From Orfium's Terms of Service, just for comparison:
You hereby grant (and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant) to Company an irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free and fully paid, worldwide license to reproduce, distribute, publicly display and perform, prepare derivative works of, incorporate into other works, and otherwise use and exploit your User Content, and to grant sublicenses of the foregoing rights
Wow, that sounds familiar.
From Bandcamp's Terms of Service:
Each Artist uploading Music to the Service grants Company and its authorized sublicensees and distributors, if any, the worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, right and license to: (i) reproduce, distribute, publicly perform (including on a through-to-the-audience basis and by means of a digital audio transmission), publicly display, create derivate works of, communicate to the public, synchronize and otherwise exploit (collectively, “Exploit”) (1) the Artist’s Music
These all of course go on to limit the scope of these licenses to the use of the platform itself. As does Soundcloud.
Maybe this grey-loss of IP ownership does not worry some, but this word "BEWARE" describes such things well for those it does worry.FWIW, I find the title of this thread to be a bit over-the-top - could it be edited?
Any Content other than Your Content is the property of the relevant Uploader, and is or may be subject to copyright, trademark rights or other intellectual property or proprietary rights. Such Content may not be downloaded, reproduced, distributed, transmitted, re-uploaded, republished, displayed, sold, licensed, made available or otherwise communicated to the public or exploited for any purposes except via the features of the Platform from time to time and within the parameters set by the Uploader on the Platform or with the express written consent of the Uploader. Where you repost another user’s Content, or include another user’s Content in a playlist or station or where you listen to another user’s Content offline, you acquire no ownership rights whatsoever in that Content. Subject to the rights expressly granted in this section, all rights in Content are reserved to the relevant Uploader.
The point of my original post is that the agreement is written in a way that easily could lead to confusion -- bad confusion -- that could cause misunderstandings and disputes.
1. It's over-long,
2. You have to read all of it to understand any of it, and
3. I don't think it's good form for an online agreement like this to be drafted with paragraphs deep in the agreement that alter significantly terms that otherwise seem clear at the beginning.
I think this is fatally poor drafting for an agreement for a broad audience. I am familiar with this style -- my very first film had an agreement written in a similar way. I also accept that legal agreements do have to be read in their entirety to be complete. For this purpose, however, I think it's a bad choice and have heard it lead to problems.
Another document that has to be read in its entirety -- but rarely is -- is the prospectus that comes with a stock or bond offering. Investors don't read prospectuses cover to cover either, and that leads to problems, so the SEC introduced a prospectus summary. Possibly such a summary could help with this agreement, but until there is one and it can be read and clearly absorbed in a few minutes, I stand by my objections.
Kind regards,
John
To be honest I don't know why anyone puts their music in full tracks online with no watermark at all...especially not on a huge site like soundcloud. Soundcloud is China's free music library to score all their tv and movies.
So what is your take on this one? People shouldn't upload their finished works for free online?
And... Soundcloud is better or that little website no one knows about?
Not that I will miss my Soundcloud account. If I were the producer of much content, I would still much rather host it myself, where I have the control, and don't need to worry about a third party suddenly changing the terms of service on me.