Hands up who's heard of iStockphoto? Probably most of you, because since its inception in 2000 iStock has grown into the big name in online stock images and graphics. If you're building a website, designing a flyer or putting a presentation together iStock is a great source of quality royalty free images at very affordable prices. And now they want bring this successful model to the field of audio.

The service launches in September, but if you'd like to be a contributor you can start submitting your samples for approval now. Audio types can include individual instrument samples, sound effects, multi-instrument loops, musical beds and entire tracks. All material must be created from scratch and you'll need to be the owner of the original source material. At the moment it looks like iStock are opting for 16Bit 41.1/48kHz .wav files as their one and only format of choice which is a little disappointing as it we'd love to see some higher quality options, but maybe that will come in the future.

 

While you shouldn't expect to make a living from your iStock audio if you're anything like me and you've got a load of home-made samples and mini tracks sitting around on your hard drive gathering proverbial dust, you can at least now do something with them.

 

Even if you don't think you'll be a contributor, when iStock Audio launches in September it could potentially be a great place to find truly unique samples to use in your productions. We'll certainly be giving it a go, and we'll let you know our thoughts when the time comes.

 

If you need help preparing your samples, perhaps in cleaning them up or applying the required meta tags etc. then please contact us at the mastering studio and we'll do our best to help out.