LibGuides: ENGL 3223: New York in Ten Objects: Online Audio Collections

Audio and Copyright

Rules of Thumb for Using Audio

Songs published before 1926 are in the public domain, and are free to use
For works still protected by copyright the rule of thumb is to use no more than 10% of the work
Some audio is offered for free under a Creative Commons License
There are a list of sites below to help you locate rights clear audio

Audio Archives

American Archive of Public Broadcasting
A collection created by the Library of Congress and WGBH in Boston of the most significant public television and radio programs of the past 60 years. Hosts over 40,000 hours including thousands of programs that have had national impact.
Archive.org: Audio Archive
This library contains recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Not all material is rights free to use, so check the permissions information!
Archive.org: Community Audio
You are invited to view or upload audios to the Community collection. These thousands of recordings were all contributed by Archive users and community members.
ccMixter
Thousands of hours of free music - all you have to do is give credit to the musicians.
Contemplator
Resources for folk and historical music. Downloadable midi files can be easily remixed. Please read Contemplator's use guidelines for proper attribution.
Free Music Archive
The Free Music Archive, a KitSplit company, offers free downloads under Creative Commons and other licenses.
Jamendo
Creative Commons music available for browse and download, and 250,000+ royalty-free music tracks library for any project, all rights included - various genres and artists.
MIXKIT
A collection of free, downloadable stock music, sound effects, and video. Browse by category or use the search function.
Museum of Endangered Sound
A collection of sounds made famous by technologies and electronics equipment that have since been superseded and/or become obsolete.
Mus Open
Provides recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Put simply, our mission is to set music free.
National Jukebox Collection
The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. Recordings in the Jukebox were issued on record labels now owned by Sony Music Entertainment, which has granted the Library of Congress a gratis license to stream acoustical recordings.
Open Music Archive
Open Music Archive is a collaborative project, initiated by artists Eileen Simpson and Ben White, to source, digitise and distribute out-of-copyright sound recordings. The archive distributes these recordings freely, forms a site of exchange, and is a vehicle for future collaborations and distributed projects.
Shortwave Radio Audio Archive
The Shortwave Radio Audio Archive (SRAA) is a collection of shortwave radio recordings that you can download or listen to as a podcast. The collection grows every day and includes both historic recordings and current recordings from the shortwave radio spectrum.
UCSB Cylinder Archive
The UCSB Library invites you to discover and listen to its online archive of cylinder recordings; donate to help the collection grow; and learn about how these sounds and songs create an audio history of American culture.
WNYC at Digital Public Library of America
DPLA connects people to the riches held within America’s libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions. All of the materials found through DPLA—photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and so much more—are free and immediately available in digital format. The cultural institutions participating in DPLA represent the richness and diversity of America itself, from the smallest local history museum to our nation’s largest cultural institutions. This link takes you directly to their WNYC collection.

Sound Effects Collections

American University's Greg Smith Sound Effects Collection
This is a collection of 1450 sound effects tracks recorded by producer Greg Smith during his 20 year career in the film and television industry. This collection was provided to the American University Library for the benefit of filmmakers, video and audio producers around the world.
BBC Sounds Effects
These 16,000 BBC Sound Effects are made available by the BBC in WAV format to download for use under the terms of the RemArc Licence. The Sound Effects are BBC copyright, but they may be used for personal, educational or research purposes, as detailed in the license.
Freesound
Hosted within the Freesound collection, over 100 "endangered" sounds from the past.
Free Sound Effects
Just like the name says, FSE offers free sound effects for all your audio projects.
FXHome
Provides sound effects downloads free of charge. The sounds are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. If you want to distribute the sounds yourself you must retain the readme in the zip files. If you use the sounds in a movie please credit FXhome and the sound effect author.
MIXKIT
A collection of free, downloadable stock music, sound effects, and video. Browse by category or use the search function.
Partners in Rhyme
Free Sound Effects and Royalty Free Sound Effects
Sound Bible
SoundBible.com offers free sound clips for download in either wav or mp3 format. We offer free and royalty free sound effects and clips for video editors, movie scores, game designers, and weekend sound warriors. Bookmark our page now by hitting Ctrl+D. We update weekly so be sure to return for one of the best copyright free sound resources on the net. Downloads are totally free and upfront with large download buttons to prevent confusion.