Lonofi | FAQ

Lonofi Home ? What the heck is this ?

What a great question !

Lonofi Home is a web app enabling you to listen to, to create and to share endless sound atmosphere generated by algorithm.

Whether you want to immerse yourself in a tropical forest or in a ancient China tea shop, you are bound to find the atmosphere that will fit your mood.

And if it’s not there, create it!

Listen to soundscape! But, why would I do that?

Excellent second question!

Many already listen to soundscape, whether to relax, to focus, or just to for leisure. If you haven’t tried it yet, now is the time!

Why should I listen to Lonofi? Well, first of all, to surround yourself with a nice sound environment

Do you like to work in unfamiliar places, in a badly set-up room, with poor lighting and decoration that doesn’t fit you?

The effect is exactly the same for sound environment.

Whether you are reading, working, playing, cooking, exercising or chilling. Or even at diner with friends! The sounds surrounding you will make a difference.

So why not try it out and take back control over your environment by playing the scenes you like. Those fitting your mood, or simply those sparking your interest.

But, am I supposed to ditch my Spotify and Youtube playlists to listen only to sound environments?

On the contrary! Music and soundscape go hand in hand.

A piece of Jazz, or folk guitar does marvel with a campfire in the background. Tense music is only reinforced by the mysterious and unsettling sounds of a rainforest.

These combinations are only example of all the synergies between music and sound environments. Rather than limiting your musical experience, Lonofi will make it richer.

At what development stage are you?

Lonofi home is currently in beta testing phase. Basically, we are still testing and developing our app. But we think the current version is stable enough to be shared with the public.

Moreover, this beta testing phase is mostly here to guide our development based on the feedback we receive from you and other users.

Do not hesitate to contact us to give us your feedback and your recommandations.

Some functions are missing or aren’t working properly!

Lonofi Home being still in testing phase, you may encounter a few bugs here and there while you use the app. We are terribly sorry about that and we are doing the best we can to fix it.

But actually, we are launching our app in beta testing phase because we want you to encounter problems and to report them back to us.

If you see any bugs or think about interesting functionalites to implement to improve our app, please do let us know using the feedback button in the app or the contact us form.

Your comments, whether positive or negative, are highly precious to us and we thank you in advance for them.

Do I need to register to use the platform?

Well, you don’t have to… But you really should!

You can listen to Lonofi’s scenes without registering on the platform.

However, all other features of the app are only available to registered users. You can only save your favorites scenes, personalise existing scenes, create new ones, and use many more cool functionalities if you have an account on the platform.

Lastly, the listening time is limited for non registered users.

Is Lonofi Free?

Indeed it is! Our beta version is entirely free and doesn’t even have advertising!

At some point we will offer a premium subscription for users wanting to use advanced features.

But the features you have been enjoying in the current version of the app will remain free for the foreseeable future. The premium features will focus on the mobile version, advanced creation options and sharing options.

The cherry on top of the Sunday:

We will never force you to listen to advertising to use our service.

That’s great, but wait a minute… How do you guys make a living?

Well, right now, like many startups, we are merely surviving.

Eventually we will become profitable thanks to special offers targeted to professional sound designers and retail business. We also expect our premium subscription to make us profitable in the long run. However, currently, we rely only on our own money and the support of our users.

I see… Can I help you?

Absolutely.

Lonofi Home is entirely free.

However our servers and the bandwidth we need to make our service work both have a cost. And the more people use our services, the higher the cost .

I you’d like to keep the service alive and free for anyone to use, don’t hesitate to help us! 😉

You can donate directly via Paypal or pledge to support us on our Patron page.

And there are many other way you can help us. Simply telling other about our service, providing us with constructive feedback, and following us on social networks is already a huge help, and we highly appreciate it .

Can I create my own scenes? Really! How does it work?

Yes, Lonofi Home allows you to listen to scenes created by others, but also to create your own!

Our basic construction block is called a track. A track is a simulation that will generate a particular kind of sound over an endless timespan. For instance the track “lion roaring” is made of dozens of different recordings of roars and will generate the sound of a lion roaring for hours.

Every track has its own parameters so you can control the simulation (volume, reverb, richness, repetition...).

With our creation mode, you can design your own scenes by combining tracks from our library and choosing your own set of parameters.

Do i have intellectual property on the scene I create?

You don’t.

As specified in our General Terms and Condition, all the scenes created on the Lonofi Home app belong to Lonofi. When using our services, you automatically acknowledge this.

Please note the two following points

If you download an extract of our scenes, it will be delivered to you under CC-BY licensing. Under the terms of this licence agreement, you can use the segment downloaded in your own projects, whether for commercial purposes or not. It’s free, and you don’t even need to ask our authorisation. The only thing you need to do is to quote Lonofi as your source.

On the app, you are identified as the composer of your scene. Your name will appear in the quotation of downloaded extract used outside of the platform. If you don’t want your name to appear in these quotations you can set it up in the user settings *Link*.

But, what if i want to use your app to create my own soundscapes and have the intellectual property over them. Is that possible?

Unfortunately this isn’t possible just yet.

However ...

We are currently working on a version of Lonofi specifically designed for businesses and sound designers. Lonofi pro (as we call this service) will offer advanced creation features - notably the possibility to create your own tracks - and users will have intellectual property over the scenes they create with it.

If you are interested by this offer, contact us here and we will reach out to you.

However, this service is still being developed, and we cannot yet guarantee a release date for it.

Lonofi is nice but there are only few tracks available in the library...

We are working day and night to provide you with a rich and varied content; you can expect to see a lot more coming soon!

I do enjoy creating scenes but i would like to create my own tracks, can i do it?

Unfortunately Lonofi Home doesn’t allow you to create tracks. Only to combine them to create scenes.

However...

We realise that this may restrain the creativity of some users. If you want to have access to more powerful and detailed creation options, we would be willing to give you a free access to our internal creation tools to enable you to create your own tracks..

If you are interested please contact us here.

Be aware of the following points though

Access requests to our internal tools will be processed on a case by case basis by our team.

Access conditions to this tools will be agreed at the convenience of Lonofi.

You will need to sign new General Terms and Conditions.

We will respond to your request when we can without time constraint.

Our decision to grant access will entirely be at our own discretion, without obligation to justify it.

Beware, if our internal tools are more powerful and detailed than the platform, they also require more time to master.

Where do the sounds used in your scene come from?

The vast majority of the recordings we use to create our tracks come from Freesound (freesound.org), without which, we must concede, this project wouldn’t be here today.

The remaining sounds come from individual third party providers, or have been recorded by our team.

We are dedicated to acknowledging the contribution of all our recordings suppliers. In each scene, you have access to the complete list of recordings used to generate it. For each recording we disclose the name of the contributor and, if available, the link to the page where you can find it.

What licencing agreement protects the recordings used by Lonofi ?

All the recordings we use are either under Creative Commons CC0 and CC-BY, or under other “royalty-free” licences enabling us to use this recordings on our platform.

Our platform doesn’t include any sound that would make users liable to any kind of charge or royalty to use it and listen to it.

I have recordings of my own, would you be interested ?

Absolutely !

We are always looking for new sounds to provide richer and more varied content to our users.

If you own recordings et you would be willing to share it, please contact us here

Please note that we will only accept recordings under the following conditions

You must own the rights to the recordings, or be the legal represent of the owner.

The recording must be made of separated sound events. As much as possible, we would like them to be isolated from surrounding noise or other sounds. We aren’t really interested in recordings of soundscapes made of multiple sounds playing at the same time.

We will only accept recordings under the following licence agreements

CC0, CC-BY, or any kind of “Royalty-Free” licence that will explicitly enable us to use it on the Lonofi app and wouldn’t make users liable to any kind of charge or royalty to use it and / or listen to it.

Can i download soundscape and use them in personal projects, with or without commercial aim?

Very soon 😉

May I use Lonofi Home to stream sound environments in my shop, cabinet or in a public location ?

Absolutely not.

Lonofi Home is made to only be used in a non-commercial and private framework. It is strictly forbidden to use in a commercial framework, whether public or not.

However ...

We are currently working on a commercial version of Lonofi Home. It will be specifically dedicated to streaming sound environment in outlets, bars, restaurants, shops, practices, and other public places.

In order to offer a service tailored to cater to every need, we are currently looking for professionals willing test this new offer.

If you are interested to test this, please contact us and help us adapt Lonofi to a commercial usage.

Lonofi doesn’t seem supported by my browser ?

Currently Lonofi Home only works on the latest version of FireFox and Google Chrome.

Lonofi will soon be compatible with Safari and Edge. You may need to wait a bit longer for other browsers...

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