A soundmap is a form of locative media

Locative media

Locative media or Location-based media are media of communication functionally bound to a location. The physical implementation of locative media however is not bound to the same location to which the content refers....

 that links a place and its sonic representations. It is an example of the personalized map content described alternately as web mapping

Web mapping

Web mapping is the process of designing, implementing, generating and delivering maps on the World Wide Web and its product. While web mapping primarily deals with technological issues, web cartography additionally studies theoretic aspects: the use of web maps, the evaluation and optimization of...

 and neogeography

Neogeography

Neogeography literally means "new geography" , and is commonly applied to the usage of geographical techniques and tools used for personal and community activities or for utilization by a non-expert group of users...

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Soundmaps convey the soundscape

Soundscape

A soundscape is a sound or combination of sounds that forms or arises from an immersive environment. The study of soundscape is the subject of acoustic ecology...

of a place, often by organizing multiple soundmarks or "community sound[s] which is unique, or possesses qualities which make it specially regarded or noticed by the people in that community" in a web-based map.

Our sense of hearing, which has until recently been underappreciated as a means of representing data, can be used to expand the representational repertoire of cartographic design....Sound, in other words, provides us with more choices for representing data and phenomena and thus more ways in which to explore and understand the complex physical and human worlds we inhabit.

—John Krygier, Making Maps with Sound