About SampleSwap.org

Whose website is this?
Canton Becker

Canton Becker has been maintaining this site by hand since 2001.

SampleSwap started in 2001 as a folder of audio samples hosted on a hotline server running on a computer in Canton's basement. In 2003, the collection was uploaded to the WWW for the first time. The entire collection has always been made available for free.

Over the past 23 years, visitors have uploaded their own creations and rare finds for consideration in the collection. Canton personally listens to every upload, and decides which ones should be folded into the master collection. Every sample is trimmed, normalized, renamed, and organized by hand.

Contact Information

You can reach Canton at canton@gmail.com, also on SoundCloud and cantonbecker.com.

Canton Becker has four albums of original electronic music you can find on Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, etc.

How can I get involved?

Send us samples! You can upload your own original samples for consideration in the collection.

Get social! Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

Add your music to the library! You can upload your own music to the creative commons licensed library of music on this site for peer review, remixing, or use on other people's projects.

Become a paying SuperStar! You can make a contribution to help offset the costs of running this free service. SuperStars also gain the ability to download the entire collection as a single ZIP file.

Most Frequently Asked Questions

In two words: Not necessarily. Our policy is to require that contributors only upload original sounds that they are giving up into the public domain. The curator, Canton Becker, makes a good effort to remove obviously copyrighted content. However there's no way to be sure that 100% of the sounds on this site are free and clear from any copyright restrictions. You'll have to use your own judgement.

Fun fact: SampleSwap has only received a single copyright complaint since 2001, which came from the lawyers for the Church of Scientology. We of course complied, removing these hilarious recordings of L. Ron Hubbard.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") provides a mechanism for notifying service providers of claims of unauthorized use of copyrighted materials. Under the DMCA, a claim must be sent to the service providers Designated Agent. If you believe in good faith that SAMPLESWAP.ORG should be notified of a possible online copyright infringement, please notify SAMPLESWAP.ORG's Designated Agent:

Canton Becker
207 Alamo Drive
Santa Fe, NM 87505
Phone: +1.505.501.8091
Email: canton@gmail.com

Please be aware that, in order to be effective, your notice of claim must comply with the detailed requirements set forth in the DMCA. You are encouraged to review 17 U.S.C. Sec. 512 (3) which requires:

  • A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner
  • Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of the infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled as well as information reasonably sufficient to permit SAMPLESWAP.ORG to locate the material
  • Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address
  • A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or law
  • A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed

UNDER FEDERAL LAW, IF YOU KNOWINGLY MISREPRESENT THAT ONLINE MATERIAL IS INFRINGING YOUR COPYRIGHT, YOU MAY BE SUBJECT TO CIVIL PENALTIES. THESE INCLUDE MONETARY DAMAGES, COURT COSTS, AND ATTORNEYS' FEES INCURRED BY US, BY ANY COPYRIGHT OWNER, OR BY ANY COPYRIGHT OWNER'S LICENSEE THAT IS INJURED AS A RESULT OF OUR RELYING UPON YOUR MISREPRESENTATION. YOU MAY ALSO BE SUBJECT TO CRIMINAL PROSECUTION FOR PERJURY.

ZIP files are compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and more.

When you download a .zip file and double-click on it, it should automatically expand to reveal all of the individual samples you marked for download.

More information about our ZIP files:

  • "Zipping" files is a way of taking a bunch of individual files and folders, and combining them into a single file. Math wizardry is used to further compress a zip file so that it actually takes up less space (and downloads faster) than the sum of its parts.
  • Zipped files usually end with ".zip". When you download a zipped file from Sampleswap, it will probably be named something like bob-04-01-12-00-00.zip
     
    Where 'bob' is your username, and the subsequent digits are the date & time you asked your basket of samples to be processed.
  • When you "unzip" your file, it will expand into a folder named "SAMPLESWAP", which will contain additional folders with all of the sounds you elected to download. The folder hierarchy will mirror how these files are stored on the sampleswap server, which may make it easier for you to organize the files on your own computer.

Click here for several good reasons to upload your music and make it available under a Creative Commons License so others can use it.

Your donations keep SampleSwap running on the most modern technology available...

Our Server
Photo by Anton Chiang
Our Human Readable Privacy Policy

Using SampleSwap requires you to register for an account using your email address. This is the only personally identifying information you are obligated to provide.

Once we have your email address, we promise never to sell it or give it away to anybody else.

As a participant, you will occasionally receive emails with free downloads, promotions, or advertisements. On every such email, you will be provided with a link to unsubscribe from these emails, reduce the frequency of your emails, or even delete your account altogether. We guarantee your 'right to be forgotten' as described in the EU General Data Protection Regulations. Click here to set your email preferences, unsubscribe, or delete your account.

If you elect to upload your original music to SampleSwap, that music will be made available for listening and downloading by the general public. Every registered user gets an 'artist' page which can also be viewed by the general public, and looks like this. Please note that if you elect to provide your location, website URL, and/or 'about' information, this information WILL be made public via your artist page along with any music you have uploaded.

Our website uses cookies and Google Analytics to gather aggregate (non-personally identifiable) statistics about how people use the site. We also keep a shorter record (approximately three months) that tracks each individual user's history of using the site for debugging (non-marketing) purposes. We also use third party services like Google Adwords to place advertisements on our site, and those services may set additional cookies for their own tracking and advertising purposes.

In short, SampleSwap is committed to collecting a minimum amount of your personal data, and to keeping that data safe. We always want to make it quick and easy for you to unsubscribe from our emails or delete your account altogether.

If you have questions about our practices or policies, you may send them to Canton Becker at canton@gmail.com or by addressing them to 207 Alamo Drive / Santa Fe, NM 87505 / USA.