Freesound, a venerable repository of CC-licensed samples, has been up to a bevy of good work since we last checked in with them. This includes developing a beautiful successor to wav2png, changing their name to freesound.org, teaming up with Happy New Ears to develop an interactive sample machine aimed at children, and launching Freesound Radio, an “experimental web-based system around collaboration and social interaction in sample based music creations.”

What many people don’t realize about Freesound.org is that it is an initiative of the Music Technology Group at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. This means that outside of Freesound there are a collection of amazing students and professors working on understanding how music technology is changing at a rapid pace. One of these student, Jordi Janer, recentlly released his PHD singing-driven interfaces for sound synthesizers as a CC BY-NC-SA licensed PDF download.