I recently came across an interesting web site that is starting to sell sound effects. Now there is nothing new in that, there are many sites that do this both big and small. But what stood out was the speed of expansion and the number of independent sound effects libraries that are already on the site, so I decided to take a closer look at Sonniss.

Sonniss was launched in earlier in 2014 with the express aim to help facilitate the sale of high-quality independent sound effect libraries for use within commercial and non-commercial productions. 

Over the last few years, Tim McHugh and the team at Visionary Sound have been discussing creating a platform that would allow people to easily buy and sell independent sound libraries. Tim explains….

When I first attempted to sell my sound effects library last year I found it difficult to make a profit, not because of the quality of my libraries (they where awesome, of course, right?), but solely because there wasn’t a platform that I could easily sell my libraries on without some large site or publisher taking a hefty 50/60% commission. It was crazy. 

So after a lot of talking and plenty of coffee, they decided to take action and now after many months of hard work, Sonniss is up and running. Tim told us…

Recently we haven’t had much sleep. Coffee is permanently running through our veins and our eyes are red from the constant glare of computer screens. Sonniss has taken a hold of us. Day becomes night without anyone noticing. Night becomes day without anyone going home.

Ever since an early age, I was always recording myself and everything around me. I didn’t fit in too well with others. I was an introvert. I liked spending time on my own. Just me and my Microphone, recorder and headset. I quickly figured out how to record different soundscapes using the overdub feature and thought I was king of the world.

Throughout growing up, my mum used to think I was crazy. I was always walking around tapping things, smashing things, breaking and throwing everything at walls, doors, the floor, etc… I wanted to hear what everything sounded like so I could record them and make a copy. Weird, right? Maybe. Possibly. Who cares!

Fast forward to just a few months ago. I met some amazing people in a local meetup that were inspired by sound as much as I was. We discussed many things – the birds, the bees, women, beer (not necessarily in that order), but mainly a platform to allow sound recordists the ability to sell their source material.

I didn’t think anything more about it until 2 weeks later when 2 geeks, 9 desktop monitors, 3 computer systems and a stack of 14inch pizzas turned up at my door. “We have to do this. We have to do this”, they said. ‘Do what?’ I replied. It’s 2am. What’s going on. (They were a little drunk. But hey, pizza right?). I let them in and we talked some more… These guys haven’t left since.

The team have pretty well worked on Sonniss 24/7 since then. Bug fixes, updates and customer support are their number one priority at the moment. In just 2 weeks they have fixed 61 bugs and made 14 feature improvements. 34 vendors have signed up.

They have spent all this time so that the process of buying sound effect libraries and managing licenses is as easy as possible.  From stream-lined guest-checkouts and super-fast downloads, to cross-platform compatibility and easy-to-use interfaces.

Buying Sound Effects on Sonniss

As soon as anyone buys a sound effect library from a seller on Sonniss, the money is credited directly into the sellers Paypal account and the files are instantly available for the customer to download. They have made the download options for a real world so you can download the file up to 4 times in 4 days before the download link expires.

Selling Sound Effects on Sonniss

If you want to sell your sound effects on Sonniss then they have made applying to become a seller quick, simple and 100% free. All of their sellers get paid instantly into their Paypal account on every sale. They retain just 20% commission.  Everything happens behind the scenes and payments are pretty much instant. They have tried to make everything as simple and as fast as possible for vendors to sell their libraries and for buyers to be able to purchase them.  All of the sound libraries are hosted on the Amazon S3 cloud infrastructure and distributed via Amazon CloudFront from servers close to the customers location. 

Passionate About Sound

I have to say that speaking to Tim he is passionate about sound, sound effects and creating a community for people who create sound effects as well as people you use them. He and his team have worked incredibly hard to get this up and running and I am impressed at the number of independent sound effects producers that have signed up to Sonniss. I really commend them for their busines model, for only taking 20% commission and making sue their vendors get the money straight away.  So whether you create sound effects or use them then do check out Sonniss.