So we are playing with the idea of making a Free, but curated with quality controlled, SFX CloudPack Based library included in BaseHead that is 100% Free for any BH user that contributes something to it also!
I personally have over a 1,000+ files I have Designed and Recorded over my 20+ year career that are cut tight and ready to go that I am willing to will toss into the library pool if others are down to contribute their custom made or recorded sounds as well.
Who's In?? 
See this post for more info and and reply there if you will like to contribute also.
https://baseheadinc.com/index.php/community/general-non-platform-specific-discussion/basehead-community-sfx-library-anyone/
BUT make sure to vote it up here also so we can gauge the interest with this feature also. 😉
WHOA!!! Love it this idea.
I'll provide around 300-500 of my designed/recorded sounds (clean) and add more later. I like the "pay it forward" approach. We all had to start somewhere, and giving back to our sound peoples' community while having a bit of self promotion is cool with me 🙂
To what Chris P was mentioning about it being overloaded with too much of one source, it would be cool to approach it through categories, ie: Designed Impacts, Source hits, Designed Whooshes, Source whooshes, World Backgrounds, Designed ambiences, etc.... Not just some big dump like the freesound outlets 😉
Quality control would be a big bonus, but I'm sure that's already the idea. Set a standard for Sound Designers to aspire towards.
Love how it could bring our worldwide sound community closer together. Need a recorded sound from somewhere/something you can't get too (cough, cough, COVID, budgets, cough 😉 maybe another sound recordist/designer has it available, and maybe you like their work and want to hire them for help.
Let's open some doors out there!!! Do it STEVE!!!!! DOOOO IT!!!!!!
😎
Ultimately, I'll never say no to free stuff and would be happy to throw a fair chunk of sounds in myself 😉
With that said, however, I have three major concerns, all of them probably fairly obvious, but requiring discussion nonetheless:
- What's the difference in my access if I contribute just one individual sound versus you contributing over a thousand? Seems like the folks who contribute the most should get the most benefit, but also the people who would have the most use for this library are actually the folks with the least to contribute (ie: New sound designers).
- More importantly, what safeguards prevent it becoming Freesound, where more-than-infrequently, stuff people haven't created themselves gets uploaded? I would be hesitant to use anything in it unless there was some kind of guarantee that I wasn't gonna suddenly get hit with an copyright claim or something. Surely, there's not enough time in the world to spot check several thousand single wavs for copyright abuse, if this becomes a very popular feature?
- How do we handle organization? A hit-list of "Desired sounds"? Otherwise we'll probably get 50,000 kitchen drawers and bedroom doors closing lol. Will metadata / record format be standardized?
- What's the difference in my access if I contribute just one individual sound versus you contributing over a thousand? Seems like the folks who contribute the most should get the most benefit, but also the people who would have the most use for this library are actually the folks with the least to contribute (ie: New sound designers).
I believe this is more of a "who would like to help out" kind of thing and not for people to upload to gain benefits. If you don't feel donating sounds is for you that is fine. It is more to give newcomers a starting point and maybe have your company listed as one of the sound providers. Steve would have to fill in more details.
- More importantly, what safeguards prevent it becoming Freesound, where more-than-infrequently, stuff people haven't created themselves gets uploaded? I would be hesitant to use anything in it unless there was some kind of guarantee that I wasn't gonna suddenly get hit with an copyright claim or something. Surely, there's not enough time in the world to spot check several thousand single wavs for copyright abuse, if this becomes a very popular feature?
Can never stop people uploading but from what I gather, this wouldn't be a "free for all" upload fest for users to upload anything they like. It would be a curated selection from more known users or "trusted users", the aim isn't for a fully featured free library.
- How do we handle organization? A hit-list of "Desired sounds"? Otherwise we'll probably get 50,000 kitchen drawers and bedroom doors closing lol. Will metadata / record format be standardized?
That would be done by the users who will be donating their sounds and possibly cleaned up by us. Of course metadata will be included as this is the whole idea, but i'd probably lower your expectation of 50,000 kitchen draws as being possible. Again, this won't be an unlimited free resource, just a getting started resource to give new users something to work with.
Definitely sounds good here - hopefully not more than some healthy skepticism! This is always a fairly nebulous area so it's good to see that some thought's bein' put into it! At any rate, I'm all for it and would totally be down to contribute!
you can never have too many Kitchen Drawers man! haha
but honestly I'm hoping to get people to contribute more designy stuff more than boring hard effects.
It won't become Freesound.org cuz it will be policed for quality control and BH users are mostly professionals and not the newbie types posting any kind of junk up like that site has just cuz it's "neat". 😉
Rules, Parameters and Details will be announced once we see how many people are interested and down to contribute cuz to do this right we need to do some coding and not just gather files. So we then will have the ability to unlock packs or xx files based on each users individual contribution, but the first we just need a show of hands and guestimation of what their first amount of files will be.
Also...Anyone that gives us a large lump of quality files to get this started before it's release will get unlimited access to the library no matter how large it gets over time 😉
Now that I have a bit more free time I think we will test this idea out and we will just start with two simple categories.
Whooshes and Stingers!
So start so start gather any SFX that you have created that fit into these two categories if you want to contribute.
Keep in mind....if you don't contribute you don't receive also.
More info to come soon after the Black Friday dust settles 😉
