The Freesound Project
| URL | freesound.org |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Audio clip sharing |
| Registration | Yes |
| Owner | Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra |
| Created by | Bram de Jong, Freesound Team |
| Launched | April 2005 |
| Alexa rank |  20,044 (April 2013[update])[1] |
| Current status | Active |
Freesound.org is a repository of Creative Commons licensed audio samples. Sounds uploaded to the website by its users cover a wide range of subjects, from field recordings to synthesized sound effects. Audio content in the repository can be tagged and browsed by folksonomic means.
Contents |
Licensing [edit]
Freesound originally used the Creative Commons Sampling Plus license for all samples, but has since switched to using CC0, CC BY and CC BY-NC. Older samples remain under Sampling Plus unless their uploaders have relicensed them.
All of these licenses allow use and distribution of the samples (modified or unmodified) for non-commercial purposes, and in the case of CC0 and CC BY also for commercial purposes. The Sampling Plus license does not allow unmodified samples to be distributed commercially, and therefore, like CC BY-NC, fails the Definition of Free Cultural Works and the Debian Free Software Guidelines and is not free enough to be used on Wikipedia, free software programs and other projects requiring free content.
History [edit]
The Freesound Project was officially launched on April 5, 2005 in the context of the 2005 International Computer Music Conference. It is a project of the Music Technology Group of Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. Bram de Jong is responsible for developing and administrating the Freesound website.[2]
Children of Men was the first major motion picture known to legally use a sample from Freesound in its production. The sound used was "male_Thijs_loud_scream.aiff" posted by the user thanvannispen, and the film properly attributes the sample in the credits.[3]
Features [edit]
- Tagging
- GeoTagging
- Sample Packs
- Remix Tree
- Waveform Display
- Flash Preview
- Mootcher Library
- Creative Commons licensing
The features of Freesound are designed to make the sound files on the website easy to index, search, and browse. Since the licenses used (except CC0) stipulate that the authors of the original work must be credited in the derivative work, the site is capable of automatically generating an attribution list to make this easier.
Software Architecture [edit]
The Freesound platform is based on technology developed by the Music Technology Group of the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona.[4]
- Similarity searches based on automatically generated semantic descriptors
- WordNet-based taxonomy for "nearest neighbor searching"[5]
- Spectral centroid waveform display[6]
The following web technologies are also used:
- PHP scripting
- MySQL database
- Smarty template engine
- getID3() media parser
- phpBB message board (with Morpheus message board extras)
References [edit]
- ^ "Freesound.org Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2013-04-22.
- ^ Music Technology Group (May 12, 2005). The Freesound Project: A web community for free and open exchange of sounds. Press release.
- ^ de Jong, B. (2007, January 13). Major motion picture using Freesound sample!!! The Freesound Project Announcements / News. Retrieved 6 July 2010, from http://www.freesound.org/index.php?start=39
- ^ de Jong, B. (2005). freesound :: technology used. Retrieved 7 July 2010, from The Freesound Web site: http://www.freesound.org/technology.php
- ^ http://audioclas.iua.upf.edu/documents.shtml#AES116
- ^ Source code available here: http://code.google.com/p/wav2png/
