CC Search aka Openverse

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I only vaguely remember the story from earlier in the year, but the project behind CC Search search tool developed by Creative Commons has been adopted by WordPress and named now “Openverse”

You get all the functionality of this federated search of CC licensed images whether there at WordPress.org, the project site or at Creative Commons.

Look, 10,000 images found for open education…

openverse search results for "open education"

But note the many search options to filter by license, or specific source of the image.

I came across a reference to this via a WP Tavern Jukebox podcast #10 What’s in WordPress 5.9, and What Is Openverse? where the project manager for Openverse, Zack Krida shared what they were working on, including building the full search capability for audio content and 3D models.

Here is that segment from the podcast…

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And now it is official.

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It looks like there has been some design work for the Openverse interface, yellow colors, etc, but the big news is a beta search for CC licensed audio.

open verse search interface with filter set to audio

So I have to see what they have by searching on “dog”

35 audio results for dog

I see a mixture of music tracks (don’t you want to listen to Batman Loves My Dog?) as well as sound effects like Sheep, Dogs, Horse, and Light Rain.

Results provide a player, download, license details, tags, and one one of the best things-- cut and paste text for attribution. Here take a listen to Dogs Drinking Water

dog drinking water search result

Search filters include by specific license, category (music, sound effects, or podcast), duration (short, medium, long), file type (mp3, ogg, flac, but I note I saw wav results too) and source ( FreeSound, Jamendo, or Wikimedia Commons). This is beta so I would bet more sources will be added – among my favorites for audio is the Free Music Archive and ccMixter)

But I am excited to see audio media tossed into the search, and that you can be sure more will be added.

Openverse sounds like a good place to find open licensed audio…