The Free Sound Project functions as an online repository of sounds licensed under the curious and lesser known Creative Commons Sampling Plus! License. There is a good mixture of both straight field recordings and processed sounds. Under the terms of the sampling license, there are also multiple versions of many of the files which different members of The Project have tweaked and offered back up.

At the time of this post the site currently has 53557 audio files. That’s a lot. There are a couple of different ways to sift through all of that information: different searches for people on the look out (hear out?) for specific sounds and automatically generated lists like “Most popular files” and “Highest rated sounds” for general browsing.

I’ve always had this picture in my mind when it comes to places that have vast quantities of information and material like Free Sound. I envision most of the available good content lying dormant and collecting dust. Sure, new content is always featured in a ‘newly uploaded’ list. Sure, high ranking content is featured in a ‘high ranking’ list. What about the other stuff that hasn’t made those lists? Who has the time to go through every page of an archive of this size?

Fine, maybe all 53557 audio files of Free Sound do not need to be utilized at every minute of every day. Maybe the site serves its purpose and that’s it. More on that later.

At this point, I would like to draw attention to the “random sample” link on the lower left side of the main page of The Free Sound Project. This link is a nice feature and allows for a slight churn of content.

Project Idea: Click that “random sample” link and make something out of what you find. Beware, it may be some birds chirping, chant music, or someone’s grandfather snoring.