Wikimedia accepts and encourages uploading audio files on Commons. Audio files, like images, must be freely licensed. The preferred audio
container
format is
Ogg
but
other file types
are supported. When uploading audio files use the file type
oga
; for video
ogv
, to differentiate amongst the generic
ogg
file type.
FLAC
, both, embedded in the Ogg container or in its native container format is supported for applications where
lossless compression
is required, for example projects where a file has to be edited multiple times.
With all video processing tools you can easily extract an audio fragment from a video.
To convert your audio to one of the
allowed
formats, you can use most
video converters
, they can also handle audio without video or extract audio from video. The command line tool
ffmpeg
is available for various operating systems and internally used by many tools with a graphical user interface. On Linux check out
OggConvert
. For Windows and Linux you can use
VLC
to convert e.g. m4a to oga.
With modern browsers the scripts
Opusenc.js
and
Flac.js
convert aiff, wave and raw audio to Opus or FLAC.
video2commons
can be used to extract the audio from a video hosted on a variety of sites, including Commons itself (the video file URL itself has to be input, not the file page URL).
When recording sounds or spoken samples with your own equipment please take care of the following aspects. Make sure to eliminate all background noises. Though, it is possible to remove unwanted noise from the audio stream afterwards, it is better to minimize your editing work. Furthermore, it is advised to use a high quality microphone. Built in hardware microphones, especially those from laptops, are considered to produce low quality recordings which include
clipping
, noise and therefore a low
SNR
.
Audacity
is not only able to record audio, but also offers a multi platform editing tool for an unlimited number of audio streams. The Audacity user manual offers suggestions tailored to specific use-cases such as
digitization of analogue material
, so read it.
Uploaders must ensure they have gathered all rights necessary, including (but not limited to)
recording rights
, and rights from any
interpreters
,
performers
,
composers
and
lyricists
involved, wherever applicable. These individual rights should be specified separately on each file description page of audio and video files.
Copyright collecting agencies represent the usage rights stemming from authors' rights for works of their members. Often authors are forced to transfer exclusive usage rights for all their works to the agency as required by the statute of the collecting agency, and even the authors themselves need the agency's permission to publish their own work under a free license as a consequence. Most larger agencies will not grant permission for Commons-acceptable licenses.