Freesound Project

Rules...

These rules should be considered more like guidelines than rules... I.e. if there's something not covered in these rules, use your common sense. Also, these rules do not give you legal guidelines: all material submitted to freesound must be compatible with the creative commons license, these rules try to elaborate on the license, but they are not the license nor legal guidance...

When adding files...

1. Freesound is about samples, not songs. There are plenty of other sites where you can upload songs, please only use freesound for samples.
2. Samples are useless without good descriptions and tags. If your descriptions are bad, your samples will not be found! Your descriptions need to be as precise as possible, not only saying what we're hearing ("noise from my computer fan"), but how it sounds ("low rumble, irregular"), where you recorded it ("recorded in my bedroom at 4 o'clock in the morning, you can hear a car in the background!"), when, how, etc etc. The more detail, the more entertaining your sample will be. You can find an interesting and in-depth discussion about sample descriptions here.
3. The creative commons license is tricky! You need to pay careful attention when adding samples to the project. If the samples break copyright and someone complains, it's you who are responsible for your material! The easiest way to fully comply with the license is record or synthesize your own samples. Some specific cases you might want to know about:
   • recorded material from analog synths is OK
   • recorded patches you tweaked yourself from digital synths are ok
   • preset patches or ROM waveforms from digital synths are not ok
   • drum box hits from digital drum machines are not ok, see previous item!
   • taking "free" samples from either free sample cd's, websites, magazines, etc is not ok if you don't know exactly under what license these samples are distributed. Just "free" isn't enough. For example, those free samples on magazine CD's are not free: you can't (for example) sell them: this is clearly not compatible with our license.
4. For anything else, see the legal aspects of freesound.

When using files...

1. When using samples from the freesound you need to 'attribute' the use of these samples. All samples you download are prefixed by their ID so you can easily find them again on freesound. There's also the "attribution page" which lists all samples you've downloaded in the past with their details (users attribution page). Failing to attribute samples is breaching copyright.
2. Do not use samples in ads/commercials. The Sampling+ license does not allow you to do this. However, you can easily contact the creator of the samples and get the right directly from them!
3. For anything else, see the legal aspects of freesound.