Find real field recordings on the world map

The Explorer tab is a world map of real, freely licensed field recordings. Every pin is an audio file on Wikimedia Commons — the media archive behind Wikipedia — that has coordinates. Soundscape Atlas does not host or copy any recordings: it searches Commons through its public API and plays the files directly from Wikimedia.

Run your first search

1. Open the Explorer tab (or press 1).
2. Under Find recordings, choose a Sound category, for example Weather.
3. Choose a Region, for example Europe.
4. Press Search.

The status line tells you how many recordings were found, for example “30 recordings found.” The pins appear on the map and the same recordings are listed under Search results. Press Load more results at the end of the list for the next page.

Search words (optional) narrows the search with plain words such as harbour, cicadas or market. Search operators are ignored.

Search around a point

Click anywhere on the map. A ring marks the point and the region changes to Around a point on the map. Pick a Search radius — 10 km to 1000 km — and press Search around this point.

Near me does the same with your own position. Your browser asks for permission first; Soundscape Atlas rounds the position to about one kilometre and sends it to Wikimedia Commons for that single search. It is not saved in your project, and searches around a point are never cached on the server.

Only a small share of Commons recordings has coordinates, so some places have none. Widen the radius or choose a whole region when the list stays empty.

Read a result

Each entry shows:

• the title, which also selects the pin on the map,
• a licence badge such as CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC0,
• the author (“by …”) — or “author not stated on Commons” when the file page names nobody,
• the length and the coordinates,
• Tags (keyword guess) such as wildlife or weather. They are guessed from the title, description and Commons categories and can be wrong.

Press Listen to hear the recording; press it again (Stop) to end it. Source page opens the file page on Commons with the full description and licence.

Licences decide what you can do

Scenes can only use recordings under CC0, public domain, CC BY or CC BY-SA. Everything else — for example NonCommercial or NoDerivatives licences, GFDL-only files or files without licence data — is left out of the search. If you tick Also list recordings that cannot be remixed, they appear with a grey pin and the note “This licence does not allow remixing”, and Add to scene stays disabled.

Keep what you like

• Save stores the recording (its metadata, not the audio) in this project. Switch to Saved above the list to see your saved recordings on the map.
• Add to scene adds it as a layer in the Studio — see Mix your first ambience.
• Add to soundwalk puts it into an ordered walk — see Soundwalks.

Use the map with the keyboard

Tab to the map. The arrow keys move between pins (to the nearest pin in that direction), Home and End jump to the first and last pin, Enter moves to the selected recording in the list, and +, − and 0 zoom in, out and back to the whole world. The list below the map always contains every pin, so you can also work with the list alone.