Smithsonian Global Sound is a virtual encyclopedia of the world's musical traditions, available through a website that offers digital downloads. Its purposes are to make diverse cultural expressions broadly accessible to the public in an educational way and also to nurture community-based musics and musicians by making individual recordings available at a reasonable price. Leading archives from around the world have entered into an agreement to provide high-quality sound recordings and interpretive commentary and to distribute royalties from downloads to the musicians.

The Center launched Global Sound in 2005. The site features tracks from the holdings of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the Archive and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology of the American Institute of Indian Studies (ARCE), in New Delhi, India, and The International Library of African Music (ILAM) in Grahamstown, South Africa. Downloads from Central Asia and other parts of the world will soon be added. Buyers can browse for music by genre, instrument, geographical location, and culture group, and enjoy Radio Global Sound. Most tracks have extensive descriptive notes and many educational features are in the works.

Global Sound is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum of the United States, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, the Rockefeller Foundation, The Allen Foundation for Music, and music archives throughout the world. It is designed to use contemporary technology to help communicate among the world's peoples the knowledge and artistry of traditional cultures.