Wikipedia:Featured sounds/Sources

This is a repository of known locations for free use sound files. Feel free to add to the list. If you do upload, remember to verify free use, as in some cases the site hosts both free and non-free works.

Michale Hill International Violin Competition

• Videos
  • Set listings (what's being played)

Jamendo

• CC-by albums
• CC-by-SA albums

University of Virginia

• Presidential speeches
  • Note that this isn't perfectly clear. While consensus currently is that these are public domain as U.S. Government Works, it is never explicitly stated as such. MSU and presidential libraries may offer additional information or alternate explicitly labeled copies for upload.

Michigan State University

• Multiple audio recordings, including presidential speeches
  • Note that each recording indicates its copyright status individually. Some say Public Domain, which is of course usable, while others say Preservation, which is not usable.

US Military Bands

• Army
• USMC
• Navy
• Air Force

Internet Archive

• http://archive.org
  • While caution is needed: as it does not check copyright of all of its recordings.

Pandora Records

• http://music.ibiblio.org/pub/multimedia/pandora/

While much of the site has been brought over already, this collection of files released under the Open Audio License is regularly updated with new recordings from a thriving and artistically excellent community.

IMSLP - Petrucci Music Library

• http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page

A Wiki-based site which celebrated its 5th birthday in 2011. There looks as though there is a large selection of performances of public-domain music under various licences, including Creative Commons licences. Each recording indicates who performed it and uploaded it.

Jazz Combo

• http://www.redhotjazz.com - Has information, but no usable files.
• http://www.jazz-on-line.com/pageinterrogation.php - Has usable files, but almost no information.
  • You could simply use the second one, which lists the year and the record, but is organized poorly (and each time you go, the songs are random.)
  • A better idea is to use the first one to find specific artists or tracks that you want to download, then use the search bar in the second one to get a hold of them. They are MP3s, but you can do the conversions using Audacity, or have www.zamzar.com do the conversion for you. (You don't have to pay for it.)
  • A third idea is to use the second site and search for a year (say 1922) and it'll come up with 50 or so tracks from that year (again, randomized from a list of all tracks from that year).
    • Remember, only songs published before 1923 (but not during 1923) are automatically within the public domain.

Robert Garfias

• https://eee.uci.edu/programs/rgarfias/sound-recordings.html - collection of recordings collected by ethnographic professor Robert Garfias, mainly oriental, but with some documentation issues. His Japanese recordings are probably the best documented.

Free Music Archive

• http://freemusicarchive.org

Pay attention to the license. There are a few gems in this collection.

Public Domain Sounds

• http://www.pdsounds.org/

All sounds are released to the public domain. Most sounds are not close to featured quality, per its community design, but some are of high quality.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Digital Library
• videos

Information resources

Places useful for finding information about recordings.

• [Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings http://victor.library.ucsb.edu/] - Limited to a few, early works, but invaluable when you need information on them.
• WorldCat - Useful for finding information about other recordings, such as Pandora Records releases.

US Presidential Sources

• President Barack Obama: http://www.whitehouse.gov/video

A large (and growing) collection of speeches and events involving the White House and US President Barack Obama. Most of which are probably more appropriate for news sites than WP but there may be some gems here. The video files are MP4, and there are also MP3 audio versions of files. They all seem to be large files and in high quality so will probably need compressing for WP purposes. This page details the copyright status (unless otherwise noted all the content is under a Creative Commons Attribution 3 Licence).

• Other Presidents: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/media.php

Audio & Visual media for US Presidents from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush can be found here, at the American Presidency Project.