Kevin MacLeod

Incompetech

Kevin MacLeod was born in 1972 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and composes and produces everything himself with sampled and synthesized instruments. He entered the royalty-free music business in the mid 1990s, which he called a sad industry with a lot of bad music, aiming at people who could not afford existing music packages. Incompetech.com was founded around 1996 or 1997; he posted music online free, hoping someone would find a use for it. He publishes through Incompetech Inc., and his catalog spans soundtrack, contemporary, jazz, electronica, classical, horror, world and holiday music.

The catalog held 1,443 entries totaling about 87 hours when we checked, though press give figures from over 2,000 to more than 4,000. Its earliest dated pieces are from 1998, and the busiest year was 2006 with 141. In September 2011 he became able to assign ISRC codes. He held Reddit AMAs on September 17, 2013 and October 14, 2014 and received the International Honorary Web Video Award in 2015. The documentary Royalty Free: The Music of Kevin MacLeod, directed by Ryan Camarda, was reviewed by Video Librarian on June 7, 2021 and distributed by First Run Features from March 29, 2022. Since 2020 he has used AI tools such as Suno, without publishing the output to Incompetech.

On January 6 and 7, 2024 Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig used "Fluffing a Duck" as their walk-on music at the Golden Globes, and in September 2024 NPR wrote about "Monkeys Spinning Monkeys" and how music and social media shape each other. Our uploads titled "Local Forecast - Elevator" and "Impact Moderato" are catalog pieces too.