Find, Remix and Reuse – SoundCloud Style
Choice is good, right? We just love that we can pick our favorite ice cream flavor or favorite color for a new shirt. When it comes to audio creation, it’s even better when your choice creates more choice for others.
Today, SoundCloud is opening up a bit more to allow you to find and share more sounds to use and reuse. With new search and discovery features for Creative Commons tracks, your creations can go much further. More options give you more freedom over your audio content on the web. It helps expose your work and find people to collaborate with that you perhaps wouldn’t normally find. We’re excited about this update and we hope you are too. We say “New features!” you say “Yay!”
Here’s what’s new:
1. Advanced Search
That’s right: finally! You’ve been waiting for this for a while and we’re happy to announce that advanced search options are now available. You’re now able to search for things like genre, tags, a specific label, track type and much more. Check the screenshot below for the different options and try it out for yourself in the search feature.
2. Browse by tag
Also new: clicking the tag on a player will lead you to a new Explore page that lets you discover other tracks by tags where you can also choose to see the latest tracks added or sorted by popularity. A tagcloud on the right of the page lets you jump straight into a different genre. (Pro tip: choose your genre tags wisely, young Jedis, this will provide the best search results for everyone).
3. Creative Commons integration
You’ve probably also noticed another addition in the advanced search options: search for tracks released under a Creative Commons license. Creative what?! Glad you’re asking! Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization that has released a set of free and voluntary copyright licenses. With Creative Commons licenses, creators have the freedom to choose how their work can be used, shared and re-used. There are six different licenses that provide users with different levels. Browsing audio released under CC just became a whole lot easier with a dedicated page we just deployed to the site. Check it out: http://soundcloud.com/creativecommons
Not only can you search for tracks released under CC licenses but we also gave the SoundCloud player a little face-lift. It now displays the type of CC license in the top right corner of the player:
Update: Creative Commons just updated their blog with some notes about the integration including an interview with our own Parker Higgins, who has been a driving force getting the integration done: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/23018
By the way: third-party application developers now too can access tags and creative commons content via the API so you get the same experience when using your favorite apps.
Get involved! We’d love to see you contribute!
Sounds of CCentury is a group on SoundCloud collecting the coolest CC-licensed and No Rights Reserved historic audio. We’ve started it out with a few public domain tracks, but if you run an archive, have access to other interesting public domain tracks, or just happened to have a field recorder handy when something amazing happened, please contribute to this collection. If you can’t contribute, there’s already some incredible stuff to listen to, and there will be more added in the next days and weeks. Check out the first contributions below and submit yours here: http://soundcloud.com/groups/sounds-of-ccentury
Creative Commons Mashup Contest: get your mashup machines rollin’ for a change to win a yearly SoundCloud Pro account (worth 250 Euro) in this little competition we just pushed using SoundCloud-Remix, the remix app we’ve posted about last week. Get the full details right here.
Oh and one more thing: Creative Commons also joined SoundCloud with an official account so if you fancy checking them out, follow at will.
Keep an eye out in the next couple of days, as we’ll be featuring quite some exciting SoundCloud members working with audio licensed under Creative Commons. This will happen right here on the blog, starting tomorrow.