FREE
MEDIA
PEDIA —
KNOW ALL.
The living encyclopedia of free culture: millions of openly licensed photos, videos, sounds, books and maps — catalogued, verified and free to reuse forever. No paywalls. No tracking. Just knowledge.
Verified license • 4k quality
Images & photos
CC BY / CC BY-SA / PD
Audio & music
Field recordings to symphonies
Video & film
Documentaries, archives
Texts & books
Scanned & transcribed
We catalogue freedom itself.
FreeMediPedia started in 2012 as a weekend wiki of three librarians. Today it is the largest human-curated index of freely licensed media — every file checked for license, source and reusability.
We believe culture should not expire behind paywalls. From NASA space photos to 1920s jazz, from bird calls in Amazonia to medieval manuscripts — if it is free, we document it, preserve it and teach you how to reuse it legally in your film, school, startup or meme.
Every upload is checked by 2 reviewers for copyright traps.
Plain-English guides for CC BY, SA, NC, ND and public domain.
Mirrored in 7 archives. Hash-signed. Future-proof.
One click attribution generator for YouTube, blogs, books.
From 300 files
to a planetary library
2012 — first 300 scans. 2016 — 500K files. 2021 — video & audio labs. 2025 — AI provenance tags to fight license laundering. Read the full timeline in our newsroom.
- ✅ 2018 — Public Domain Calculator launched
- ✅ 2022 — 2 millionth file: Apollo restoration
- ✅ 2024 — Classrooms program in 40 countries
- ✅ 2026 — Decentralized mirrors + offline Kiwix packs
of free media
Each collection has curators, quality bars and reuse playbooks. Pick your rabbit hole.
From microscopy to astrophotography. Master attribution, RAW sources and model releases.
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Silent classics, Prelinger archives, open documentaries and stock B-roll you can monetize.
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CC music, field recordings, NASA sounds, LibriVox audiobooks. Sample packs included.
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Manuscripts, out-of-copyright books, open textbooks. Transcribed and searchable.
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CC BY, BY-SA, BY-NC, public domain marks, fair use vs free — with checklists.
LEARN →
Checksums, mirrors, offline packs, AI provenance. How we keep bits alive for 100 years.
JOIN →You own a camera? A scanner? A microphone? You already own the future archive. 68% of our files came from people like you.
Shoot your city, digitize family tapes, record nature. Must be your work or public domain.
We recommend CC BY-SA 4.0. Our wizard explains commercial use in 30 seconds.
Add title, date, location, categories. Good metadata = 10x more reuse.
Two curators verify. Featured files hit homepage and newsletters.
the commons
License changes, new drops, preservation wins and how-tos. Updated daily by editors.
News archive is syncing. Check back soon — or explore about the project.
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