Building a Web Site For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Getting Music and Video

First things first: You gotta get the music or whatever media before you can add it to your Web site. Okay, grabbing music off the Web, off a newsgroup, through FTP, or just about any other way that data moves on the Internet is a pretty easy thing to do. However, you face two problems with taking just any old song that you can get your hands on, and the same goes for video. First, if you can snag it with no trouble, so can everyone else — and you presumably want your site to stand out from the crowd. Second, you face the question of copyright. The odds are pretty good that you have no idea who owns the copyright to a song or video that you snag from some Web site or if it’s in the public domain (for everyone to use) instead of under copyright.

You can avoid this copyright mess by following these few simple suggestions:

✓	Get your own custom music or video by hiring professionals to create it for you — totally new and completely unencumbered. That way, you won’t have any legal hassles, and nobody else can use it on another site.
✓	Buy or download royalty-free music and video collections.
✓	Use public-domain music and video (if you don’t mind everyone else using the same music or video on countless other Web sites, too).
✓	Create your own music or video.

The following sections describe how to get these different types of files for your site.

Finding music houses

Professional music suppliers can accommodate your desires to play unique music on your site, either ...