Before you open up your wallet for expensive software or try to make your own sound effects, you may easily be able to find free sound effects on the Web. There are plenty of great resources available online. Best of all, it doesn’t have to cost you anything!

Have your headphones ready? Here’s the top 5 websites for free sound effects downloads.

Flash Kit

Flash Kit’s Sound FX page is one of the best places to download free sound effects. The site has over 7,000 royalty-free tracks available for download.

You can search the collection manually or browse various categories, like nature or transportation, for the sound you’re looking for.

If you come across a desirable sound effect, all of its information, including length, quality, and size, are available and you can easily preview the track before downloading. All tracks are downloadable as WAV, MP3, or Flashtrak files.

Feel free to also contribute to the archive yourself by submitting your own original sounds.

Soungle

While Soungle may look and feel like just an audio search engine, it really isn’t. The website is touted as a mega online library and it only searches its impressive growing database of sound effects.

Soungle keeps everything easy and straightforward. Search results simply include a preview, description, clip information, and if you like the sound effect, just download it. It’s as easy as that.

Soundboard

Soundboard has a massive supply of thousands of sound effects to choose from. You can either search the collection by keyword or explore the slew of soundboards, with everything from airplanes to circus animal sound effects.

Once on a soundboard page, you can listen to the playlist and download whichever tracks you like. All sound effects are MP3 files.

SoundBible

Offering thousands of sound bites and effects, SoundBible is the encyclopedia of free sound clips. The site divides its content into free sound effects or royalty-free sounds.

All the sounds are plainly listed with a preview listen button and what license each falls under. Royalty-free sounds consist of Creative Commons and public domain works.

Learn more about SoundBible in the MakeUseOf Directory.

Freesound Project

The Freesound Project is a repository of Creative Commons licensed audio samples. It’s a huge collaborative database of just sounds, so you’re bound to find what you need.

You can search through all the content by keyword or browse the popular tags. Of course, you can always contribute to the database by adding your audio samples released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License.

Still can’t find what you’re looking for? Try out FindSounds, a great search engine just for sound effects. MakeUseOf’s Directory of Apps has also got the scoop on SoundSnap, yet another resource for sound effects, however, keep in mind that the site is not entirely free anymore and you’re limited to only five free downloads a month.

Do you have a favorite website for downloading free sound effects? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: Fe Ilya

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However, the downside is that all those photos are going to cost you. It’s important to understand the term “royalty-free” (RF) for those websites. RF images are not in the public domain, nor are they free to use without purchasing a license.

Luckily, there are plenty of websites for copyright free photos that won’t require you to dig into your pockets.  Here’s 5 of them.

Freerange

Once you register for a free membership at Freerange, thousands of high-resolution stock photos will be at your fingertips at no cost. All of the website’s images can be used for personal or commercial projects.

For photographers, Freerange also offers Google AdSense revenue sharing when you contribute. Check out this list for more of the top websites to sell your stock photos.

Stockvault

With over 13,000 free copyright free photos, Stockvault connects designers and photographers. The photo sharing website offers all of its images for absolutely free personal or non-commercial use.

Check out more about Stockvault in MakeUseOf’s Directory.

FreeDigitalPhotos

FreeDigitalPhotos neatly organizes its thousands of photos into easy-to-find categories and sub-categories. Every image is available for free download but if you want a larger version or a high-resolution version, they’re priced at $5 and $10, respectively.

stock.xchng

SXC.hu has over 400,000 photos to choose from by more than 30,000 photographers. The website maintains that all images are free, but you must abide by its image license agreement.

Some of the site’s artists may also need to be notified about using some images, and in most cases, you’ll need to give credit to them.

Flickr

If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, you may want to actually try Flickr. The popular image hosting website has millions of images from its users who have offered their work under a Creative Commons (CC) License. All you have to do is simply pay close attention to the type of licenses each image falls under to use it appropriately.

Keep in mind that Flickr photos offered under the CC Attribution License requires you to give credit to the photographer.

Want more? MakeUseOf’s Directory of Apps has got details on MorgueFile, yet another website database for free high-resolution digital stock photos. If you’re still having trouble looking, try out PicFindr, a stock photography search engine.

If you know of any other good sites, let us know in the comments.

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Just look at MakeUseOf, the site you’re hopefully browsing at the moment. Where in the world can you buy a magazine with (currently) 1,754 articles for free? (more if you include the Directory and Geeky Fun).

‘Free’ does exist, and it’s brought to us through the internet.

Last week we saw industry quality open-source games with Yo Frankie. This week, we’ll take a look at the audio visual side. Free industry quality movies are pretty scarce but free music can be found in many places. So, enter what in my opinion are the best sites to download free music.

Not the torrent or limewire kind; the I-take-it-without-paying-so-it’s free, but music released under creative licenses, by people who don’t think music should be a business. People who sing for emotions, not money.

Jamendo

All the music available on Jamendo is released under the Creative Commons license. This means that it can be freely listened to and used and redistributed under the same license.

The artists then get rewarded via user donations and revenues from the Jamendo’s commercial programs and partnerships.

You can browse through over 150,000 tracks by artist, album and genre, or you can use the tags for quick navigation.

All of the tracks and albums are available for download without any needed registration and can be shared over the internet using widgets.

CCHits

CCHits is a great website to find and share music under the Creative Commons license.

All the songs can be played on the spot and downloaded in MP3 format. You can browse through the different songs by date, the number of hits, or by using tags. Alternatively, you can also search through the database.

The site uses a digg-like system, in which you can ‘like’ a song. This will increase both the song’s rating and also allow you to find it easily again at a later moment.

To give songs your ‘liking’, see your listening history and your liked songs, you’ll need a Ning account. Signing up is a very quick and easy process.

The song database is somewhat limited at the moment, but this website is destined for growth. You can always help by uploading your own songs to the website.

Amie Street

Amie Street is an online marketplace for music by independent artists.

As you may have deducted from the word ‘marketplace’, not all music on this site is free, only the yet-undiscovered ones.

This is how it works: Initially, about all of the music that appears on Amie Street gets released without a price – you can then download it without paying a dime. However, as the popularity of the piece increases, the price goes up.

The trick is to browse the new releases, and find the musical pearls between them. Note that signing up is required to download an album.

Another great feature is that you can earn credits by recommending songs to friends – up to 98 cents per song – which you can use to buy some of the premium songs. The retail price of these premium songs never goes over 98 cents apiece either.

Check out our earlier story on Amie Street.

ccMixter

ccMixter hosts many a capellas and samples which can be freely downloaded and resampled by remixers. The samples can be ordered based on various categories, popularity, beats per minute, or can be looked through using search queries and tags. In short, a great place for DJs and alike to find free samples.

A lot of these remixes have also been reposted on the website, for video-makers to use or music lovers to enjoy. Among these remixes are some really high-quality works, that even most people with less interest in the genre (like me) will enjoy.

Newgrounds

Just like flash games and movies, lots of royalty-free songs are released daily on Newgrounds by aspiring musicians.

The author must be credited upon redistribution, and the music can only be used for non-commercial purposes. If you just want to play it on your computer though, there’s even less you need to worry about.

The major part of the songs consist of house and trance music, but pop, rock and even classical music is represented. Though a lot of the songs are only good to use in flash games and movies, there are also a ton of songs that wouldn’t look out of place on the average radio station.

Do you know of any other good site to download free legal music? Do you want to share a song with the other readers? Give your opinions and suggestions a nice home in the comments section below.

Picture Credits: marimoon

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What does royalty free mean in the first place?

Simply put, you don’t have to pay royalties or license fees for using the material. It doesn’t necessarily mean the material is completely free, in most cases you will still need to pay a small initial fee to obtain the image, icon or sound. Then however, you can use it in any way the end user license agreement allows you to, meaning no further license fees will have to be paid.

In this post I will share with you some great resources for royalty free photos, which are free to use for non-commercial work.

I was a little surprised at first to find that Flickr is one of the best sources for royalty free photos. Without doubt, Flickr has one of the greatest and constantly growing collections of individual, unusual and beautiful images. Now, you can’t just use any photo found on Flickr. If you want to stay within legal boundaries, start right here at Flickr’s Creative Commons page and pick the license agreement that suits you best. With The Attribution-Non Commercial License for example, there are almost 10 million photos to pick from. Click on “See More”, then go ahead and use the search as usual. It might be helpful to select “Most interesting” instead of “Most relevant” in order to see only the most popular images. It’s important to note that all Flickr photos must be credited, indicated by the BY: sign in the license.
Now that I think about it, it’s quite logic that Flickr would be your number one stop for photos, but from the legal point of view, I didn’t expect it to be so well organized in the first place. And at this point I need to give credit to Skellie from skelliewag for a wonderful article on Flickr Images.

My personal favorite is stock.xchng. I’ve been using this site for around two years and find it very convenient. To get your hands on any of their images, you have to sign up, but in this case it’s worth it. Most images come with “standard restrictions”, indicating the site’s image license agreement. Some users may wish to be credited or notified when their work is being published, some want to be asked before you use their images.

Stock.xchng offers a few extras. Members can upload and share their own material, rate and comment on photos, and send other users private notes through their profile. Favorites are organized in so-called lightboxes, which can be made public. Members can also contribute image related tutorials and there is quite an impressive collection to browse. As a member you can submit posts to the community blog, which in fact is an aggregate of individual user blogs. You see, there is a lot to be discovered on stock.xchng.

Everystockphoto is a search engine for license-specific photos. It crawls many of the popular stock image sites, making it easy to search many sources at once. Since this is only a search engine, the images are not stored on their servers, and some sources, such as stock.xchng, require you to set up an account before being able to download anything. Also, be sure to check the site specific terms of usage. What’s cool is the everystockphoto Firefox Search Plug-in (found under Tools) with which you’ll have free stock photos right at your fingertips.

Do you know of any other royalty-free picture websites? Let us know in the comments!

(By) This post was written by one of our regular authors, Tina from Recommended.

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