Kevin MacLeod (musician)

Kevin MacLeod (born September 28, 1972) is an American composer and music producer. MacLeod is best known for his distribution of royalty-free library music through his website, Incompetech.com. MacLeod has made over 2,000 self-composed pieces of music available for download under the Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 license. His licensing options allow anyone to use his music for free as long as he receives attribution, which has led to his music being used in millions of YouTube videos and thousands of films; as of July 2016, MacLeod has over 2,300 composer credits listed on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). His music has been used in Hugo, several commercial video games, and videos by online content creators such as CollegeHumor, Good Mythical Morning, and many other popular YouTube channels.

MacLeod decided to release his music under Creative Commons licenses in order to maximize the number of people who can listen to and use his music. According to him, part of his reason for allowing people to use his music for free is his belief that the current copyright system is broken; he feels powerless to change the entire system on his own, but hopes to create "an alternate body of works that is able to compete with them".

MacLeod's most popular license is the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY); as long as he receives credit, his music is free to use. A no-attribution license is also available for people who are unwilling or unable to provide credit to MacLeod; this license costs $30 for one song, $50 for two songs, and $20 per song for three or more songs.

MacLeod has also created FreePD.com, which collects new public domain sound recordings by various artists. Rather than waiting for old copyrights to expire, he hopes to provide a quality library of modern recorded works by artists who explicitly release their music into the public domain. Some of MacLeod's own music is available on the website as well; he explains that these songs are "not commercially viable in the traditional sense, and just add clutter [on his primary website] which hinders people in finding the pieces that they may want."

MacLeod is the subject of a documentary film titled Royalty Free: The Music of Kevin MacLeod. It is scheduled to be released in 2017. Ryan Camarda, the film's director and producer, ran a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter with a goal of $30,000; by the end of the campaign, 524 backers had pledged a total of $30,608. According to the Kickstarter page, the money was needed for transportation in order to conduct in-person interviews with the various subjects featured in the film.

Films

• Hugo
• Facing Fear
• Bellflower

Webseries

• CollegeHumor
• Jacksepticeye
• Machinima Inc.
• L.A. Beast
• CGP Grey
• Dross Rotzank
• Good Mythical Morning
• Adam Montoya (SeaNanners)
• Yahtzee Crowshaw
• Critical Role

Video games

• The Stanley Parable
• Kerbal Space Program
• Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments
• The Bridge
• DCS: Black Shark
• SCP – Containment Breach
• Hatoful Boyfriend
• Robocraft

Other media

• Wikimedia Commons
• Ghent city promotional film
• Monty Python
• Conan
• Harmontown
• Yogscast

• "Facing Fear – a documentary short film". facingfearmovie.com. Retrieved January 19, 2015. 
• Arvid Fossen. "FilmMusicSite.com – Bellflower Soundtrack (Jonathan Keevil, Kevin MacLeod) – Oscilloscope (2011)". filmmusicsite.com. Retrieved January 19, 2015. 
• CH Staff (June 27, 2012). "Perfect Fantasy World". CollegeHumor. Retrieved January 19, 2015. 
• "Machinima". YouTube. Retrieved January 19, 2015. 
• "The Stanley Parable". Metacritic. Retrieved January 19, 2015. 
• "Kerbal Space Program". incompetech.com. Retrieved March 10, 2015. 
• "Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments". youtube. Retrieved January 24, 2015. 
• Hato, Moa. "はーとふる彼氏 公式サイト" (in Japanese). PigeoNation Inc. Retrieved March 25, 2015. 
• "163 Promofilm Stad Gent 2014". YouTube. Retrieved January 19, 2015. 
• "Monty Python". incompetech.com. Retrieved January 19, 2015. 
• "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys". incompetech.com. Retrieved January 19, 2015. 
• "TeamCoco". incompetech.com. Retrieved January 19, 2015. 

In 2015, MacLeod was awarded the International Honorary Web Video Award at the 2015 German Web Video Awards by the European Web Video Academy for his lifetime achievement in influencing the German web video community.