A little over a week ago, I wrote this LinkedIn post about great FREE image resources for e-learning. Trust me, free images are easy to find in comparison to free audio resources. However, it’s still very feasible to find some great quality audio files for your e-learning projects. Music is ubiquitous on everything our learners do. From elevators and cars to smart phones and tablets, our learners can access and\or are exposed to music. It only makes sense to enrich learning experiences with some tunes. Sound effects are great for reinforcing behavior i.e. buzzer for wrong answers vs. a delicate chime for correct ones. In this post I give you all the options I know i.e. FREE vs. Cheap to find the right music background and sound effect for your courses.
YouTube
You Tube is my go-to resource. Google is one of the greatest things that happened to technology and their acquisition of YouTube made it into the amazing resource it is for royalty FREE music (and sound effects). All you have to do is go to youtube.com (you would need a free Gmail (Google eMail) account if you don’t have one already) and click on the Creator Studio button which is available by clicking on your profile (top right screen).
YouTube Profile
Once in Creator Studio click the CREATE icon to view the audio library. There it is and as the screen advises, you must render attribution to some files but, most of them are FREE to use.
SoundBible
Soundbible.com is my second choice which is filled with sound effects. YouTube sound effects library is limited and that’s why Sound Bible is an option here. Most sounds are royalty FREE but not attribution free. Although some files are available through public domain, most of the sound effects must be given credit on your project.
SoundCloud
Everyone that wants to be a musician now has a SoundCloud profile. However, you don’t have to be a musician or DJ to take advantage of the free cinematic sound clips available through this site.
AudioBlocks
AudioBlocks is not FREE but, you can get unlimited downloads for $99 a year. That’s a great deal for this awesomely rich library of audio stock music, loops and sound effects. AudioBlocks is even featured in other recognized fee-for-service audio libraries in the industry i.e. e-Learning Brothers
Finding good background music and sound effects which are also FREE of cost can be daunting. However, I hope these sources above prove useful in your future projects. Please comment if you know of any other audio resources for e-learning.
