Soundcloud: Not Just for Musicians

As I have mentioned before, Soundcloud is a platform not just a file hosting service.  And while it is a huge resource for great underground music it is also becoming a great resource for sound samples and loops for music, film, and games.  There are also great libraries and sounds from independent sound designers and field recordists like Tor Johnson.  He developed a Soundcloud app called New Sound Lab.

New Sound Lab is a web-based, high resolution sound library collection that makes use of the Soundcloud platform.  It also features geo tagging, which utilizes google maps to give you a visual pinpoint of where the sound was recorded.  Tor is providing high quality sound libraries up to 192kHz for use in music, film, games or any other application your creative mind can think of.  

Soundcloud itself can be used like a sound library.  Before you search be sure to click on the "show advanced search options" check box.  This will allow you to narrow your search by allowing you to enter tags/genre terms, whether the original is in an uncompressed format, downloadable, and by it's creative commons license and permissions.  Now you can hit that search button and click play on the first track and Soundcloud will automatically play all of the results and even go to the next page for you.  All you have to do is save your favorites, or download that perfect sound!

Here's my search Tip:  I left the main search field blank and selected one-shot samples from the "track type" drop down menu, downloadable and only creative commons tracks that are free to use commercially.  This returned over 500 results.  You can use tags to narrow it down but it is dependent on how well the uploader tagged the file.

Have Fun Exploring!