Questions people actually ask

Yes. Every track is free to download and free to use commercially: client work, advertising, films, games, podcasts, monetised video. There is no cost, no account, no subscription and no per-use fee, now or later. The one condition is credit.

Yes. The licence is CC BY 4.0, and attribution is what it asks for in return. It is the only thing I ask, so I do ask it properly.

Every track page gives you the exact line with a copy button. Put it wherever your medium puts credits: the video description, the end titles, the game's credits screen, the episode notes. It does not have to be on screen while the music plays. The line looks like this: "Track Title" by Mikael Hellman, mikaelhellman.com, licensed under CC BY 4.0

Write to me at [email protected] and we will find a way that works. This is a real problem for some formats and I would rather solve it than have you quietly skip the credit. It is not a trick question and the answer is not "buy a licence", because there is nothing to buy.

Yes, all of it. Cut it to length, loop a section, layer it, pitch it, put it through whatever you like. The credit stays the same.

No. You owe me nothing beyond the credit. I would genuinely like to hear about it, though, and it is the most useful thing you can send me.

Three things. Do not sell the music as music, which means no stock-audio resale and no "my beats" compilations. Do not pass it off as your own work. And do not register it anywhere: no uploading it to Spotify or any distributor, and nothing that puts it into YouTube's Content ID or a collecting society's database. That last one would generate copyright claims against everyone else using the same track, which is the one thing this site exists to avoid. Full terms on the licence page.

That is the question this site takes most seriously. Each track is checked by hand against Content ID, and every track page says whether that check has been done, so you are never guessing. A track found to be registered is taken down rather than flagged, because a library that sometimes claims you is worse than a smaller one that never does.

Content ID matches against recordings someone has registered with YouTube, usually through a music distributor. It has nothing to do with the licence. I have released music commercially under other artist names over the years, and where one of those releases shares a recording with something here, that recording can be in the database. I am working through the catalogue and untangling it.

Tell me at [email protected], with the track name and a link if you can. I will find out why, get the registration removed if it is mine to remove, and take the track off the site if it is not. You can dispute the claim in YouTube Studio in the meantime, and the licence on this page is your evidence.

No. Putting it through a distributor would register the recording, which would then claim every other person using it. Use it in your video, your game or your film freely. Do not put it on streaming services.

I do. I am Mikael, a composer in Stockholm, and this is a hobby rather than a business. More on the about page.

Some of it, and the site always says which. I play a sketch first. Sometimes that sketch becomes the track. Sometimes I hand it to Lennart 3000, a generative step I have given a name so it is impossible to miss, and then I arrange and master the result myself. Tracks marked Mikael Hellman had no generation involved. Tracks marked Mikael Hellman & Lennart 3000 did. You can browse only the human ones if your client has rules about it.

The thing I played before anything else happened: piano, strings, whatever it started as. It is free to download too, and it is unambiguously my own performance. It is often the better story.

MP3 at 320 kbps, 44.1 kHz. Everything is mastered to roughly −14.5 LUFS, which is what the streaming platforms expect, so tracks sit at a consistent level against each other and against your dialogue. The player on each page streams a smaller Opus file; the download is always the full-quality one.

Ask me at [email protected]. There is no WAV on the site today, and stems are not something I keep tidily for every track, but if you have a real need for one I would rather hear from you than have you work around it.

Ask at [email protected], but manage your expectations: this is what I do in evenings, so it depends entirely on what it is and what else is going on. No harm in describing the project.

No, and no. No sign-up, no email address, no cart, no daily cap, no trial that expires. The button downloads the file.

There is an RSS feed of new releases. No newsletter, because that would mean collecting email addresses, and the whole point is that you can use this site without giving me anything.

Credit me properly. That is genuinely the useful one, because it is how anyone else finds the site. If you want to do more there is a Ko-fi, which is entirely optional and changes nothing about the licence.

Email [email protected] and I will fix it. Wrong tempo, wrong key, a dead download, a description that describes a different piece of music entirely: all of it is worth telling me about.