About greensound
Real places, for sleep. greensound is a sound mixer that runs in your web browser. It layers real field recordings, each labeled with the place it was recorded, over soft noise made live on your device, and a timer fades it out when you choose. There is no app to install and no account to make.
What does greensound do?
Three ready-made mixes, Sleep, Focus and Relax, start with one tap. Below them you can build your own mix from up to six sounds, each with its own volume, and choose how long it plays: fifteen, thirty, sixty or ninety minutes, or all night. Green, brown and white noise are generated in your browser as you listen, so they never repeat. The field recordings are loops cut from longer recordings of real places. Today every sound is free to play. A paid tier, Pro, is planned.
What is a field recording?
A field recording is sound captured in a real place, outdoors, rather than made in a studio or on a computer. Every recording on greensound today comes from Mexico: the Yucatán Peninsula and the Pacific coast of Oaxaca. We did not make them. They were recorded by people who released them into the public domain, and each one is listed at the bottom of this page with who made it, where and when, as far as its source says.
How are the recordings chosen and credited?
We look for recordings whose source says who made them, where and when, and we listen to each one before it goes in. Some were left out after listening, because their sharpest sounds could not be softened without flattening them. Each recording that goes in is cut to a loop of twenty to forty seconds, its level is matched to the others, and its rare loudest moments are softened. Nothing else is changed. When a source leaves out a name or a date, we leave it out too, rather than guess.
What does CC0 mean?
CC0 is a public domain dedication from Creative Commons. The person who made a recording waives their copyright as far as the law allows, so anyone may use it for anything without asking. Every recording on greensound today is CC0. The license asks for no credit, and we give it anyway, because someone stood in that place with a microphone to make it.
No ads, and nothing sold
greensound shows no ads and sells no data. There is no account, no email and no tracking pixel. Page visits are counted by Vercel, the company that hosts the site, without cookies. Listening sessions are counted in a table of our own: when a session starts and ends, how long it ran, and which sounds and length it used. Nothing in that table can tell us who you are, where you are or what device you used, and it is shared with no one.
Who makes greensound?
greensound is an independent project, made by one person.
Ten percent for real places
When greensound starts earning money, we intend to give 10% of gross revenue to conservation, starting with Ría Lagartos, a biosphere reserve on the north coast of Yucatán, and to publish every transfer on a public page. greensound has no revenue yet, so nothing has been given yet.