Originally Posted by Gavin Sinclair
With Youtube, I think it's a case of over-zealous algorithms or something on the part of distributors like CD Baby on the lookout for pirating, not that they are asserting any copyright (which they don't possess). They are trying to do a good thing for people who distribute through them, but the same process can get in the way of trying to do something legitimate with the copyright holder on board with what you are doing.

Chris and Martin mentioned Pixabay. I use them too, although, like Martin, I usually end up using their images and applying the "Ken Burns" effect to create some movement in the video. They have a really good library of free images. A lot of the same ones (and many others) can be found at pexels.com, but I find Pixabay a lot easier to navigate and more extensive.

If you have a Mac, you can do a lot with iMovie. I don't have a Mac, so I use Windows Moviemaker which I have on my old computer. Microsoft removed Moviemaker in Windows 10 and replaced it with something pretty useless. There are free or cheap movie software programs out there. I have tried VideoPad, which has a lot of capabilities, but the transitions between images can be jerky, so I had to give up. This problem might not occur with actual movie clips.

It is also possible to do a lot with iMovie on an iPhone, but I don't like working on something like that on such a small screen.


Actually they DO claim rights since they uploaded "videos" of most of their entire catalog onto YouTube already and according to various artists did it without notice or express permission because their terms of service allowed them to do it. Search for any random CD Baby title (especially those where the artist does not have their own channel) and likely you will find it on YouTube where you can listen to the whole album free (minus annoying commercials) any time you want. Of course you can do the same on Spotify and guess where Spotify got that content? From CD Baby (again according to artists). Apparently CD Baby "collects" any income earned, takes their cut and them pays based on their agreements. But in some cases at least folks are no even aware their stuff is on YouTube or Spotify or how it got there until they figure out it was CD Baby. Perhaps they forgot clicking the boxes to put it there automatically, or perhaps it was simply done without notice which many artists have claimed to me. It is all second hand info to me however, though the music is easily found.

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