[Andrex]

It's not that hard, you find an email and you basically do a cold call. I was doing it in high school off Newgrounds (which is full of royalty free stuff too!)

If your project is small and free, you're not going to land The Eurythmics. But all those people posting their music online hoping to get noticed? Emailing them, even a cold call, immediately tells them you've listened to their stuff and you like it. Honesty is the best approach.

I think OP is onto something.

Edit-

> but not be 100% sure if I own the rights or not).

That's also really easy: stipulate it in writing. Preferably a proper contract but an email agreement is defensible too (IANAL).

[electroly]

> stipulate it in writing ... proper contract

When it's just me and some apps, I'm writing the background track in an evening after coding the game earlier in the day. If I bring someone else in, now I'm writing contracts (something I'm completely unprepared to do correctly myself, as a non-lawyer). It's too big of a jump for a one-day zero-budget hobby game that isn't very good and only my friends will play. Not when I can quickly cook up something myself using readily available tools.

For a more serious project with a budget, absolutely you find a professional producer, just like you get professional coders and artists. But this isn't that.

[Solvency]

Dude I've literally offered to design entire websites for up and coming music artists for FREE because I love their work and am rebuilding a portfolio to have more music sector work.

I've offered this to like 15 people. Some respond in utter confusion and blow me off. Most don't even respond.

This isn't 2005. The vast majority of people, especially "music artists" are not corresponding over email and are not exactly professionals either.

[dooraven]

> It's not that hard, you find an email and you basically do a cold call. I was doing it in high school off Newgrounds (which is full of royalty free stuff too!)

You are missing the point, most programmers are introverts and absolutely deplore doing cold calls and cold emails.

[jasonm23]

> Just write a contract

... this is almost TOO convenient.