Our sound effects are free to use, but that doesn’t mean they are copyright free. We retain the copyright on sounds released via our Standard License (most of our library). This means we retain all rights to the sounds, but via our licence, we allow you to use them for free in your projects.
I receive emails regularly asking if our sounds can be used in certain projects and I thought it might be useful to write a short article highlighting some of the most common questions with some quick answers. If you’re wondering if you can use our sound effects in your project, please take a read. I think you’ll find the answer is almost always yes. If you still can’t find an answer, check our License Agreement, Forum or send me an email.
Also, it’s worth mentioning here that our sounds and music CAN be used in projects that are commercial or monetised through ads, no problem at all. Remember, you need to credit us if you use them, unless you upgrade with a small donation to remove the attribution requirement (and get the wavs for all our sounds too).
YouTube
Yes, you can use our sound effects in your YouTube video. Our sound effects must be used as part of the video, to enhance it’s production and not as the ‘main value’ of the video. For example, you can use our sounds for actions on screen, to set the ambience, to enhance any aspect of the production.
A video example where the sound is the ‘main value’ which we do not allow, would be one that plays our sound in isolation with a link to download it in the description. Please do not do that. This is classed as redistributing our sound effects and is a violation of our License Agreement.
In a game or app
Yes, you can use our sound effects in your game or app. If you are using our sounds to enhance any aspect of the game or app, be it through providing sounds for on-screen actions, background sounds for the ambience, or for menu or navigational tones etc, this is all fine.
As above, you can’t use our sounds if they are the ‘main value’ of the app, for example, a ‘guess the sound’ game. If this is your intention, you must contact us and gain permission.
In a movie
Yes! Our sounds are very popular in movies and the largest portion of our users use them for this purpose. There really are no restrictions for using our sounds in your film. You must abide by our stipulation to credit us if you do, but this can be removed with a donation, here.
In a commercial
Yes, you can use our sound effects in your commercial. Again if you can’t credit us for this usage, you need to upgrade to a Gold account with a donation here. We even let you decide how much you’re happy to donate to upgrade!
Can I mix your sounds to create new sounds?
Yes, absolutely. You can mix any number of our sounds together, even with other people’s sounds and use them as part of your project. But if you do this, you can’t claim them as new sounds for distribution outside of your project even if one of our sounds is mixed with someone else’s. Basically the copyright on our sounds stay with them, even when mixed with others.
Can I share your sound effects and music with other people?
No… you can’t share our sounds with any other person. This point often confuses some people as they state they will be sharing or distributing the project they are working on that includes our sounds, which is perfectly fine.
Summary
Basically, you can’t take our sound effects or music and just share them in an email, hard drive or DVD etc, social network, file-sharing network or any other means of sharing them as files.
As you can see above in these common examples, as long as you are using our sound effects and music to enhance the overall production of your project, then you can use them freely, even if your project is commercial, for broadcast and monetised through ads. Remember, you must credit us with a link or mention, but this requirement can be removed by upgrading with a small donation.
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