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CC0, CC BY and Public Domain Sounds Explained

Last updated 2026-09-16

Every sound on ViralMemesFX shows a licence line on its page. Most creators skim past it, then get nervous when a video is monetised or a client asks whether the audio is cleared. This guide explains the handful of labels you will see, in plain terms, and what each one means for a TikTok, a stream, a game or a paid project.

Public domain

A public-domain sound has no copyright at all, either because the copyright expired or because it never applied. You can use it for anything, commercial or not, with no credit and no permission. Old field recordings, archival effects and government-produced audio often fall here. There is no licence to break because there is no licence.

CC0

CC0 is the Creative Commons “no rights reserved” dedication. The author has given up all rights they can, which puts the work as close to public domain as the law allows. Practically, CC0 works the same way: use it anywhere, in anything, sell it, remix it, and you do not have to credit anyone. Most of the free sound-effect packs in our library, including the Kenney game-audio collections, are CC0. If you are making a commercial game or a client video and want zero paperwork, filter for CC0 and public-domain sounds.

CC BY

CC BY means “attribution required”. You can use the sound commercially, edit it, and combine it with other work, but you must credit the author. The sound page shows the author’s name and a source link, which is what a credit needs. Where to put it depends on the platform:

Forgetting the credit is a licence breach, though in practice authors almost always accept a fix once asked.

CC BY-SA

The “share-alike” version adds one condition: if you make a derivative work, you must release it under the same licence. For a sound effect dropped into a video, most people treat the video as a larger work rather than a derivative of the sound, but the line is fuzzy and lawyers disagree. If your project cannot be released under a share-alike licence, choose a CC0 or CC BY sound instead. Our library keeps share-alike clips to a minimum for that reason.

Licences you will not see here

Non-commercial (NC) and no-derivatives (ND) licences are not accepted in our library, because almost any real use, from a monetised video to a trimmed clip, would break them. Nor do we host audio owned by a studio, a label or a game publisher. A “famous movie quote” or a ten-second song hook has a copyright owner who did not agree to any of this, and that is the audio that gets creators claimed and sites taken down.

Community uploads

Uploads on ViralMemesFX are reviewed before they go live and are published for free use by anyone. Uploaders confirm they made the recording or have the right to share it. If you spot a clip that belongs to someone else, the Report button on the sound page goes straight to a human, and rights holders can use the DMCA page for formal takedowns.

What “commercial use” means

Monetised YouTube videos, sponsored TikToks, Twitch streams with subscriptions, paid client work, games you sell and apps with ads all count as commercial use. Public domain, CC0 and CC BY all allow it. The only difference among them is whether you need to credit the author.

Automated systems sometimes match free-licence audio to a commercial track that used the same sample, or to another creator who uploaded the same CC0 clip first. If that happens:

  1. Do not delete the video. Open the claim and choose to dispute it.
  2. State that the audio is a public-domain or CC0 recording and paste the source link from the sound page.
  3. Keep a screenshot of the sound page showing the licence line, in case the dispute escalates.

Most of these claims are released within days once the licence is shown. Keeping a note of where each sound came from is the single habit that makes this painless, and it is why we put the author, source and licence on every sound page instead of in a footnote.

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