documented cases of author-released public-domain or creative commons work being claimed by other people [1]. Create a false entry in the ContentID database and issue takedown notices to the original creator and anyone else who used the music. Even if you get caught you can drop the claim and still walk away with the money you made off of their videos.

      [1] See http://incompetech.com/wordpress/category/copyright/ for several examples

    • honestcoyoteOct 2013

      For my last year of classes, I made something similar, though for a lower cost.

      I used http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/ to make a custom dot grid to accomodate my large handwriting, imported it into InDesign to create 200+ numbered pages of the grid and then added a few pages front and back of reference items. Finished up with a color cover of my own design, and then sent the resulting PDF to an online printing service, Lulu, and the resulting 8 x 10 notebook was quite nice.

      It didn't have the feel of a Moleskin but the spiral binding was pretty resilient to the daily abuse, the thick cover also held up perfectly, the paper was thicker than normal notebook paper, and it was nice having a notebook which fit my writing style perfectly. Total cost per book was around $15.

    • LafcadioApr 2015

      Eh, I think it's just a common mistake, and I corrected them because it's a pet peeve of mine, not because I think it is a big deal. Your line of thinking is not new to me though, and if "could care less" is sarcastic then I would argue it is particularly ineffective sarcasm (see: http://incompetech.com/gallimaufry/care_less.html).

    • coroboMar 2015

      Does it include music from oft-used music sources in YouTube videos such as AudioMicro and Incompetech[1]? I'd guess it's not really possible on the AudioMicro front as they're paid-for music that'd cost you a fortune to index but may be worth adding the latter

      [1] http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/

    • mikestewOct 2023

      Come for the graph paper, stay for the snark. Go to the Grid Dots page[0], and...

      I'm going to guess you're really into pens. Not an unhealthy amount... but more than most.

      It's like the web page sees into my mind!

      [0] https://incompetech.com/graphpaper/squaredots/

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