Terms for services

Every service here is quoted one job at a time. You tell us what you need, we come back with a price and a timeline, and nothing is charged and no work begins until you have accepted both. An enquiry commits you to nothing.

What you are buying is permission to use a recording we own, for the use you described. The licence names you, the song, where it may appear and for how long. Use it somewhere the licence doesn't cover and that use isn't licensed — come back and we will extend it.

Licences are non-exclusive unless we have written that they aren't: the same song may be licensed to somebody else. If you need it to be yours alone, say so and we will quote for that instead.

We keep the copyright. Licensing is not a sale, and nothing here transfers ownership of a recording.

Non-exclusive means you may record on it and release that, and so may other people on the same beat. It stays on sale.

Exclusive means we take it off sale permanently and will not license it again. We will say that in writing, with the date. Anyone who bought a non-exclusive licence before that date keeps it — we cannot withdraw a licence already granted, and you should assume earlier releases exist.

Your recording stays yours throughout. We are doing work on it, not acquiring it, and nothing about sending us a file gives us a share of it.

For distribution we deliver to the stores on your behalf and take no share of your masters or your royalties. You are responsible for having the rights to everything in what you send — including samples, features and artwork — and for the metadata being true.

Stores accept or reject releases on their own terms and their own timetable. We will tell you what a rejection says and resubmit where it can be fixed, but we cannot promise any particular store will take a release, or when.

Radio and TV imaging, and music for a venue, run month to month. Each month covers the pieces described in your agreement; unused work does not roll into the next month unless we have said it does.

Either of us can end it with 30 days' notice, in writing. Anything already delivered and paid for stays yours to keep using under the licence it was delivered under — ending the contract stops new work, it does not revoke the old.

For venue music, the public-performance licence we give you covers the premises named in the agreement and lasts as long as the contract does. It covers our music only; anything else you play is between you and whoever owns it.

Before work begins, in full. Once work has begun, we refund the part not yet done — if we have mixed one of three tracks, the other two come back to you.

Where we have already delivered something made to your brief, it is not refundable, because it cannot be un-made or resold. That is the same rule as a custom song, and it is why we quote and agree before starting rather than after.

If we cannot do the job, or we are late by enough that it has stopped being useful to you, you get your money back. We would rather turn a job down than take it badly.

Work we would be ashamed of: anything hateful, anything sexual involving minors, anything meant to deceive people about who is speaking or singing, and anything we would be helping somebody pass off as their own when it is not.

We also will not clone a real person's voice without their written permission, whoever is asking.

These terms are governed by the law of Cameroon. That does not take away rights you have where you live: if you are buying as a consumer somewhere whose law gives you protections that cannot be signed away, you keep them.

dwin@vibebanger.com — or through the form on any service page.