Astrophysical sources of a stochastic gravitational-wave background

We review the spectral properties of stochastic backgrounds of astrophysical origin and discuss how they may differ from the primordial contribution by their statistical properties. We show that stochastic searches with the next generation of terrestrial interferometers could put interesting constraints on the physical properties of astrophysical populations, such as the ellipticity and magnetic field of magnetars, or the coalescence rate of compact binaries.