6 websites where you can find free sound effects for your videos

Sound design goes way beyond a movie’s soundtrack. Music may be essential, but the sound effects also have their appeal. And this is also true for videos produced for the web — whether by brands or by influencer on YouTube channels —, to major Hollywood productions.

Audios can, beyond doubt, help you tell the story presented in the video’s images. In addition, they are usually linked to the feelings that need to be conveyed.

For example, if someone is talking about water and then you hear the sound effect of a bottle being filled with a liquid, there’s a good chance that you’ll fee thirsty and won’t know why.

Would you like to know more about this subject?

Well, keep reading! Here you will understand the importance of using sound effects in your videos plus, you’ll learn about 6 website options that make audios available.

What is the importance of using sound effects in videos?

It’s no coincidence that the term is called audiovisual. In order for a video to properly tell its story, it’s necessary to join audio and video elements.

The wrong soundtrack, bad timing or without equalization can make all film shooting and production efforts go down the drain. On the other hand, when the audio elements are synchronized with what is being shown on the screen, the story becomes more enjoyable and fluid.

If you produce content for social media, remember that most of them have the autoplay feature. This means that it is possible to watch muted videos.

Therefore, if your followers decide to watch your content with the audio turned on, it must be top notch! The sounds of a video are often mostly responsible for holding an audience’s attention to the content.

For now, we’ll put soundtracks aside and focus on sound effects, which are those sounds,  such as bang, splat, pow and all other sounds that help tell a story — whether of a video or a podcast.

Remember that viewer attention span on the web is increasingly shorter, which means that a good sound design might be the differential that your content needs.

What are the top 6 websites for downloading sound effects?

Let’s suppose that you need to imitate the sound of a horse galloping for a video, but there are no horses around in order to capture this audio. People used to have to reproduce all the sounds they wanted in a homespun manner.

Nowadays, technology facilitates this process for those who work with audiovisuals and you can find the sound of a horse galloping — and an infinity of other sound effects—, a few clicks away.

1. BBC Sound Effects

Media giant BBC, one of Britain’s leading broadcasters —, with branches in several countries —, not long ago, released 16 thousand sound effects of its online archive.

Do you need the sound of an elevator door opening? How about the whirring sound of a movie reel on an old projector? You can find them, and much more, at BBC Sound Effects.

The website has a simple easy-to-use layout. With basic English skills (or a quick check with Google Translator), you can search for the desired effects by using keywords.

One important detail: These audios can be downloaded for free, as long as they aren’t used for commercial purposes, which means that they cannot be included in monetization-enabled videos.

2. Freesound.org

Freesound currently has one of the larges archives for the downloading of sound effects. In many ways, it works like a social network: it has tabs with forums among participants and for those who wish to upload their sounds.

Unlike BBC Sound Effects, some of the audios are cleared for commercial use. You need to pay attention to the licenses available on the website. While some are included in the Creative Commons, others require that the author of the audio be mentioned in order to use it.

3. YouTube Library

YouTube’s audio library is one of the favorites of content producers when it comes to sound effects and soundtracks.

This is mainly because the availability of an audio on the platform automatically means it is released to be used in videos hosted on YouTube.

In other words, you can bid farewell to those situations where YouTube removes your video’s audio after it’s uploaded. There is a division between soundtrack and sound effects, and in both cases, you can also search by means of keywords.

4. Facebook Sound Collection

YouTube’s biggest competitor in terms of uploading and consuming videos, Facebook wouldn’t be left behind in terms of releasing audios for its content producers. Launched in late 2018, the Facebook Sound Collection hit the market with approximately one thousand high-quality soundtracks and sound effects.

There are currently over 2,500 tracks. Its main advantage is that the audios available can be used on both Facebook and Instagram, but it’s important to pay attention when you make these audios available on other networks, such as YouTube.

5. 99Sounds

The main difference between 99Sounds and its competitors is the way how sound effects are made available — in addition of course, to a small peculiarity (we won’t call it bizarre) of the themes presented. Instead of searching and downloading individual tracks, the platform releases “collections” based on themes.

Therefore, if you need the sound of a drone or a magnetic field for any reason, you can download these collections and have a variety of options at your disposal. On this website, all audios are released for commercial use.

6. Get-Sounds

This is probably the most basic website among all others we presented here. However, it all separates sound effects by categories — animals, domestic situations, sirens, transport and sports, among others —, which can facilitate the search.

Get-Sounds is also the website with the smallest archive, but still, it can be quite useful in putting your videos together.

What have you learned so far?

As you can see, including sound effects can provide uniqueness to your content. And besides, finding quality options for free on the web isn’t rocket science.

Just remember to always pay attention to copyrights in order to avoid future headaches, agreed?

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