Freesound Forums

I'm using sounds from Freesound in some of my projects. In some cases, I'm transforming the sounds to make them more convenient to use. I would like to upload these transformed sounds to Freesound. Legally I'm allowed to do that as long as I follow the license, but I was wondering if this is against the terms of Freesound, or otherwise considered bad form.

As an example, suppose I download a 2-minute field recording that I would like to loop as part of the background of a 30-minute soundscape. Because the original recording doesn't work well as a seamless loop, I do some processing on it (e.g. cross-fading) so that it can be looped. Now that I have this more convenient version, I figure I might as well upload it back to Freesound to save other people the effort of doing their own processing on it if they also want to loop the sound.

Is this okay, as long as I credit the original creator and use the same license as on the original sound?

I'm not trying to steal credit from the creator; just the opposite. I see it as a way of thanking the creator by giving more exposure to their work. But I can certainly understand if others don't share my opinion on this.

Remixing is encouraged at Freesound (just so long as you do credit the original if they have an attribution license, as you note).

When uploading the sound and editing the sound's information, there is a category called "Sound sources":

"If you used other Freesound sounds in the process of creating this one you can mark the source sounds on the next page. If you do, other people can click through the remix graph and browse Freesound like this."

This can allow you to easily link to the sounds that you've used from this site.

Do make sure that you set your sound's license to the most restrictive license on one of the sounds you've used (e.g. if, in a single sound, you combined one sound with the "Attribution Non-Commercial" license but the rest are "Public Domain", you should still set the license to "Attribution Non-Commercial") and credit the original creator if it is an attribution license.

Hello Inspector J

Thanks for mentioning the point about the 'source sounds' functionality at Freesound.

Hello fidvo

A few more notes on this.

If I remember correctly, you cannot use this field when you first upload the sound.
It has to be approved by the mods first.

Aftr that you need to go back and edit the sound description.
Then you will find the sound sources button.

You then need yo search for the sounds you have used and add one at a time.
Sounds complicated, but is not. The interface makes it really easy.
Searching for the sounds works like another search in freesound. The best way to search is to enter the sound number, this is on the filename of each downloaded sound.

Once you have added all your sound sources, you need to save your updated description. Otherwise the changes will not take effect (i.e. will be lost).
Again, sounds complicated but is not.

Then you may need to wait a few hours or even a day for the serves to sync. Then you will see the remix tree button on your sound.
Essentially, there is no limit to this: you can have really bug remix trees if people continue to make processed / combined versions of the sounds and bother to register their source sounds.

A really cool feature!!!

fidvo wrote:
Is this okay, as long as I credit the original creator and use the same license as on the original sound?