Licensing

Using our sounds or images as part of your project:

In most cases we will be happy for you to use our nature sounds in your project. However, please consider that our work is not only protected by copyright, it is our livelihood. If you wish to add value to your project by incorporating our nature recordings or images, please read our guidelines below.

Credit:

For any use, we require credit in your publication; such as:
"Nature soundscapes (and/or images) courtesy of Listening Earth. www.listeningearth.com"
If you are publishing online, it is necessary for you to include a link from this credit to our homepage.

Use for exchange:

We appreciate that for many people, their project is funded from their personal resources. Often we receive requests for permission in exchange for credit and promotion. Whilst we appreciate the spirit in which this suggestion is intended, in our past experience it has not offered us much in practice (** see below for our further thoughts on this).

Hence we offer limited-resource users the following options for an affordable license, to renumerate us for our work, and cover the legal issues.

 

Free License:

Suitable for: i) Personal student uses, such as school projects & research,
ii) Non-commercial activities that principally promote wildlife or conservation awareness, or
iii) Non-profit charitable or community uses.
Applies to: Only images or sound samples as published on this website. Includes public playing of our CDs, but not audio published from our CDs.
What to do: No fee applicable, but we require credit in your publication as above. If your use falls into this category, we'd welcome hearing from you, but its not necessary.

Personal Publishing License:

Suitable for: Individuals publishing on a not-for-profit basis (eg; personal websites, hobby projects)
Applies to: Sounds taken from our published CD albums, or sounds/images as published on this site. Limited to a maximum use of 5 minutes of audio material.
What to do: Write to us, say hello, and tell us about your project or envisaged use. Given that we approve your proposed use, we ask a one-off payment of AU$60, plus acknowledgement and a link as described above. This allows a maximum of 5 minutes of audio to be used, or images as negotiated, for the duration of the project. This payment does not include the purchase price of any audio content.

Small Business License:

Suitable for: Individuals or small businesses for a project that may be commercial, but not envisaged to return a significant profit.
Applies to: Sounds taken from our published CD albums, or sounds/images as published on this site. Limited to a maximum use of 5 minutes of audio material.
What to do: As for our Personal Publishers License, but with the one-off payment being AU$120. Acknowledgement and a link is obligatory, also as above. This payment does not include the purchase price of any audio content.
We also require that, in the happy event that your project eventually becomes significantly profitable (say twice the return on initial investment), you contact us again and discuss upgrading to a more commercially appropriate license fee.

Commercial Publishing License:

Suitable for: Projects of a commercial nature or undertaken by a well-established business, company or corporation. Studio time to custom prepare materials. Commercial airplay.
Applies to: Anything derived from our publications, especially audio as published on our CDs.
What to do: Please ring or email and discuss your needs, and we can prepare a customised quote. Our licenses and fees are negotiable and dependant upon the nature of the use. We have an extensive sound and image library, and can assist with specific requirements.

 

App Developers and Startups:

We appreciate that with speculative projects, the returns are often not clear. Hence developers, often with limited budgets, request preferential rates, or use on a 'lets see how this goes' basis.

In essence, this is asking us to subsidise, co-speculate, defer, or in some way share the risks involved in a commercial project. This is not a role we wish to take on. We consider licensing of our materials to be part of a developer's initial investment in their product.

For an estimate of fees, please get in touch with the anticipated amount of audio material you'll require, and relevant technical and commercial implications (such as whether customers would be able to download media).

 

On-hold Telephone Licenses:

Nature sounds are a welcome relief from the radio, jingles or promotional rants commonly encountered when callers are put on hold. So reflect your business values and give your callers a relaxing alternative by licensing some of our nature recordings.

We offer licenses allowing for either 1 or 5 years usage of any of our published sound recordings, to be used on any number of telephone lines provided they are all in the same building. The 1 year license is AU$100, or 5 year license $400 (both plus GST for Australian customers).

 

** Promotion in exchange for permission agreements:

Giving credit is a standard requirement of permissions for use - for instance a photographer's or photo libraries' details published alongside an image, or copyright/accreditation details included with song publishing. In this digital age, this credit/promotion is achieved through a hypertext link (online publishing) or including a website in print publishing.

We feel that a proposal offering promotion in exchange for permission is effectively requesting someone to pay for promotion by donating their creative work. In our past experience of such arrangements, we can quantify the value of what we've contributed, but we've not been sure of what we have got back.

Unlike many sound and image libraries, we have chosen to try and make licensing affordable for a range of people and circumstances. Our fees are significantly less than major sound libraries such as the BBC, ABC or Cornell Lab.

We've arrived at these guidelines after 15 years experience of licensing our recordings to users around the world. They are intended to be affordable and flexible for a range of people from ordinary folks to corporate clients. We're comfortable with the fairness of these guidelines - please be aware that only in exceptional circumstances will we negotiate on them.

 

Select and Purchase your License:

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Broadcast License - 1 Year

Allows broadcast of any of our published recordings in ambient public spaces or on telephone on-hold systems for one year.

Broadcast License - 5 Years

Allows broadcast of any of our published recordings in ambient public spaces or on telephone on-hold systems for five years.

Personal Publishing License

Personal Publishing License - suitable for Individuals publishing on a not-for-profit basis.

Small Business License

Small Business License  - Individuals or small businesses for a project that may be commercial, but not envisaged to return a significant profit.