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Sound effects

This guide will walk you through the steps to build a sound effect browsing UI, fetch available categories and play/download a sound effect.

Content Access: All partners have access to sound effects, and they are all available to download.

About sound effect metadata: Sound effect responses include basic information (id, title, length, added, images). Client-side filtering of results can only be done using the title or length fields.

List sound effect collections​

Use the sound effect collections endpoint to display curated groups of sound effects in your application.

Collections are managed via the developer portal: an admin imports an Epidemic Sound playlist into a collection, and only Active collections are returned through this endpoint.

Each collection includes id, name, and the first 20 sound effects embedded in the response — regardless of how many the collection actually contains. Use the availableSoundEffects field to know the true total count.

Performance optimization

When building a collection browser, use excludeField=soundEffects to fetch only collection metadata — id, name, and availableSoundEffects — without loading the embedded sound effects. Once a user selects a collection, fetch its full contents using the collection details endpoint, which supports limit and offset for pagination.

List sound effect categories​

The sound effects categories endpoint returns category metadata for browsing the sound effects catalog.

Understanding the category hierarchy:

Sound effects are organized in a parent-child hierarchy. Only leaf categories (categories without children) contain actual sound effects. Parent categories serve as grouping containers.

  • Some categories have cover art that you can display in your interface
  • Use the type parameter with value featured to only show categories curated by our team (default is all)
  • The categories endpoint returns only metadata - to get the actual sound effects, use the sound effect details endpoint

Note: Browsing categories and searching are mutually exclusive. When a user enters a search term, disable category browsing, and vice versa.

List the sound effects within a category​

Use the sound effect details endpoint to display all sound effects within a specific category.

Remember that only leaf categories (those without children) will contain sound effects.

Search for Sound effects​

Use the sound effects search endpoint to allow users to search within the sound effects library.

Sorting and pagination:

  • Use sort to order results: best-match, newest, popular, length, or title
  • Use order to specify direction: asc or desc
  • Pagination: default limit is 50, maximum is 60 per request

For best-match (relevance), use order=desc so the best-matching sound effects appear first—same as music search. For other sorts (newest, popular, length, title), asc/desc behave as usual (e.g. newest + desc = newest first).

Pagination works the same way as music search—the response includes pagination and links objects. Use links.next to fetch the next page, or increment offset by limit in your next request.

Best practices:

  • When using sort best-match, use order=desc so best matches appear first
  • Disable category browsing when search is active

Play or download a sound effect​

Use the download sound effect endpoint to play or download a specific sound effect.

Important considerations:

Since most sound effects have small file sizes, we do not offer a separate streaming endpoint. However, some ambient sounds can be longer than 3 minutes, which may take time to download.

Recommended implementation:

  • Show a loading spinner or progress indicator while the file downloads
  • This provides better user experience, especially for longer ambient sound files