Freesound Forums

Make it last!

Excellent and deserving resource for me and my students. Happy to donate and I look forward to it.

I just have paid this donation.
Thank you for maintaining such and nice database of sounds.

I reckon a banner at the top or bottom and of pages, and on sound pages could be cool. Maybe some pages explaining the importance of donation linked to the homepage.

advertising on numerous other sound design sites. also advertising at music schools specifically engineering schools. also wearing the shirt outside in public

I am very new to freesounds.com I do plan on donating $10 u.s. dollars around December 25 to show my appreciation I'm not sure if it will be a yearly donation I am considering it stay blessed all n thanks much appreciated for this website 👍🏾🙏🏾😁

The idea of giving is the best choice for me, as well as increasing the sale of products like caps, mugs, keychains and other products that may carry the logo of the project.

I think this is an excellent idea. I've been using this site for about 6 years now and I greatly appreciate everything you all have offered. I honestly had no idea that there was an option to donate. However, I'll gladly be donating to the cause to help support a site that is helping so many others. Thank you all for your wonderful efforts.

It's incredible how much expenses a project like Freesound actually creates. This is the best site for sound effects on the web. If 10 dollars per year help, gladly.

Great idea) I'm relatively new here, so I support you guys!

I just donated and I feel so good about it. Than you to FreeSound.

My Suggestions for the site's future: Add AdSense basic banner ads on the pages.
For Regular users who have not donated can only download 10-20 loops per day.
Any user who uploads sounds or donates gets Prime member who has no download limit.
Premium users can activate monthly donation or give big donation to remove ads and get special icon in forums and get highlighted on front page in a list.

Thank you

Hey you guys, not sure if anyone has already mentioned this because its almost obvious, freesound should team up with audacity. audacity is a free open source audio program. most things about it is free, free to alter the code, free to download, free to enjoy etc. its a pretty nice program also, just like this site. their point is that they had volunteers pitch in to make the program free. there's more to it but that's all i got, just downloaded it now actually. Free audio.

https://www.audacityteam.org/

Hi,

I know that you are currently thinking on the ways in which to raise funds that might be advantageous for Freesound. Many community radio stations gain their funding through advertisements for sponsorship. Is that not an idea that you feel comfortable with? I guess if there isn't a set team as such the sponsorship model might be problematic. I would rather have some small advertisement pop ups than no Freesound at all. Is there not a way you could maybe get some successful music/sound artists involved? Seeing as music helps a great deal of people in many ways this might be an idea that some might be interested in; or would this go against the philosophy of Freesound?. It doesn't want to end up like Soundcloud where people have to pay per month. I think that would put people off, and actually would take the service away from the audience that it is intended for, which I presume is people like myself that enjoy music making/sharing, but maybe do not have the financial scope to cover the costs if that were to happen.
Celebrity endorsement could be something, although problem is, you might get lots of contributors, but no increase in actual cash. It's a tricky one. Maybe you could get more schools or colleges/uni's involved for volunteers, people that are starting out in media courses as part of their coursework. You're prob doing some of these things already. It looks like you need a captain, I don't mean me me either. The Audacity idea, there is also Reaper that is free downloadable software that you could possibly team for advertisement/ideas. Social media groups might be worth contacting, but then there's the philosophy of Freesound to consider again. You could set up a network for radio stations contributors to contribute cash to it. You could set up a fund raising page on go fund me or something equivalent. You could indirectly approach charities that are helped by the site for some funding contributions. So it is still voluntary but has some contributors who are thanked maybe. Not sure how that fits in with freesound's ethos though, being as it is free sound. I think there might be some charities out there that would agree that this is a very good thing that is happening and deserves funding. Government funding is prob unlikely because of the stance that freesound takes, ie, non political etc. You have a separate sight for actual funding, maybe explaining the intricacies of the site and how it works. It sounds like it needs to become like a social enterprise or a charity itself to be honest. Why doesn't someone set it up as an actual charity, or is that already what Freesound is?

I've been here for 7 years now, freesound has been a huge part of my personal projects. Recently sold a sound to a major studio to use in a trailer, and I'm donating part of the proceeds back to the platform. Proud to be a part of the community here.

Hey how about opening a bitcoin wallet? (or better Litecoin as it transfers faster)
besitos

I sporadically give Wikipedia contributions (usually $20) even though I don't use it much (maybe once a month?). I feel compelled because I think it is a great idea and am routinely amazed at what it's become. I would guess freesound's audience is not even close to Wikipedia's. I would be happy to pay a nominal annual fee, and I think others would be too. Why not start out with a $5 annual fee? Those people providing a certain amount of usable content could be given a free membership in appreciation of their contributions. In a sense this would give value to their uploads and would perhaps spur more content. If contributions equate to any ability to pay for a curator (even part-time), sounds could be better catalogued with the cream of the crop where they belong-at the top of any search. I've barely started poking around, but there seems to be as much bad content (if not more) as good.

Cheers, and thank you!

Hi, thanks for your input!
Here some comments about what you've been saying since my last message.

Thanks Icons8 for your post about open collective [https://freesound.org/forum/freesound-project/40188/?page=7#post91453]. That looks really interesting. We plan to regularly publish a sustainability report to let you know how we sustain Freesound and what we do with the money. I guess that's aligned with the goals of open collective. Maybe in a future it would make sense also to join that platform.

Some of you suggest the sponsorship model and making deals with companies (eg sound equipment suppliers). We try to avoid this road as we don't want to depend on a small number of big companies but rather prefer the large amount of small donations from the community.

The advertisement model we also want to avoid as we don't like putting ads on the site. This makes things confusing and well, add-free is always better right? Also premium memberships is something complicated in Freesound because we would need to penalize downloaders, not uploaders, but then that would mean sounds would become less free.

The idea of extending on merchandising is nice. The problem is that if we don't want to manage that ourselves (like sending orders, etc), we need to do it through some company (like we do for tshirts) and then the margins are very low it it might not be worth the effort for a few cups sold. But we'll keep this idea in mind

We think donations is still the best model for us. One think that we might want to do is to simplify the possibility of recurrent donations (eg. yearly donations). We'll see.

Bitcoins could work as well, but that'd mean another source of donation to track and later centralize. We're happy with the current paypal+stripe options which should hopefully be suitable for the majority of donors.

Thanks everyone again for your input!!!

i'd happily watch ads!

¡Excelente idea!. Yo soy un mapmaker de Minecraft y al no poder grabar sonidos, los descargo por acá. Lamentablemente al ser menor de edad no les puedo donar, pero les juro que lo haría.

There should be a very visible button to make donations on every page. Love this place. I want to see it grow. Thank You!!!