Using a music search engine or some other sound search tool is usually pretty straightforward: enter a search term or browse the listing for sound files.
Best Audio Search Engines
An audio search engine lets you search for sounds across the web, and they’re always updating with new information.
FindSounds
FindSounds searches the web for sound effects, instrument samples, and other sounds in a variety of formats (e.g., MP3, WAV, AIF). You can search using keywords or browse for sound files by category. Direct download links to the files are provided.
Audioburst
Audioburst is extremely unique because it lets you perform an audio search across millions of minutes of sound from podcasts, TV, and radio stations. If you’re looking for a quick way to search recent news recordings for specific keywords, this is the place to be.
MP3Juices
MP3Juices is a free MP3 audio search engine. It lets you select up to seven sources to run a sound search on: YouTube, SoundCloud, VK, Yandex, 4shared, PromoDj, and Archive.org. You can download and stream the audio it finds.
Listen Notes
Listen Notes is a podcast search engine. Type a word or phrase to perform an audio lookup across tens of millions of podcast episodes and interviews.
Other Audio Search Methods
There are lots of other audio search tools that aren’t necessarily considered search engines like the ones listed above but do still serve the purpose of helping you find audio in many forms. For example, some music search engines are really just a collection of audio files, not a method for scouring the web for music.
Reverse Audio Search
Shazam: A mobile app where you can run an audio search by audio instead of text. In other words, you can feed the app a sound and have it determine the title and more information like the artist and possibly lyrics, great for when you need to identify an unknown song. Picard: Cross-platform music tagger that provides a song search feature where music can be identified by the sound alone, even without any metadata.
Specialized Audio Search Sites
NASA Audio: Search sounds from NASA, both from their collection of current missions and historic spaceflights. Audio is separated into categories like Beeps and Bites, Sounds of the Future, Shuttle and Station, and Discovery. Internet Archive’s Audio Archive: Millions of free audio files are available here, and it’s frequently updated. Includes radio programs, mixtapes, podcasts, samples, audiobooks, news, and more. History.com Speeches: Listen to hundreds of famous speeches and other audio clips that have made history. SermonAudio: Search for and stream MP3 sermons.
Streaming Music Services
Pandora: One of the most popular ways to search for free and paid music. Finds audio related to the titles you search for, letting you make your own custom music stations. iHeartRadio: Great for running a wide audio search to find radio stations in the US and Mexico.
Audiobook Websites
LearnOutLoud.com: Search for free audiobooks, MP3 downloads, podcasts, and more. Project Gutenberg Audio Books: Find audio in the form of classic books. Storynory: Original sound files regarding audiobooks for children.
