We hope you are enjoying the new EmuBands app. We have introduced some new features – some will be
visible, for example the ability to split royalty earnings automatically between contributors, and some are
behind-the-scenes, for example the royalty section now operates much faster than before. We have also introduced a new pricing structure that will be fairer and will hopefully save you money. All of these features are designed to give you a much better user experience. We will be introducing more new features in the near future so keep checking back for these.
As a result of these changes and because of the changing nature of the industry, we have had to update our Terms & Conditions. You can view the old version here, and you can view the new version here, but we thought it would be helpful if we outlined the main updates so you can see clearly what has changed.
There are a few minor changes, such as changing the term ‘Band Representative’ to ‘Client Representative’ –. Another example is we’ve changed the definition of the term ‘Order Confirmation’ from “means the email
acceptance sent by EmuBands following receipt of the Client’s Order” to “means the payment receipt issued by EmuBands by e-mail following the Client’s payment for an Order”. These changes are purely administrative and are updated to reflect the way we do things. If you spot any minor changes that you’d like more information on, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
The more meaningful changes, however, we feel are worth explaining:
Material Breach – we have added a definition of what we consider to be behaviour so unacceptable that it allows us to terminate the agreement with you should you carry out of any of these actions. We understand that the overwhelming majority of our artists and rightsholders would never even need to consider this, but unfortunately over the last few years we have had some incidents that have led us to need to update and expand this definition. We have a duty to protect all our staff from abusive and unacceptable behaviour, and we have a duty to protect ourselves and our valued DSP partners from fraudulent and damaging activity. Some examples are; committing fraud to buy our services (i.e. using someone else’s payment details to make payments to us), carrying out what is called ‘artificial manipulation of streams’ – i.e. engaging a third party to play your recordings to generate royalties (or attempting this yourself, for example by playing your own music on repeat), infringing on someone else’s copyrights, or generally being abusive to any member of our team.
4.1.7 We’ve added the text “but excluding the Rightsholder’s Intellectual Property” to clarify that EmuBands
never owns that. This clause relates to things like the content we post to the website (e.g. news articles) or the underlying code of the website. It doesn’t refer to your intellectual property – e.g. your recordings or your
artwork.
5.6 / 5.7 / 5.8 These have been updated to clarify that it is your responsibility to make sure you’ve got all
necessary permissions in place to release your material via EmuBands – this can mean for example clearing any samples you’ve used or getting permission to use someone else’s photograph in your artwork, and many other scenarios. It is your responsibility to make sure that everyone involved in the release gets paid – for example if you’ve agreed a deal to share royalties with someone from whom you’ve licensed a sample. EmuBands isn’t responsible for this and if anyone comes to us with a claim for something like this, that it’s not up to us to settle the claim, this is solely your responsibility. Of course, we have a team of experts who can help advise on any issues you might be facing on copyright matters, and, where you have agreed to share revenue with anyone, that is a perfectly good reason to take advantage of our new payment splitting feature.
9.1 We have added some wording that means in a case where you have committed a Material Breach (see
above) where a third-party (i.e. someone other than you) is due a share of (or all of) your royalty earnings, then we are permitted under these Terms and Conditions to pay them directly where this may be deemed
appropriate.
9.2 We’ve slightly extended the amount of time before we’ll report royalties to you. This is due to the fact that the nature and scope of royalty reporting is getting more complex over time, and sometimes it can take a little bit longer to process some of the reports we receive. But don’t worry – the ‘best endeavours’ text means exactly how it sounds – we’re working our best to get the royalties to you as quickly as we can.
9.5 We have added this clause to clarify that for some customers, depending on where you are based, we may have to deduct tax from your royalties. This is a regulatory requirement, not something that EmuBands has insisted upon…believe us! Most countries around the world have an agreement in place with the United
Kingdom which, ultimately, means that we won’t have to deduct any tax but if you’re based in a country where no agreement exists, then unfortunately, 20% of your royalties are paid as tax in the United Kingdom (we collect these and pay them to the UK tax authorities for you – you won’t need to make the payments yourself). The UK Government has a list of countries with which it does have a treaty in place, so if your country is not on this list then unfortunately this tax will apply to you: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tax- treaties.
9.7 To get your royalties to you, we previously used a combination of direct bank payments (in the UK), or via Wise (formerly called Transferwise) if you’re outside the UK, and also via PayPal. Bank payments in the UK were subject to a £1 admin fee. The good news is we’ve stopped these admin fees, and that payments even to the UK are now made via Wise. Wise will, however, charge a small deduction – if you’re in the UK, it’s cheaper than before, and if you’re outside the UK, it’s the same as before. If we can’t make a payment to you via Wise (for example, if your local currency isn’t yet supported by Wise), then we can still use PayPal to get you your money. In extreme circumstances, we can still make payments to you by bank transfer manually, but these will be subject to the same £1 charge as before if payment is being made to the UK, or if it’s outside the UK, we’ll let you know the charges before we make the payment.
10.2 This clarifies what will happens if you commit a Material Breach (as outlined earlier) – after fourteen days we will issue takedowns for your releases to all DSPs. This will give you time to find a replacement service, but we will not be responsible for any costs or any loss of earnings as a result.
10.5 / 10.5.1 We have added more wording to clarify more examples of what we consider to be unacceptable behaviour and would lead to us terminate our agreement – immediately and without refund. Things like artificial manipulation of streams and rude or offensive behaviours are included – and while we know that the overwhelming majority of artists and rightsholders we work with are good people, none of our team deserve abuse for doing their job and this clause allows us to stop working with anyone who behaves in such an unacceptable manner.
10.7 This clause clarifies that the agreement carries on until you tell us to remove your releases, which you can do at any time. If you want to keep some releases live but remove others, then that’s fine – the agreement carries on. If you opt for one of our subscriptions, you’ll receive those additional services for as long as you have a subscription. If you cancel it early, you’ll still get access to those services until what would have been your renewal date. If you cancel a subscription, your releases will still stay live on DSPs, because the distribution of your release is covered by the one-off fee which means your release stays live until you tell us to take it down (unless, of course, you commit one of the acts under a material breach which means that we would terminate the agreement). Indeed, even after you have told us to remove all of your releases, the agreement still needs to carry on for as long as it takes for all DSPs to report all of your royalties – you’ll still be able to log in and get the royalties you’re owed.
12.9 We’ve added wording to this clause to clarify that if DSPs change the way they calculate how royalties are divided (an example being if a DSP switched to what’s known as user-centric payouts), then that is their decision – we will carry on reporting royalties to you as we’re instructed to do so. We also have no control over, or responsibility for, any country changing the way publishing royalties are calculated or paid, but obviously we’ll inform you of any such changes and do our best to help you whatever happens.
14 / 14.1 / 14.2 / 14.3 / 14.4 / 14.5 / 14.6 This is some more wording about artificial manipulation of streams,
and/or the use of services that try to generate streams by dishonest means. If you do this, then either DSPs can make sure those streams earn no royalties, or, after the fact, they can issue adjustment reports (in practice, you will be ‘refunding’ the royalties to them). If this happens and your royalties balance goes below zero, then we can reclaim this money from you. If any DSP applies any form of financial penalty for such behaviour, then we will also reclaim this from your royalties – and if your balance drops below zero, you will owe us that amount and we will seek to reclaim this by official means if necessary.
15.1 If we suspect that you have been carrying out artificial manipulation of streams (either by us discovering suspicious behaviour, or by a DSP informing us of it), or of infringing someone else’s copyright(s), then we will place a block on royalties being paid to you while we investigate (this can take up to six months). If we find any such activity has taken place, then obviously we will issue takedowns for all of your releases (without refund), and we will apply, from that date, a six-month block on royalty payments being made to you. This is to protect us from any future adjustments being made that would end up in your balance being below zero. In short – just don’t carry out this behaviour, it’s not worth it!
15.2 Some artists in the past have managed, dishonestly, to gain refunds from a payment provider even after we’ve carried out all work that we’ve promised. If this happens, we will reclaim any charges from your royalties balance, and if this takes your balance to below zero, then you owe us this amount and we will seek to reclaim this by official means if necessary.
15.3 If you enter (three times or more), incorrect details when requesting royalty payments and it results in the payments being returned to us, then we can apply a £10 charge from the third occurrence and each time after that. It takes time to process these payment reversals. We understand that honest mistakes can happen, though, which is why we don’t do this the first two times it happens. But please, be careful when entering your payment details – it’s better for both you and for us if the royalty payments get to you first time.
15.4 We’ve partnered with a third-party service called Partnerize which means they can ‘monetize’ smart links of your releases to specific DSPs. We’ll split any money generated by this with you on a 50/50 basis.
15.5 / 15.6 We’ve stopped the 20% Bulk Discounts programme; if you’ve got any credit left over then we’ve
automatically converted this to a ‘voucher’, which will last for five years. The good news is that you can convert some of your royalties into a ‘voucher’ to pay for distribution, and we’ll top up the value of your voucher by 25% (although we reserve the right to withdraw the top-up offer in future, so it’s not specifically mentioned here).
15.7 We’ve also stopped the ‘Refer & Earn’ and commission schemes. Any outstanding balances due have been converted into ‘vouchers’, again with a five-year expiry date.
15.8 If we pitch your release to DSPs for inclusion in playlists and features, while we hope to get you the results you want, we can never guarantee this. If we’re unsuccessful, unfortunately we don’t get any feedback from DSPs on why so please don’t chase us for feedback.
15.9 Sometimes a DSP might make a slight alteration to the metadata for your release – for example, the casing of your release and track titles. If this happens, it’s because of that DSP’s policies and unfortunately, it’s outwith our control when this happens. This will not affect any of the Services that we offer you.
Some of these changes may appear to be quite strict – but we hope that you can understand why we have had to introduce them where necessary. If, however, you feel that you don’t want to continue working with us as a result of these changes, that’s fine – just let us know and we’ll issue takedowns for your release(s). We do hope you will want to continue working with us, however, and if you have any questions regarding any of these updates, please just get in touch.