Incompetech
incompetech.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2009
Kevin MacLeod's site offers free royalty-free music and printable graph paper PDFs.
What HN saysHN commenters point to it as a source of royalty-free music for games, videos, and hobby projects, run by a single musician.
34HN people shared it
28linked it in comments
6stories submitted
19story points
9 months agolast shared
2009people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Free Online Graph Paper / Grid Paper PDFs5 people · 14 points · first shared 2009 · 11 comments on HN
- 2I Could Care Less4 people · 2 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 3Music4 people · first shared 2018
- 4Homepage4 people · first shared 2012
- 5Royalty free3 people · first shared 2015
- 6Royalty Free Music for your Startup Video or Podcast.2 people · 1 points · first shared 2010 · discussion on HN
- 7Music2 people · first shared 2014
- 8Lunch at the Hewlett-Packard Cafeteria1 people · 1 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 9A Catalog of Amazon Box Dimensions1 people · 1 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 10Kerbalspaceprogram1 people · first shared 2021
- 11Squaredots1 people · first shared 2023
- 12Collections1 people · first shared 2015
- 13Faq1 people · first shared 2023
- 14Cornelllined1 people · first shared 2019
- 15Caring.png1 people · first shared 2011
What HN people wrote when they linked it
matthewdanger · 2012-06-25
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.
Tijdreiziger · 2022-05-08
Related:
Openverse https://wordpress.org/openverse/ (formerly CC Search)
NoCopyrightSounds https://ncs.io/
Dova-Syndrome https://dova-s.jp/EN/
Incompetech https://incompetech.com/
fuball63 · 2020-04-08
I've used https://incompetech.com/ in the past for royalty free music for game jams and other hobby projects. It's the site of one musician that makes all of this stuff and releases it for free.
Raphmedia · 2015-08-14
For those looking for sources of royalty free music, I strongly recommend Kevin MacLeod's http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/collections.php
corobo · 2015-03-09
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/
account42 · 2026-01-22
Surprised to not see Kevin MacLeod's royalty free music collection listed: https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/music.html
LeoPanthera · 2025-11-27
zovirl · 2025-01-12
I’ve used music from Kevin MacLeod [0] and Heatly Bros [1] in projects.
[0] https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/music.html
[1] https://heatleybros.bandcamp.com/music
blagie · 2023-10-10
mikestew · 2023-10-10
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/
swilliamsio · 2023-07-15
A shockingly large amount of music used in old flash games and in old YouTube videos is by Kevin MacLeod, whose released thousands of high quality tracks of all styles under CC-BY.
https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/music.html
mattmar96 · 2021-12-08
Yeah it is from KSP, good ear!
https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/most/kerbalspaceprogram.php
Oops I should really add a credit for it.
easton · 2021-02-04
Another good site for royalty-free music is Incomptech, it more than did its duty in my high school TV Production class...
https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/
Symbiote · 2019-06-25
There are plenty of templates online, for example http://paper-prints.com/sheet/cornell_notes_A4 and (customizable) https://incompetech.com/graphpaper/cornelllined/
Searching also led to a few suppliers of pre-printed notebooks or paper with a similar grid.
anc84 · 2019-01-30
Nice!!
How do you compare to https://incompetech.com/music/ or rather, how do you plan to distinguish yourself from the existing grandmaster of royalty free music?
WayToDoor · 2018-08-20
I am using this as a web interface to make my graph paper : https://incompetech.com/graphpaper/
It works pretty well given my 'reds, and at least I do not have to tinker with LaTeX and Tkiz
raesene9 · 2018-05-23
I've used https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/ for this in the past, which works relatively well.
msla · 2018-04-20
There's more royalty-free music at Incompetech:
https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/music.html
mturmon · 2015-08-11
If you can see through the ads, this site has what you want:
http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/trianglehex.html
Adjust line parameters as you like, and it gives you a PDF.
I used it to get a hex grid when explaining Pascal's triangle to my kid.
Lafcadio · 2015-04-27
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).
chrisBob · 2014-10-30
http://incompetech.com/music/
I used this music for my iPad game[1] and was very happy with it.
[1] http://oceancmotion.com
vobios · 2014-05-02
This one has some of the options your are looking for such as spacing, color, and page border:
http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/
honestcoyote · 2013-10-27
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.
ijk · 2013-04-10
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
rlm · 2012-01-21
I guess you meant "couldn't" care less? :)
http://incompetech.com/gallimaufry/care_less.html
But I'm in total agreement with you. I too like the productions of Hollywood. I just don't like their political power.
ghurlman · 2011-03-30
Alas, while caring can continue into infinity, zero is indeed the lower bound.
See also: http://www.incompetech.com/Images/caring.png
slmbrhrt · 2010-05-10
Oh, don't start with this.
http://incompetech.com/gallimaufry/care_less.html
swombat · 2010-03-28
FYI, the music is by someone called Kevin MacLeod. He publishes Royalty Free music here:
http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/