A new coalition, the Professional Sound Alliance, launched on 24 September to argue that sound effects and sound design deserve the kind of protection music and voice already have. Its founders include Pro Sound Effects chief Douglas Price, Boom Library CEO Pierre Langer, Sound Ideas' Craig Nimens, re-recording mixer and former Cinema Audio Society president Karol Urban, and two-time Oscar-winning sound editor Mark Mangini, whose credits include Dune and Mad Max: Fury Road.
The group names two problems. What it calls data piracy is the feeding of professional sound libraries into commercial AI models without permission or payment; sync piracy is the older habit of using library sounds in film, TV and games without a proper licence, such as files left on a company server after a freelancer's job ends. It defines professional sound as everything in a production that is neither music nor dialogue, from footsteps to explosions.
The launch is modest in form: a petition and a seal supporters can display, with no officers, no bargaining power and, the Alliance told MBW, no plan to sue or to set licensing standards. It pitches sound as the unprotected third pillar of audio, pointing to the RIAA for music and SAG-AFTRA for voice, though MBW notes those bodies do quite different jobs and that sound already has craft societies, the CAS and MPSE, which have campaigned for recognition rather than rights.
The founders' own business complicates the picture. Pro Sound Effects sells a rights-cleared training set of about 1.27 million sounds and lists Google, Sony AI and Dolby among its clients, and Sony AI says it trained a private version of its sound-effects model Woosh on licensed libraries including Pro Sound Effects and Boom. The company says its complaint targets unauthorised scraping, not generative AI as such.
MBW sets the move beside the record industry's fights with Suno and Udio, where leaked Suno code reportedly listed Freesound and the Pond5 stock library among training sources, and beside Stability AI's open Small SFX model, trained on licensed and Creative Commons audio. Sound professionals, toolmakers and studios are invited to sign on through the Alliance's website.
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