Freesound Forums

Hi everyone!

For some time we have been thinking about a new feature for Freesound that would allow users to create collaborative sound collections. Essentially, we want to evolve the current concept of "bookmarks" into something called "collections" which would include more useful features. Before starting to work on that seriously though, we think it would be nice to collect your opinions and ideas so we can design the "collections" feature in a collaborative way.

In our current ideas, a collection would be like a "Bookmark category" but it could be created collaboratively by a group of users, have a dedicated page with relevant information, and their sounds be downloaded in a single zip file. This should be useful to promote specific collections of sounds, to get users to create and group sounds in Freesound and to attract new collections to be uploaded to Freesound. Freesound would support "Packs" and "Collections", but bookmark categories would disappear and be replaced by collections. Here is a more detailed list of the features that "Collections" should have:

• Have a number of sounds associated with a collection (maybe with a maximum of X sounds per collection).
  
• Have a title, textual description and (maybe) and image associated with a collection (allowing images can bring problems, maybe the image should be a combination of spectrograms or something like that).
  
• Have the option to designate a limited number of "featured sounds" from the collection which will appear first in the page for the collection.
  
• Have the option to make the collection public or private.
  
• For public collections, have the option to designate a list of users who maintain it and can add/remove sounds from it.
  
• For public collections, have the option to allow non-maintainer users to propose sounds to be added or removed. Sounds will not be added or removed until a maintainer approves the suggestion.
  
• Have the option to download all the sounds of a collection in a single zip file (with proper licensing information like for packs).
  
• Be able to filter sounds in the search engine by collection, so all Freesound search features can be used for finding sounds in collections.
  

Do you think this is interesting? How would you like a feature like that to work?

Hello there.

I think it would be very useful!
Say a video maker collection and sampling and nature sounds collections etc...
Having it open to be collaborative would be great too!

First off responses to your points :
1) I'm not in favour of a limit per collection. We don't know how users are going to use this, maybe it makes sense in X application to have 20,000 samples. I'm thinking a "ultimate music producer pack" or something. Then I recognise that people randomly downloading 20gb or so could be problematic.
2) I can see the image being problematic from a moderation standpoint and standard image sizes etc... In addition to the spectrogram idea, how about being able to use standards emojis? Kind of like a stock library, somewhat guaranteed safe, and still visual.
3) Cool!
4) Conflicting opinions here while I'm all in for options, I feel like this site so far has been very open, like being able to view downloads of people etc... Id say having all collections free for all would be more inline. But then maybe a school project would want a private collection. So best to keep both options.
5) Yep! I think collections could be a single user, or group based. There could be 5 options :
-Single user (here's a collection I made)
-Invitation (People in a collection can invite other users to join in)
-Trusted contributors (Moderators could add regular "curators" to a whitelist, and all "trusted contributors" could contribute to any collection that allows them to.
-Open/public collection, by a voting method.
-Open/public collection, trust/free for all.
6) The none maintainers suggestions is a cool idea!
7) 👍
I didn't quite understand how this filtering system would work. Would it show collections in addition to sounds, like "this sound is in those collections" or would it collapse multiple sounds into one "search finding" based on "they're all in the same collection" like a "pack" does? Or other?

I think it would be a great tool!

Here's a few additional ideas :
A) Collection rating. Users can rate the entire collection. (So "meow sounds" collection would be lower rated if there's white noise and drilling sounds packed in)
B) Collection average sound rating. Kind of like how a pack works.
C) Be able to follow users who curate good collections.
D) Perhaps a few generic "Freesound collections" with diverse use cases and types of sounds?
D.2) It could be either Freesound staff selections, but preferably a user voting.
User suggestions to add a sound in, most voted goes in. Highlight 3 random sounds from the collection back into the "should we add this pool" (with its initial votes kept). Lowest of the 3 highlighted gets kicked out as the additional sound goes in.
Essentially kind of forcing a "best-of" playlist that refreshes with time. But still user based.
E) Coming back to that "Ultimate producer pack", it would be interesting to have "sub-collections" inside a collection. So a Collection could be for a use case, and a sub-collection as a way to sort-out.
Such as :
-Producer pack
--Drums
---Loops
---Kicks
---Snares
---Folley
--Instruments
---Notes
---Loops
Etc...

F) Like E) Another way to do this could be having "Parent collections".
Essentially a collection of collections. We could say "this is a good drum loops collection, that's a good "individual kicks collection" mash it all up into one "Essential drum samples" collection. If that makes sense?

Going back to a film producer "kit", it could group a "walking SFX" collection with a "transition swipes" collection, and a "explosions SFX" collection all in one go.

As you can see, my dream here would be "I make X, go on freesound, see "pack for X"" and have all the essentials in one go x')

G) Would be cool to have a download collection filter. Like "download all sounds that are 4stars and up". Or filter out some tags.

Many thanks for your time and hearing me out!

Hi, thanks for your comments @Sadiquecat.
Some comments:

• I think we really need a limit for collections not only to avoid download problems but also to promote better "curation" of the collections. In any case, there could be several "volumes" of an hypothetical "ultimate music producer pack" collection. I'm thinking of a limit of ~250 sounds per collection.
• About the image thing we definitely need to think about it. Emojis can be nice, I think you might already be able to use them in sound names/pack names, have you tried it? I wander also if there are services that offer a pool of "safe" images to use. Maybe getty images or something like that. I have no idea how that works, I'll investigate.
• I like the idea of different configuration options for allowing contributions to a collection, but we'll try to make it as simple as possible (from a start at least). Maybe 2-3 options instead of 5.
• About the filtering (point 8 ), I just meant that the search page should have options to search sounds in a collection (just like we do for packs) and, maybe, to search for collections as well.
• I kind of don't like the idea of rating collections directly, and I'd use the ratings of sounds inside the collection as a proxy (like for packs). In this way we focus on sound ratings.
• Following users who curate collections could be done by listing the curators of a collection in the collection page and going to their profiles.
• I agree ti would be nice to be able to add some structure inside a collection. I'm thinking about being able to organize the sounds of a collection in folders, but one hierarchy level only. The idea of parent collections might make things really complex

I'll think of collections having no limit and the ability to remove multiple sounds at once. That will be a great idea! C:

Allowing users to work collaboratively on collections with public and private access will facilitate more dynamic sharing, especially if users can suggest sounds with the maintainer's approval. Highlighting 'special sounds' can increase engagement by helping users quickly identify key assets in a collection. Visuals based on spectrograms or waveforms will keep the focus on sounds and avoid moderation issues with user images. By the way, I was looking for specialists and realized that hire angular programmers is quite hard work. Integration of search filters and the ability to download as zip files with license data will simplify workflows in projects, making it easier to use sounds legally and efficiently. This feature can be crucial for sound designers, educators, and creatives who rely on Freesound for diverse and well-organized audio resources.