The Free Sound Project, an Internet community supporting free exchange of sounds by musicians, sound artists and researchers, has been launched by the Music Technology Group of Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona. A web site located at http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/ allows anyone to participate by contributing and downloading sounds.  

The Free Sound Project web site offers a variety of community oriented features including the ability for visitors to add descriptions and "tag words" to any sound. The web site includes advanced searching capabilities leveraging cutting-edge research at the Music Technology Group. Sounds can be browsed according to how similar they sound to each other and according to semantic relationships embedded in their descriptions.

In stark contrast to the music industry's increasing focus on controlling intellectual property, the web site aims to support an ongoing process of open and legal sound exchange. Sounds contributed by community members are public and available under the "Creative Commons Sampling+" License. This license supports most uses of the sounds provided that the source is acknowledged.

Music Technology Group director Xavier Serra, a leading sound analysis researcher for the past two decades was quoted as saying, "A key project goal is to enable research which studies relationships among large collections of sounds. Often such collections must be acquired at significant expense. We aim to lower the cost of entry into this exciting field, and to enable research which has not been possible to date."

The project, created by well know audio software developer Bram de Jong, was created in the context of the 2005 International Computer Music Conference . This year's conference theme " Free Sound" aims to raise awareness of the erosion of musical freedom by intellectual property laws, and to promote the idea of sound as a public good. The conference will be held in Barcelona at the beginning of September. Sounds contributed so far include field recordings, domestic sound effects, recordings of musical instruments and electronic processed sounds. "Some of the most beautiful sounds we have so far are super high-fidelity recordings of tuned wine glasses," said project creator Bram de Jong.

From the beginning of public testing in early March this year, the project has attracted over 2,300 community members with over 1,500 sound contributions totalling more than 300 minutes of sound. For further information about the Free Sound Project contact Bram de Jong on +34 935 422 865 or by email [email protected].