Field Recording Atlas

The Field Recording Atlas is a map with sound on it. Every pin is a recording somebody made of an actual place at an actual time: a tram junction at 06:40, a laundrette, a stairwell in a housing block with a lift that sings. Pan across a district and neighbouring pins fade in and out of each other, so you hear a neighbourhood rather than a point. Zoom out far enough and a city becomes one long chord.

What we accept

Ninety seconds minimum, five minutes is plenty. WAV if you have it, a phone recording if that is what was in your pocket, and we would rather have the phone than nothing. Tell us the date, the time of day and the gear, including the honest answer. Geotag to the street, never to a front door.

Two rules we do not bend. No music playing in the frame, because that is somebody else's recording inside yours. And no conversation a stranger could be identified from: if two people are talking about their week, walk on or come back later. An editor listens to everything, usually inside two weeks, and rejections come with a reason rather than a silence.

Rights, and what it costs

Nothing, in either direction. Browsing is free and needs no account, submitting needs a free one. You keep the copyright on your recording and grant us a non-exclusive licence to map it, stream it and archive it. Anyone can download a pin for non-commercial use with a credit; commercial use goes back through you, not us.

Contributors get credited on every pin, and the overnight hours on Wire Radio are drawn from the atlas, which is how most people find out their laundrette has been on the radio at four in the morning. When a record on the Ambient Hundred was made somewhere we have pins for, we link the two.