Freesound vs Jamendo

Freesound's APIv2 lets apps browse, search, and retrieve Freesound's library of user-uploaded sound clips — with content-based similarity search and audio-analysis features on top of plain metadata search — plus upload, comment, rate, and bookmark actions for authenticated users. It supports both token-based key auth and full OAuth2, defaults to JSON responses (XML and YAML are available but untested by the maintainers), and access is free for registered developers. The older APIv1 has reached end-of-life and is no longer available.

Jamendo's API serves a catalog of roughly half a million independently released, Creative-Commons-licensed tracks, with over 20 read methods covering search, radios, and discovery plus write methods for managing a signed-in user's library. Reading the catalog only needs a free client_id issued on signup — full OAuth2 is reserved for the endpoints that act on a specific user's account — and responses can be requested as JSON, pretty-printed JSON, or XML. There's no published pricing tier for API access; it's free to use under Jamendo's terms.