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Sound Server

Guides

Guides to free samples and licences

Every guide starts with a short answer, then explains the details: what a licence lets you do with a sample, how to credit it, how to find sounds that fit your track, and how to let an AI agent do the digging. They link straight into live searches of 41 sample sites and into the curated collections, so you can go from question to sound in one click.

Looking for one word? See the glossary. For questions about Sound Server itself, see the FAQ.

Licensing

Whether you may release a track with a sample, what each licence asks of you, and what to do when a platform flags a sound.

  • Can I use Freesound samples in a commercial release?

    Yes, if the sound's licence allows it. Every Freesound upload has its own licence: CC0 sounds can go in a commercial release with no credit, CC BY sounds can too if you credit the author, CC BY-NC sounds cannot be used commercially at all, and the older Sampling+ licence allows commercial use only once the sound is transformed and never in advertising.

    Explainer · 4 questions answered

  • CC0 vs CC BY vs royalty-free samples: what's the difference?

    All three let you use a sample in music you sell. CC0 has no conditions at all. CC BY requires you to credit the author. Royalty-free is not a single licence but a family of store and site licences that let you use sounds in your own music without per-use fees, while forbidding you to redistribute the samples themselves; some also ask for credit.

    Explainer · 4 questions answered

  • How to credit CC BY samples in a song

    Name the sound, its author, where it came from and its licence with a link, and say that you modified it, for example: “Deep Kick 01” by Jane Doe (Freesound, https://freesound.org/s/123456/), CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), pitched and processed. Put it wherever listeners can find the credits: release notes, the video description, the game's credits or a credits page you link to.

    How-to · 4 questions answered

  • What is the CC Sampling+ licence?

    Creative Commons Sampling+ 1.0 is a retired licence written for sampling. It lets you sample and transform a sound into a new work, including a commercial one, as long as you credit the author and don't use it to advertise anything; copying the whole, unchanged sound is allowed only non-commercially. Its NonCommercial variant forbids commercial use altogether. You will mostly find it on older uploads to Freesound and ccMixter.

    Explainer · 3 questions answered

  • Is BBC Sound Effects free to use in music?

    Only for non-commercial work. The BBC Sound Effects archive is free to download, but its RemArc licence covers personal, educational and research use. A track you sell, stream for royalties, monetise on YouTube or license to a client is commercial, so it needs a separate commercial licence or a different sound. Sound Server shows BBC results with a red “Non-commercial only” verdict for that reason.

    Explainer · 4 questions answered

  • What counts as commercial use of a sample?

    Any use mainly aimed at earning money or commercial advantage. For music that includes selling downloads, streaming on platforms that pay royalties, monetised YouTube or Twitch content, leasing or selling beats, sync placements, games and apps you sell, client work and advertising. Samples under non-commercial (NC) licences can't be used in any of those; they're fine for practice, study and projects that never earn anything.

    Explainer · 4 questions answered

  • Sample clearance and Content ID: a producer's guide

    A sample taken from someone else's record needs permission from two owners before release: the owner of the recording (the master, usually a label) and the owner of the composition (the publisher). There is no safe length that avoids this. Licensed samples (CC0, CC BY, royalty-free) don't need clearing, but they can still trigger automated systems such as YouTube's Content ID, which you dispute by showing the licence and the source.

    Explainer · 4 questions answered

Production

Finding the right sounds by type, tempo and key, and turning them into kits and parts.

  • What is an 808? The drum machine and the bass

    “808” means two related things. The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer is an analogue drum machine made from 1980 to 1983 whose kick, snare, clap, cowbell and hats became staples of hip hop, electro and pop. In modern trap, drill and hip hop, “an 808” usually means its bass drum stretched into a long, tuned boom that plays the bassline.

    Explainer · 4 questions answered

  • One-shots vs loops: which samples should you use?

    A one-shot is a single sound, such as one kick, one chord or one shout, that you trigger and arrange yourself. A loop is a recorded pattern, usually one to eight bars at a fixed tempo, that repeats seamlessly. One-shots give you control and fit any tempo; loops give you a performance with feel built in, but must match your project's tempo and key.

    Explainer · 3 questions answered

  • How to find samples by BPM and key

    Filter by tempo and key, then verify. On Sound Server, type it in the query (“vocal chop 140 bpm”, “808 in F minor”) or use the BPM and key filters; half and double tempo and the relative major or minor also match, because they fit the same track. Not every source labels tempo and key, so unlabelled sounds are kept but ranked lower unless you switch on strict matching.

    How-to · 4 questions answered

  • How to build a drum kit from free samples

    Choose one sound per slot (kick, snare, clap, closed hat, open hat and, for trap or hip hop, an 808) that suit your style, tempo and key, check that every one is cleared for a release, then map them to pads: General MIDI drum notes for a DAW, an SFZ file for samplers, or a Strudel sample map to play it in the browser. Sound Server's kit builder does all of this in one step and gives you the credits.

    How-to · 3 questions answered

  • WAV, AIFF, FLAC or MP3: which sample format should you use?

    Produce with lossless files: WAV or AIFF (uncompressed) or FLAC (compressed without loss). They all sound identical; pick whatever your DAW and sampler read. MP3 and Ogg are lossy and fine for auditioning previews, but avoid them in a release. For sample rate, 44.1 kHz suits music and 48 kHz suits video; for bit depth, 24-bit gives recordings more headroom, while 16-bit is enough for finished one-shots.

    Explainer · 4 questions answered

AI agents

How assistants and coding agents can search, vet and fetch samples for you.

  • How AI music agents can find and license samples with MCP

    Give the agent Sound Server's MCP server (https://sound.shep.bot/mcp, no key needed). It then has tools to search every sample source (search_samples), read a sample's licence, credit line and files (get_sample), assemble a drum kit (build_kit) and find similar sounds (find_similar). Searches are commercial-safe by default, and the agent is told to report each sample's licence verdict and never present a non-commercial sound as cleared.

    How-to · 4 questions answered

Ready to listen? Search all 41 sites, browse the sample collections, or read how verdicts are decided.