Dear Freesounders,
Believe it or not, Freesound is turning 20 years old in 2025! We couldn’t be prouder of what Freesound has become after all these years. Freesound numbers are growing year after year (if you have not done it yet, have a look at our last Freesound in numbers blog post), and the incredible collection of sounds that you’ve been contributing to has an enormous value for millions of people all over the world. Freesound is not only the biggest website where sounds are freely shared under Creative Commons licenses, but it is also an open archive that captures the sound of the world.
Because 20 is a very special anniversary number, we want to celebrate it in a special way. We normally celebrate Freesound’s birthdate on the 5th of April, but for this occasion, we are organising a number of activities that will span through the whole year. Also we’ve chosen a main theme for the celebration, which is that of Freesound sounds as an archive to safeguard the world’s Intangible Heritage. Intangible Heritage includes the intangible and ephemeral elements that shape our world – whether rooted in human culture, natural environments, or the entangled interplay between them. These sounds reflect what is fragile, ever-changing, and at risk of disappearing. Freesound, with its extensive archive, provides a digital space where these sounds can be preserved and reimagined.
The first activity we want to announce for the celebration of the 20th anniversary is a Freesound-based composition contest to explore the theme of Intangible Heritage. We have just published the terms of the contest on the Phonos website, and we encourage the Freesound community to participate! The deadline for submitting compositions is the 31st of May, 2025. The selected compositions will be published online, ensuring open access and alignment with Freesound’s mission of fostering collaboration and sharing within the global community. Furthermore, a Freesound live event will take place on the 28th of October at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, in which the selected works will be presented with the possibility for the authors of performing live both on site or remotely.
Besides the presentation of the selected works of the composition contest, the Freesound live event we are planning for October will also include talks from members of the Freesound community and, of course, from the Freesound team at Phonos/Music Technology Group. The event will be live streamed and it will be possible to participate remotely, but we will also encourage participation on site. We will post more information about that event and how to participate in due time.
We would also like to announce that we are working on a sound installation that also explores the theme of Intangible Heritage through the lens of Freesound, and that will premiere this fall in a very nice exhibition hall in Barcelona. This installation is being developed with the curation of Fito Conesa, and will also feature a virtual version so that it can be enjoyed by the community at large. Again, we will let you know more about the installation in due time.
There will be other things happening during the year to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Freesound, but we can’t unveil them all just yet 😉. We’ll keep you posted! Meanwhile, feel free to celebrate the anniversary by getting creative and uploading new sounds with the tag #freesound20. We can then display them all together in here.
We would like to finish this post by giving enormous thanks to all the people that contributes to Freesound: people who upload sounds, people who download sounds, people who donate, the team of moderators and support, researchers and developers at Fundació Phonos and the Music Technology Group (where Freesound happens), IT and administration staff at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, artists, developers and companies that use API to integrate Freesound sounds in their projects, funding bodies that supported research grants related to Freesound, and all the people who will contribute in the future. 20 years is not something that happens by chance. This can only have happened thanks to your effort and dedication.
frederic, on behalf of the Freesound Team
Nice and thanks
Congratulations!