Trust & clearance
How Selekt clears every sample
Most sample sites ask you to take their word for it. Selekt hands you the receipt. Every sample is sourced from a verified open license, screened against an industry database of 150M+ commercial recordings, and signed into a certificate you can open and verify yourself — no account required. Here's exactly how that works, and what “cleared” does and doesn't mean.
Source → Screen → Sign → Verify
1. Source from verified open licenses
Samples come from the Library of Congress / Citizen DJ, Freesound (CC0 and CC-BY contributors), Musopen, and pre-1926 public-domain recordings from the Internet Archive. The license is verified at the source — not asserted by an anonymous uploader — so the chain starts from something checkable.
2. Screen against 150M+ recordings
By default, every sample is fingerprinted at ingest and screened against an industry-standard database of 150M+ commercial recordings — the same class of audio recognition behind services like Shazam — and anything that matches a known copyrighted recording is rejected before it reaches the catalog. The one exception is material that's public domain by law (pre-1926 recordings and federally/institutionally guaranteed public-domain collections), which is cleared by that status itself — the strongest clearance there is, since the recording legally can't be copyrighted. That's not a shortcut around screening; it's a higher bar. The certificate records which path applied, so nothing un-screened ever hides behind “public domain.”
3. Sign it into a tamper-evident record
The source, license, attribution, and screening result are written into an audit record, signed with an Ed25519 key, and hash-chained to the record before it. Change any field and the signature and chain break — so the certificate is tamper-evident, not just a PDF that says “trust us.”
4. Publish a certificate anyone can verify
Each sample gets a public certificate (/cert/<id>) and a signed audit receipt (/audit/<id>) that open for anyone, with no login. You — or a label, publisher, sync supervisor, distributor, or client — can re-check the cryptographic signatures against our published public key in the browser or offline. Trust, but verify.
What's on a certificate
- Source archive — where the sample came from, with a link back to it.
- License — CC0, public domain, or CC-BY, plus any attribution required.
- Screening result — the fingerprint-screening verdict and when it ran.
- Certificate ID — a stable identifier for the record.
- Signed audit chain — Ed25519 signatures, hash-chained, with the public key to verify them.
- Formats — downloadable as a PDF, and available as signed JSON.
Verify it yourself
You don't have to take our word for any of this. Paste a scan or certificate ID into the public verifier, or open any sample's certificate and re-run the cryptographic check. It works without a Selekt account because the proof lives in the signature, not in our database.
What “cleared” means — honestly
We describe what we did, never what we promise. “Cleared” means a sample was sourced from a verified open license and screened, and that the record is signed and published. Fingerprint screening is extremely accurate but not infallible, and a certificate is evidence of the work we did — not a legal clearance opinion or a guarantee. You remain responsible for confirming rights before commercial release. That honesty is the point: real receipts beat empty promises.
Frequently asked questions
What does "cleared" mean on Selekt?
It means we did the work and kept the receipts: the sample comes from a verified CC0, public-domain, or CC-BY source; it was fingerprint-screened against an industry database of 150M+ commercial recordings at ingest; and the whole record is cryptographically signed and published as a certificate you can open and verify. "Cleared" describes what we screened and documented — it is screening evidence, not a legal clearance opinion, and you remain responsible for confirming rights before commercial release.
Can I verify a sample myself, without a Selekt account?
Yes. Every sample has a public certificate page (/cert/<id>) and a signed audit receipt (/audit/<id>) that load for anyone — no login. The records are signed with Ed25519 and hash-chained; you can re-check the signatures against our published public key right in your browser, or offline with a few lines of code. You don't have to trust us — you can verify the cryptography.
What is actually on a Selekt certificate?
The source archive and a link back to it, the license type (CC0 / public domain / CC-BY) and any attribution required, the audio-fingerprint screening result and when it ran, a certificate ID, and the signed audit chain that ties those facts together. It downloads as a PDF and is also available as signed JSON plus the public key.
Where do the samples come from?
Verified open sources: the Library of Congress / Citizen DJ, Freesound (CC0 and CC-BY contributors), Musopen, and pre-1926 public-domain recordings from the Internet Archive. Each license is verified at the source, not asserted by an anonymous uploader.
Why screen samples that are already public domain?
Because provenance can be messy upstream — an archive upload can be mislabeled, or a public-domain recording can contain a copyrighted element. Fingerprint screening against 150M+ commercial recordings (the same class of audio recognition used by Shazam-style services) catches those cases at ingest, and the result is recorded on the certificate so you can see it was checked.
See a real certificate
Browse the catalog, open any sample, and pull its certificate — source, license, screening result, and a signed chain you can verify. Producers and composers use that URL to show anyone exactly where a sound came from.
