These are the distribution terms that apply to every DistroVibe subscription. You accept them when you subscribe, and a personal copy is available in your dashboard. Artists and labels who have signed a Master Distribution Agreement, a label agreement or a white-label partner agreement with DistroVibe are also bound by that agreement, which prevails for the matters it covers.
1. Parties and scope
1.1. This Agreement is between DistroVibe Group Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17561859), whose registered office is at Suite 11384, 5 Brayford Square, London, E1 0SG, United Kingdom ("DistroVibe", "we", "us"), and the person or organisation that holds the DistroVibe account ("Subscriber", "you").
1.2. It applies to every paid DistroVibe plan and add-on, together with the Terms of Service, the Privacy Policy and the Refund & Cancellation Policy. If they conflict, this Agreement prevails.
1.3. Label, revenue share, publishing and white-label arrangements are covered by their own agreements, which prevail for the matters they cover.
1.4. You confirm that you use the service for the purposes of your music career, trade or business, and not as a consumer. If the law nevertheless treats you as a consumer, the protections in clauses 9.3 and 15.2 apply.
2. The service
2.1. Your plan gives you access to the features described on our pricing page for that plan, which may include distribution of your releases to digital music services and platforms ("Stores"), analytics, royalty reporting, your wallet and payouts, and other tools.
2.2. We may improve, change or withdraw features, and add or remove Stores, to keep the service secure, lawful and commercially viable. If we remove a core feature of your plan, we will tell you in advance and you may cancel.
2.3. We use sub-distributors, delivery and service providers to provide the service. Stores act independently: we do not guarantee that a Store will accept, publish, keep or promote any release, or any level of streams or income.
2.4. Your account is personal to you. You may let a manager or other authorised representative use it on your behalf, but you may not share, sell or transfer it, and you are responsible for everything done through it. If your account covers a group, you warrant that every member has authorised you to deliver the group's Content and receive its income.
2.5. To protect the service and the Stores, we may set reasonable limits on the number and frequency of releases an account can deliver, including releases made with artificial intelligence, and we may pause deliveries from an account that exceeds them.
3. Subscription, billing and cancellation
3.1. Subscriptions are sold through our merchant of record, Polar, which processes your payment, issues your receipt and handles sales taxes. Fees are charged in advance for each billing period.
3.2. Your plan renews automatically at the end of each billing period until you cancel. You can cancel at any time in your dashboard or by contacting support; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period and fees already paid are not refunded, except as set out in the Refund & Cancellation Policy or where the law requires.
3.3. If you are a consumer with a statutory right to cancel, you ask us to start the service immediately when you subscribe, and you acknowledge that once the service has started your right to a full refund ends as described in the Refund & Cancellation Policy.
3.4. We may change our prices. Changes apply from your next billing period after we have given you at least 30 days' notice; you may cancel before they apply.
3.5. If a payment fails, we may pause new deliveries and payouts until it is resolved. A chargeback or payment dispute on fees for a service that was provided is a material breach of this Agreement and the consequences in the Refund & Cancellation Policy apply.
4. Your content and licence
4.1. You keep ownership of your recordings, artwork and other content ("Content").
4.2. You grant DistroVibe a worldwide, non-exclusive licence to reproduce, distribute, make available, monetise and administer your Content through Stores (including content identification and user-generated content monetisation), to collect all income from it, and to use your names, approved images and artwork to distribute and promote it, for as long as the Content is distributed through us and for the time needed to remove it afterwards.
4.3. We may decline to deliver, or remove, any Content, in particular where a Store requires it or we reasonably suspect a breach of clause 5 or 6.
4.4. We may correct, complete or standardise your metadata to meet the requirements and style guides of Stores, and add any designation a Store requires. We will not change the audio of your recordings.
4.5. To the extent the law allows, you waive, and will procure that every contributor waives, any moral rights in the Content as needed for the uses permitted by this Agreement, including the use of excerpts, metadata corrections and the use of your Content in videos and other content created by Store users.
4.6. While a recording is distributed through us, you will not deliver the same recording (the same audio, or the same ISRC) to the same Stores through another distributor, aggregator or direct Store account, or authorise anyone else to do so.
4.7. You will comply with the content policies and technical requirements of the Stores, as published by them or notified by us. A Store's decision that Content breaches its policies (including its policies on artificial intelligence or artificial activity) is sufficient for us to remove it. When we ask, you will re-deliver corrected audio, artwork or metadata.
4.8. We do not use your Content, and do not license it to third parties, to train artificial intelligence models.
5. Your warranties
5.1. You warrant, when you deliver Content and for as long as it is distributed through us, that: (a) you own or control all rights in your Content and every element of it (including compositions, samples, beats, vocals, artwork and names); (b) all third-party material is licensed for worldwide digital distribution; (c) your Content and metadata are accurate and do not infringe any right or law or any Store's policies; (d) your Content does not use the voice, name, image, likeness or identity of any real person, living or dead, without that person's (or their estate's) written permission, including through voice cloning or other artificial intelligence; (e) you have disclosed accurately any use of artificial intelligence in creating your Content and which elements it was used for, and you hold the commercial rights to that output under the terms of the tool you used; and (f) Content previously distributed elsewhere has been removed there before you deliver it to us.
5.2. When we ask for evidence of your rights, you will provide it within 72 hours, or any shorter period a Store requires. If you do not, we may remove or withhold the Content and its income.
5.3. You are responsible for paying any producers, featured artists, songwriters or other contributors what they are owed. Our split tools are offered for convenience: we pay recipients as you instruct, you are responsible for the instructions being correct, and fines, deductions and amounts owed under clause 6 are charged to the account holder whatever splits are set up.
5.4. Unless you hold and can show a written licence for it, you will not deliver: remixes, edits, mash-ups or sped-up or slowed versions of recordings you do not own; DJ mixes, mixtapes or continuous mixes of other people's recordings; recordings containing uncleared samples or interpolations; cover versions without the licences the Stores require; or recordings that were previously released by someone else. You will not use titles, artist names, featured artists or artwork that mislead listeners about who made a recording, and you will not deliver spam, such as large numbers of near-identical recordings or content that Stores do not accept as music, such as white noise or other functional audio where a Store does not allow it.
5.5. You will tell us in writing within 10 days if your ownership or control of any Content changes, or if anyone makes or threatens a claim about it. When we ask, you will sign, and procure that your contributors sign, any document reasonably needed to confirm the rights in this Agreement.
5.6. Content identification (such as YouTube Content ID) may only be used for Content you own or control exclusively and in full. It may not be used for recordings based on non-exclusive beat or instrumental leases, Creative Commons or public domain material, samples, loops or sound effects libraries, karaoke or sound-alike versions, or content designed to trigger claims. We may remove such Content from content identification and deduct income from claims that should not have been made.
6. Artificial activity and misuse
6.1. You will not engage in, buy or allow artificial streaming or engagement (bots, scripts, click farms, paid or guaranteed streams), or fund, arrange, encourage or knowingly benefit from it when others carry it out. You will not upload content you have no rights to, or use the service unlawfully or to harm others.
6.2. Income attributable to such activity or to infringing Content is not due to you. Where we reasonably suspect it, we may hold the related income and your wallet while we investigate, for up to 180 days or, if a Store, rights holder or authority makes a claim, until that claim is resolved.
6.3. You will reimburse us for any fines, penalties, chargebacks, fees or deductions that a Store or service provider imposes on us because of your breach, together with an administration fee of USD 50 per affected recording reflecting our handling costs.
6.4. If, after income has been credited or paid to you, a Store, service provider or rights holder reverses, claws back or claims any of it, or claims fines or penalties, we may deduct the amount from your wallet. If your wallet does not cover it, you will repay the difference within 14 days of our request. This applies while this Agreement is in force and for 24 months after it ends, or for longer if a Store or service provider can still make the claim against us. We may restate earlier statements to reflect these adjustments.
6.5. Where we reasonably believe that accounts are linked to you (for example through the same person, payout account, contact details or device) and are used to avoid this Agreement, we may apply the measures in clauses 6 and 10 to those accounts as well.
6.6. If we have to take down or re-deliver Content because of your breach or incorrect information, you will reimburse the reasonable costs we incur, including any fees Stores or service providers charge us.
7. Royalties and payouts
7.1. Unless another agreement with us sets a different split, while your account has an active paid plan we credit 100% of the net amounts we actually receive for your Content to your wallet, after deductions by Stores, collecting bodies, service providers and payment processors, taxes and currency conversion costs. For income processed while your account has no active paid plan (for example after your subscription has ended and your releases remain live), we keep 20% as our distribution commission and credit 80% to your wallet.
7.2. Income is credited after the Stores report and pay it to us, usually monthly and in arrears. Credited amounts are provisional and may be adjusted for later corrections, chargebacks or deductions by Stores.
7.3. You may request a payout once your available balance is at least USD 25. Payouts are made to a bank account in your own name through our payment provider (currently Wise); transfer fees and currency conversion costs are deducted from the payout and shown before you confirm.
7.4. You must verify your identity before your first payout, and whenever we reasonably ask. We may deduct from your wallet amounts you owe us, overpayments and taxes we are required to withhold. You are responsible for your own taxes.
7.5. You may object to a statement within 12 months of it being made available, by giving us the specific reasons for your objection in writing; after that it is final, except in the case of fraud. If you are a consumer, this does not limit any right you have by law.
7.6. We may ask you for the tax forms or information that we, a Store or a service provider need before we make payouts. Where tax must be withheld from amounts paid to us or to you, the amount withheld is treated as paid to you, and we do not gross up any payment.
8. Indemnity
8.1. You will indemnify DistroVibe, its group companies, officers, staff and service providers against all claims, losses, damages, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your breach of this Agreement, from facts that would be a breach if true, or from any claim that your Content infringes a third party's rights.
8.2. This includes losses we suffer because a Store or service provider restricts, suspends or ends our account, delivery capacity or payments, or imposes fines or extra checks on us, as a result of your breach.
9. Limitation of liability
9.1. We are not liable for the acts or omissions of Stores, for loss of profits, revenue, streams, opportunity or reputation, or for any indirect or consequential loss.
9.2. Our total liability under or in connection with this Agreement in any 12-month period is limited to the fees you paid us in that period.
9.3. Nothing in this Agreement limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything that cannot be limited by law, or affects your statutory rights as a consumer.
10. Suspension, termination and takedowns
10.1. We may suspend your account, withhold payouts or end this Agreement immediately by notice if you breach clause 3.5, 5 or 6 or any other material term, provide false information, fail identity verification, are abusive or threatening towards our staff, or act in a way that harms DistroVibe, other members or our relationships with Stores and service providers, or exposes us to claims, penalties or reputational harm. We may also end it for any reason on 30 days' notice, refunding any fees you prepaid for the period after it ends.
10.2. When your subscription ends, we stop delivering new releases. Releases already live stay live until you request a takedown, unless we remove them under this Agreement, a Store removes them, or we give you at least 30 days' notice that we will remove them.
10.3. Takedowns are requested from Stores within a reasonable time; Stores' own processing times apply. Income for use before removal is credited when we receive it, subject to clauses 6 and 7.
10.4. Clauses 4.5, 4.8, 5.3, 5.5, 5.6, 6, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 8, 9, 11.2, 12 and 15 survive termination.
11. Personal data
11.1. We process your personal data as described in our Privacy Policy, including through Polar (merchant of record), Wise (payouts) and Didit (identity verification), and share release metadata with Stores and service providers to distribute your Content.
11.2. Where a rights holder makes a credible claim about your Content, or a Store, service provider, court or authority requires it, we may share your identity, contact details and information about the Content and its income with them, as described in our Privacy Policy.
12. Assignment and change of operator
12.1. We may assign, novate or otherwise transfer this Agreement or any of our rights and obligations under it to a group company or a successor to our business, by giving you notice. You may not transfer your account or this Agreement without our written consent.
12.2. This Agreement replaces any earlier subscriber agreement you accepted. Where an earlier agreement was entered into with the previous operator of the DistroVibe service, it continues with DistroVibe Group Ltd on the terms of this Agreement.
13. Notices
13.1. We may give you notices by email to the address on your account or in your dashboard. You may give us notices by email to legal@distrovibe.com or support@distrovibe.com.
14. Changes to this Agreement
14.1. We may update this Agreement. We will tell you of material changes by email or in your dashboard at least 14 days before they take effect, unless a change is required sooner by law or a Store. If you do not agree, you may cancel before the change takes effect; otherwise, continuing to use the service after that date means you accept it.
15. Governing law and jurisdiction
15.1. This Agreement and any dispute or claim (including non-contractual ones) arising out of or in connection with it are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.
15.2. If you are a consumer, you also keep any mandatory protection of the law of the country where you live and may bring proceedings in its courts. DistroVibe may bring proceedings in the courts of the country where you live to recover amounts owed or protect its rights.
15.3. Before starting court proceedings, each party will first raise the dispute in writing with the other and try in good faith to resolve it for at least 30 days. This does not prevent either party from seeking urgent relief or DistroVibe from recovering undisputed amounts owed.
16. General
16.1. This Agreement, with the documents in clause 1.2, is the entire agreement between us about its subject matter. If any provision is invalid, the rest remains in force. A delay in exercising a right is not a waiver. No third party has rights under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.