Freesound Forums

Hello all,

I 've just launched www.soundsnap.com and would like to invite you to check it out.

If you like Freesound, you might like Soundsnap too (and its 30.000 sounds!). We have sounds by people like Mike Dred (Rephlex records), SI BEGG (Ninjatune, MUTE), Monster X (peace off records), sound editor Justine Angus (Batman Begins, Happy Feet) and game sound designer Stuart Duffield (Konami, Acclaim).

Before people start comparing it to Freesound or jumping to any other conclusions, I would like to say what I wrote to Anton (Freesound admin) after he sent me a very warm and friendly email today:

'...Keep in mind that I see Freesound as a friend, not an enemy.
I think the main battle today is between Free and 'gated' Culture.
And only the people can decide what will survive.'

Freesound has been a great inspiration for us and will always be.

Let me know what you think about our site. Feedback is more than welcome.

Tasos
Soundsnap Admin

Hi,

that looks good !

-Erdie

WoW!!!
The site is cool, but not perfect...

It offer the same as FreeSound but a little less,
The previews are little too small,
and the site is full of graphicS that make
the site slow/louder for my 56K-Modem...

Very usefull the possibility to dowload in wav or mp3,
but a big cost for your HD StorageS I think

But having some competition/cooperation is not bad for freesound,
but like you said this is the people that will choose what is good/usefull,
I am very happy to see new free/openFree alternatives to the commertial market,
so I give respect to you like I give it to Bram

Hi guys,

Thanks Erdie, I hope you enjoy he site.

Hard PCM, thanks for the respect and I really appreciate your feedback- I much prefer criticism to praise.
Sorry to hear that its running slow for you... We sometime overestimate what people are actually using, althought we 've tried to optimise the page loading...

I hope you can find some useful sounds there at least.

Speak soon,

Tasos
Soundsnap Admin

Hi Tasos,

on the first view the license looks a bit more complicated that the freesound conditions. Therefore let me ask: What are the differences in terms of license between freesound and your site? May I just use the sound for my radioplay and may I distribute the result under the conditions of creative commons again? Do I need to credit the authors? (Even i would do it voluntary, it would be important to know if this is forced or voluntary)

-erdie

The main difference between Our License and the one that Freesound is using is this:

- Attribution is not necessary for sounds from Soundsnap, although its recommended where its reasonably possible. For example, for film sound, the Creative Commons licenses don't make much sense, so we had to change them and write our own.

- Otherwise, you can use sounds and commercially distribute your radioplay without any problems.

For more info, I would feel more comfortable answering to questions on our forum http://www.soundsnap.com/forum

Check our Help/Faq section too: http://soundsnap.com/faq

Thanks,

Tasos

Both sites are excellent and a great idea. We need more dedication to sites such as this online and the generation of more collaborating sites for musical artists of all natures. I too, have been working laboriously at achieving similar things but am not nearly as advanced as either Freesound or SoundSnaps are at this point.

I agree strongly with what you claimed SoundSnaps and commend you for your open attitude wherein you are not competing here. Competition is, IMHO, useless and egotistical on the Internet especially when collaborating is our main goal. Competition would just be a contradiction of our own goals.

I'm very excited with both sites here, and others as well which have cropped up over the last year. I am a musician/producer/engineer and songwriter and would immensely enjoy collaborating with any of you in an effort to help make all of our sites better, together.

Kindest Regards

Peter

Soundsnap
The main difference between Our License and the one that Freesound is using is this:

- Attribution is not necessary for sounds from Soundsnap, although its recommended where its reasonably possible. For example, for film sound, the Creative Commons licenses don't make much sense, so we had to change them and write our own.

Hi Tasos,

I think you have a great site, but it is exactly this unnessary attribution which I as a soundrecordist feel is unbalanced. In this model there is no ratio to give and take and all.
And also, I think it has been proven that the freesound licence works great. The creditroll for Children of Men is anecdotal evidence of that.
If somebody wants to use my sounds without attributing to them thats fine, just pay me for my work like you would sound dogs or hollywood edge. Maybe the users over at soundsnap have such nice bankrolls that they dont have to worry about rent but I do have bills to pay, mikes to buy and recorders to pay off.

Cheers
Anton

Hi Anton,

First of all, I would like to say that I love Freesound. Its a great plaform and has some great crators. But since you brought this subject up, I am happy to answer..

Just to make something clear: The fact that attribution is required with the License here, does NOT mean that you get paid. So whether you get attributed or not, you still don't get paid, so I don't see your point. I think that recognition of yourself as a sound designer/recordist is more important within the community, rather than having your name on a film credit. The reality is that in 99.99% of the cases creators of sounds are unfortunately NOT credited, although Freesound 'promises' this.

I think that Creative Commons was created with music, text and other artforms in mind, but not sound. Thats why Freesound has been struggling for so long with this issue.

Bram says this in his interview: (http://creativecommons.org/audio/freesound)

'We doubted a long time about which license to choose, and in the end decided to go with Sampling+. In retrospect we chose wrong, and we’re planning to ask our users to switch to Attribution/Attribution-NonCommercial, but that’s a bit further in the future.'

There has been a poll for a long time on Freesound, which is trying to resolve this issue. In fact, its too late, because people have already uploaded their sounds under this license.

The fact that after millions of downloads there is only one credit for a Freesound sound in a major movie, proves my point. What about the other millions of downloads? Are people not using them in their work? Or are they not crediting?

I think the answer is obvious. Millions of samples and sounds are downloaded and used illegally without attribution. For me that is understandable only if you tell the creators that this is the case up front. Otherwise, this causes a serious ethical and legal issue, people think they will get credited and in 99.99% of the time they dont. So Freesound users are obliged to use sounds illegally, to not use them at all, or to credit the user (which is unfortunately extremely rare).

So we tried to simplify the process and make everything legal and clear and wrote our own License. We understand that the credits in a film can't run forever and solved the issue for the downloader by making attribution optional. I suppose that Soundsnap is meant for people that don't mind getting Attributed or not (although Soundsnap recommends attribution where possible), and Freesound is for creators that really want to get attributed. But I think that since you cannot enforce this attribution, the deal is not correct. Freesound promises to its users something it cannot deliver- Attribution.

I hope this helps to explain our logic and our License difference with Freesound.

C u online

Tasos Frantzolas
www.soundsnap.com

Hi Tasos,

how did you get 30000 samples from the beginning of soundsnap? Where they archived somewhere else before?

-Erdie

Hi Erdie,

They were archived in the personal collection of the core of our community. These are 25 people from all over the world- some of these people are top industry professionals.

You can read more about the story and philosophy of Soundsnap at http://soundsnap.com/faq.

Tasos

Soundsnap
In fact, its too late, because people have already uploaded their sounds under this license.

Why is it too late? Authors can always change the license of their material if they wish to.
That's the plan: just ask the authors to let us change the license on the site and give them an interface to do so.

Yup, it IS all royally "late" but... it's still on the TODO.

To be honest using a license which is not widely spread is pretty risky.

- bram

a few months back i posted a link to web page that looks exactly like this. simple looking site-me likes that.