Licensing · Samples
How to Check a Free Sample's License Before You Release a Track
"Free sample" can mean four very different things. One of them lets you release anything. One can get a commercial release taken down. Here's how to tell them apart in under a minute.
Published 13 October 2026
We have screened thousands of free sounds for our packs, and we only ship CC0. This is the checklist we use, written for producers rather than lawyers. It explains common licenses. It is not legal advice, and for a high-stakes release (a label deal, a sync placement) it's worth asking someone who is a lawyer.
The Four Licenses You'll Meet
| License | Use in a track you sell? | What you owe |
|---|---|---|
| CC0 (public domain dedication) | Yes | Nothing. No credit, no notice. |
| CC BY (Attribution) | Yes | A credit for every sound: title, author, source link, license. Forget it and you're outside the license. |
| CC BY-NC (NonCommercial) | Treat as no | Not for commercial use. Selling the track, streaming royalties and monetised video are where producers get caught. |
| Sampling+ (retired) | Read it first | Allows using the sound transformed inside a new work, but not in advertising. Creative Commons retired it, and it still shows up on older uploads. |
"Royalty-free" is not a license. It's a description, and the actual terms are in whatever text came with the files. Many free packs from producers and stores are royalty-free for use in your music, but ban redistributing the sounds, for example in your own sample pack or a game's asset folder. Read the LICENSE or Read Me file in the download.
Where the Real License Is on Freesound
The license belongs to each sound, not to the uploader or the pack. On Freesound it's shown on the individual sound's page, next to the download button. The same uploader can mix CC0, CC BY and NC sounds in one pack. Checking one sound and assuming the rest is the most common mistake we see.
Tags don't count. A sound tagged "free", "royalty-free" or "cc0" can still be licensed CC BY-NC. When we build packs we read the license from each sound's license field through Freesound's API and ignore tags entirely.
The Risk the License Doesn't Cover: Who Recorded It?
A license is only as good as the uploader's right to grant it. Someone can upload a sound they don't own, from a commercial sample CD or a plugin's factory library, and stick CC0 on it. The license looks clean. The sound isn't.
The warning sign is the name. In the CC0 search results we screened for our packs, 6,780 results (18%) named a commercial drum machine, plugin, brand or sample store in the title, tags or description. Some are genuine recordings of the uploader's own hardware, but the page can't prove which. Our rule is to exclude them all. If you use one, keep it out of anything you can't afford to re-release. (These are search results, and the same sound can appear in more than one search. The full numbers are in our test of 1,004 free samples.)
Keep a Record of Every Sample
If a distributor or platform ever questions a sound, you want to answer in minutes, not by searching your browser history. For each third-party sample, save:
- The sound's ID and page URL
- The license, as shown on that page
- The uploader's name
- The date you downloaded it
A text file inside the project folder is enough. We keep exactly this for every sound in every PhaseForge pack, which is how we can say each one is CC0.
Quick Checklist
- Read the license on the sound's own page. Not the pack, the profile or the tags.
- CC0: go. CC BY: credit every sound. NC: not for anything you sell or monetise.
- "Royalty-free" means read the included license text.
- Avoid uploads named after commercial machines, plugins or sample stores.
- Log the ID, URL, license, uploader and date for each sample.
Samples That Are Already Cleared
Every sound in a PhaseForge pack is CC0-sourced, with its source recorded file by file. Use them in releases, sync, games and video. No credit required.
Free: 40 CC0 sounds from 20 of our 24 packs
Two sounds from every curated pack (kicks, bass, synths, music loops), the same files as the paid packs. Royalty-free, no credit required.
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