Guide
Which songs can you use in a bouncing ball video?
This is a practical overview, not legal advice. Copyright rules differ between countries, so check the rules where you live if you're unsure.
Three different things
A piece of music can carry rights at three levels, and a video can use one without touching the others:
- The composition: the melody and harmony as written. Beethoven's Für Elise is a composition.
- A recording: a specific performance. A 2015 recording of Für Elise has its own rights, even though the piece is public domain.
- An arrangement or transcription, including a MIDI file someone sequenced, can also be protected if it adds creative work.
Melody Bounce never uses a recording. It plays the notes of the melody on a piano sample, one note per bounce. So for the built-in songs the only question is whether the composition is free to use.
The built-in songs
| Song | Composer |
|---|---|
| Für Elise | Ludwig van Beethoven |
| Minuet in G | Christian Petzold |
| In the Hall of the Mountain King | Edvard Grieg |
| Canon in D | Johann Pachelbel |
| Ode to Joy | Ludwig van Beethoven |
| Rondo alla Turca | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
| Symphony No. 40 | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
| D major pentatonic | Traditional scale |
All of these composers died before 1910, Grieg last in 1907, and the pieces are in the public domain worldwide. The piano is the VSCO-2 Community Edition upright piano, released under CC0, so the sound itself is free to use too.
Your own MIDI files
When you upload a MIDI file, the composition inside it is your responsibility. Pieces by composers who died long ago are usually safe; songs from the last hundred years usually are not, even if the MIDI file was free to download. Platforms like YouTube and TikTok match melodies, not just recordings, so a copyrighted melody can be flagged even when it's played by a bouncing ball.
See Using your own MIDI file for places to find files with clear licences.