Each recording on the website is accompanied by a spectrogram and location data on a map displaying geographical variation.
[4][5][6][7] It has also been the source of data for an annual challenge on automatic birdsong recognition ("BirdCLEF") since 2014, conducted as part of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum.
xeno-canto was launched on May 30, 2005, by Bob Planqué, a mathematical biologist at VU University Amsterdam, and Willem-Pier Vellinga, a physicist who now consults for a global materials technology company.
[1] xeno-canto has now become global, expanding its coverage to North America, Africa and Asia, and finally to Europe and Australasia.
[10] xeno-canto aims to utilize the capabilities of the internet to improve the general popularity, accessibility, and knowledge of bird sounds.