Sounds uploaded to Freesound are automatically processed then manually moderated before appearing publicly

When a sound is uploaded via the Freesound API (which requires OAuth2), it goes through two sequential steps before becoming publicly available and searchable. First, automatic processing converts/analyzes the file and is almost instantaneous. Second, a human moderation team manually reviews the sound, which can take some days. The API exposes a ‘Pending Uploads’ endpoint (also OAuth2) to track the status of uploaded sounds. So Freesound is not a real-time publication pipeline: a sound uploaded now will not necessarily be findable by API search within minutes or hours. Plan for a multi-day review lag when building upload-and-retrieve workflows.

Examples

Upload workflow: POST to the Upload Sound resource → sound enters a pending state → poll Pending Uploads → sound appears in search after moderation (hours to days).

Assessment

A script uploads 10 sounds to Freesound and immediately searches for them. Explain why the search returns zero results and what endpoint the script should poll instead.