About

The Sound Collectors’ Club was started in 2010 by me, Michael Maroussas, as a new way to share sounds online with likeminded sound folk all around the world.  Eleven years on, the Club’s still going strong!

Now for the details.  How does it all work?

The Club is based upon the folder sharing capabilities of Google Drive.  When you join, you are allocated your own specific ‘uploading’ folder, which is what you use to share your sounds with the Club.  The idea is that members can then upload their recording (relating to one of the given Club themes announced on the website) and subsequently gain access to another shared folder of everyone else’s recordings that have been accumulated since that theme began.  The more themes you contribute to, the more you gain access to.  We’re basically crowdsourcing sound fx collections online.

Once your uploaded recording(s) has been approved by me and transferred into the appropriate theme folder, you get emailed an ‘invite’ which will give you direct access to all the tracks which that theme contains.  You can then download this theme folder and sync it to your desktop so you’ll automatically receive sounds contributed to that theme in the future.  You are then free to use these sounds within commercial projects without any restriction (other than you obviously mustn’t go and sell them on as sound effects – individually or as libraries).

Hence, from contributing just one recording you could end up with a small arsenal of sounds to add to your library.

However, although The Sound Collectors’ Club was primarily set up with the simple ambition of collecting sounds, it has also turned out to be a really useful networking tool over the years too.  The vast majority of Club members are film or TV sound professionals – sound designers and editors, recordists or mixers – so the Club offers a great platform for these members to reach out to their peers in other countries.  Inevitably, collecting together encourages interaction; and that interaction can and has grown into anything ranging from sharing ideas and techniques to commissioning field recordings or even working together remotely.  The Club is a good foundation for this as members’ involvement in sharing sounds with each other over the years helps to build the trust and respect needed in order to embark upon these new collaborations together.

In short, this is a professional club, not just a hobbyist one!  For just £20, you can start contributing to and sharing the Club’s sound collections, plus reach out to other sound pros around the world via your automatic invite to join the Club’s shared Evernote notebook, ‘The Knowledge‘, as well as the Club’s new Slack discussion group.  So please consider joining us; the very nature of this kind of crowdsourcing means the more the merrier!

Feel free to contact me via the form below, or offer up any comments or suggestions within this blog or through Twitter.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,

Michael Maroussas