All the stuff we create is either:

• released — a finished work we have officially released;
• unreleased — something that’s unfinished, and not officially released or licensed yet); or,
• commissioned — something that someone has specifically paid us to create for them.

Released works

If a work (piece of music, or its accompanying album art) is on our artists’ Spotify or Bandcamp, it’s released.

We hold the copyright¹. But don’t worry, we’re cool. All our released works are licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY) Licence — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ — see the licence for the fine details, but it basically means, you can:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

as long as:

• you give Attribution — give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests we endorse you or your use.
• you don’t stop anyone else from trying to use it (you don’t have any exclusive rights); and,
• you don’t plagiarise it i.e. pretend you wrote our music yourself, or reupload or redistribute it somewhere as if you wrote it.

Streaming

Specifically: Yes, you may play all our released works on Twitch, Discord, YouTube or Trovo!

We compose almost all² our own songs — so we grant you what’s called a Sync Licence to stream our released works on Twitch, Discord, YouTube or Trovo. We will not copy-strike or mute your stream. Ourselves, we don’t absolutely insist on credit when you do that (as we know you can’t always easily set up a ‘Now Playing’), but it’s nice if you can because chat always wants to know what that floaty vibe or absolute banger is. Don’t worry — we’re totally cool with it.

If you’re playing it on Twitch by the way, consider trying Pretzel Rocks, they have a great library of other tracks you can use safely on stream, and they pay artists pretty well, even on the free plan.

Unreleased works

If we haven’t released a work officially (or if someone’s commissioned it but hasn’t finished paying for it yet) then it’s unreleased. Obviously.

You don’t have any rights to unreleased works. They’re confidential. Top secret. Sneak peek. No streaming. (Unless we specifically agree otherwise in writing.)

Until they’re finished and either released or commissioned.

Commissioned works

The terms of commissioned works are negotiated individually, so it can vary if someone wants it to. Most often we retain the copyright, but on receipt of the final payment, grant an exclusive licence to the commissioner.

Those terms mean only the person who commissioned it gets to use it, but they can use it in any way they want (including letting others use it, or stopping others using it), except minting it as an NFT.

NFTs — No Fucking Thanks

You must not ‘mint’ any of our work as an NFT — in our view, doing so claims an exclusive right (to make a non-fungible token of the work) that you do not have, and we will never grant (even to commissioners). We will absolutely send a copyright takedown if you do that.

AI

We don’t even know what to say about AI right now — it’s a bit too much of a minefield and we’re staying out of this one for now³.