In the collection we’ll tell you about five libraries where you can download real sounds of nature and use them for commercial purposes.
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Yellowstone sound library
This is a library of sounds from Yellowstone National Park. Now there are more than a hundred entries in it - from the “ explosions ” of geysers to the roar of a grizzly bear. In 2013, Yellowstone National Park teamed up with the Acoustic Atlas project of the University of Montana to put together a publicly accessible audio library.
The project was led by Jennifer Jarrett from Yellowstone - she was a volunteer in the national park, as well as environmentalists of the National Park Service in the United States. Initially, Jennifer recorded the sounds of nature in Yellowstone and engaged in “audio storytelling”. One of these stories was heard by Jeff Rice from the Acoustic Atlas and offered the girl cooperation.
All files are available in mp3 format, they can be downloaded without any restrictions. According to the information on the site, the materials can be freely used for commercial purposes, however, the authors of the project ask to indicate, if possible, a link to the "US National Park Service."
Important: before using any file from the library, you should make sure that it is really not protected by exclusive rights - this is possible in isolated cases. You can do this with the help of the United States Copyright Office.
Rocky mountain sound library
The Rocky Mountain Park Audio Library is also based on the National Park Service. It was formed later than Yellowstone in 2018. The catalog contains about two hundred audio recordings of 60 species of birds and wild animals - for example, moose and coyotes .
All notes were collected in the park by Dr. Jacob Job, a researcher at the University of Colorado and an employee of the National Park Service. Initially, Jacob’s goal was to make a “time cast” of the national park: by 2080, scientists due to climate change expect a significant reduction in the population of local birds, which, in turn, will change the sound landscape.
As for the rules for using sounds and their format, everything is similar to the Yellowstone Audio Library: sounds can be downloaded and freely used for commercial purposes, but it is better to check with the Copyright Office just in case.
Media Library Macaulay
The Macaulay Audio Library of the Cornell Ornithology Laboratory is part of the US National Electronic Science Library, the world's largest collection of animal audio materials. The Sound Library was founded in the middle of the last century and contains over 250,000 records of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish and insects from around the world.
Screenshot: macaulaylibrary.org
The media library was named after the ornithologist Linda Macaulay: it recorded the sounds of 2,850 species of birds in more than 54 countries on six continents. All recordings are available for free listening, and they can also be requested free of charge for research and educational purposes. They are stored in wav format.
As for the commercial use of audio materials, you will need to obtain a license. To do this, you need to register on the site and send a request for specific files, while the price for each track is set individually. To simplify the procedure, the authors of the site issued a special step-by-step instruction.
BBC Sound Effects Library
The BBC Sound Effects Library contains a collection of more than 29 thousand tracks that were recorded by the best BBC sound engineers from the late 1960s to the present day (at the same time 16 thousand audio recordings from the library are freely available under the RemArc license - they can be use free of charge for personal, educational or research purposes). The music library contains about seventy categories of audio files - they can be filtered by geographical feature or sound origin.
In addition to technogenic recordings, the library also has many “natural samples” - for example, the sound of a rainforest and an avalanche . The library also includes thousands of bird voices .
Use of the library for commercial purposes is allowed only with the purchase of a license. There are several acquisition options : you can buy one or several files separately - for a fixed price of $ 5, purchase a part of the library, or download it in a single use. The latter will cost no less than 1,499 dollars.
Sonniss
Sonniss is a UK sound marketplace that was launched in 2014. The goal of the service is to simplify the sales process for authors of independent audio libraries. Sonniss collaborates with lesser-known authors, as well as with prominent sound designers - among them, for example, Sefi Carmel ( Sefi Carmel ), who worked with Ridley Scott and David Bowie. The service was used at different times by such media brands as Disney, VFS and Microsoft Studios. Many of the sound libraries have been used in feature films, television shows, and AAA games.
All files on the site are strictly moderated to guarantee the buyer the quality of audio. At the request of “Nature” you can find, for example, “ wind in autumn leaves ” and “ Baltic forest ”.
All libraries are distributed under a royalty-free license. The cost of sound packets (usually in WAV format) varies from 10 to several hundred dollars. By the way, by tradition, before each Game Developers Conference, Sonniss gives out a limited number of audio files for free - for example, in 2019, users could download 25 gigabytes of audio from the marketplace catalog for free.
Our other developer kits:
Sounds for UI: A Compilation of Themed Resources
Where to get audio samples for your projects: a selection of nine thematic resources
Music for your projects: 12 thematic resources with Creative Commons tracks
How to visualize sound on the web: a selection of thematic materials and video lectures
What else are we writing about in our Hi-Fi World:
“Finds of an Audio Man”: a tree of musical genres, a GitHub-xylophone and satellite broadcasts
Sound cards as a way to plunge into the atmosphere of an unfamiliar city