Terms of Service

1. Agreeing to these terms

When we say "we", "us" or "our" in this document, we mean Second Order Ventures LLC, which operates Riffgarden. When we say "the service", we mean the Riffgarden website, the studio, the free tools, the public pages and anything else we build and maintain under that name. When we say "you", we mean the person who uses the service, whether or not they have an account.

By using the service, now or in the future, you agree to the latest version of these terms, to the Fair use page and the Copyright and takedowns page, which are part of them, and you acknowledge the Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the service.

There may be times when we do not exercise or enforce a right in these terms. That does not mean we have given it up. These terms contain a limitation of our liability.

If you break these terms, we may close your account. That is a broad statement, and it means you have to trust us. We try to earn that trust by saying plainly what the service does with your music and your data, and by keeping an open door: [email protected].

2. What the service is

Riffgarden is a music making tool that runs in a web browser. You build rhythms and melodies on a grid, shape sounds, arrange patterns into songs, and can ask an AI co-producer to edit your project with you and explain what it changed. You can record songs to audio files, share them, and use free tools on the public site.

3. Account terms

• You sign in with Google or Discord. We do not store a password for you.
• You are responsible for keeping your sign-in secure, and for everything that happens under your account, including anything posted or shared from it. We cannot be liable for loss or damage that comes from your failure to keep it secure. If you think someone else has used your account, tell us.
• You must be a human. Accounts registered by bots or other automated means are not permitted.
• You must be at least 13 years old, or the age at which you can consent to online services where you live if that is higher. If you are under 18, you need a parent's or guardian's permission.
• One account per person. Do not let anyone else use your account.
• The information you give us must be accurate. The display name you choose is shown on anything you share publicly.
• You may not use the service for any of the purposes listed on the Fair use page under "What we ask you not to do".

4. Fair use and plan limits

Every plan has limits, and the software enforces them: the number of projects, the instruments and patterns in a project, co-producer time each month, recording minutes each month, stem splits each month, and the storage your audio takes up. When you reach a limit, that feature pauses until the month turns over or until you make room. Nothing you made is deleted because of a limit.

The full rules, including what we ask you not to do and what we do about abuse, are on the Fair use page. It is short. Please read it.

5. Payment, refunds and plan changes

The free plan is really free. We do not ask for a credit card, and, just as for people who will one day pay us, we do not sell your data.

Paid plans are not open yet. Joining a waitlist is not a purchase, costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Before any plan is sold we will complete this section and add a refund policy, and you will be asked to accept them before you pay. They will follow these lines:

• You pay in advance for each month or year. If a payment fails, we will tell you and give you time to fix it before the paid features are paused. Nothing you made is deleted because a payment failed.
• When you upgrade from the free plan to a paid plan, you are charged at once and your billing cycle starts that day. For other changes of plan, the new rate starts from the next billing cycle.
• Prices are shown without any tax that applies where you live. Where we are required to collect tax we will add it and pass it on.
• We will publish a refund policy that is fair to people who were charged for something they did not use.

6. Cancellation and termination

• You are responsible for closing your account if you no longer want it. You can do it yourself in Settings, with no questions asked. A message asking us to close it is not, by itself, a cancellation, although we will gladly help if you cannot find the button.
• Closing removes your email address and your sign-in from the account, takes you off any waitlist, and makes everything you made private, so links you shared stop working. It cannot be undone, and signing in again afterwards starts a new account. Download the recordings you want to keep first.
• What you made stays stored, no longer connected to your name or email. To have that erased too, write to [email protected] before or after closing and we will delete it within 30 days, apart from what the law requires us to keep. Copies in backups are gone within a further 30 days. Once that is done we cannot get it back. Things other members copied while you allowed it stay with them.
• Once paid plans exist: if you cancel a paid plan you will not be charged again, and you keep the paid features until the end of the period you paid for.
• We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, and we reserve the right to refuse the service to anyone, for any reason, at any time. Suspension means you cannot get into the account. If we close it, it is closed the same way as when you close it yourself: the sign-in and email address are removed and everything in it is made private. We have this clause because, out of everyone who will ever sign up, at least one person will be up to something we will not host. Where it is reasonable, we will warn you first and give you the chance to export your music.
• Threats or abuse directed at the people who run the service, in any form, close an account at once.

7. Modifications to the service and prices

The service changes often. We may add, change, pause or remove any part of it, with or without notice. We will try not to take away something you rely on without telling you first, and we will not delete your music because a feature went away: you can always record what you made to an audio file.

Prices may change too. Once paid plans exist, if we change the price of a plan you are already on, we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email and in the product before it applies to you.

8. Uptime, security and privacy

• You use the service at your own risk. We provide it on an "as is" and "as available" basis. We do not offer a service level agreement, but we do take keeping the service up seriously.
• We may slow down or temporarily pause an account whose use is far beyond what other people's is, if it affects the service for everyone else. We will normally get in touch first, unless waiting would harm the service.
• We protect your data with encrypted connections, backups that are encrypted before they leave our servers, and access limited to the people who run the service. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot promise that ours is.
• When you use the service you entrust us with your music and your data. You agree that we may process it as described in the Privacy Policy, and for no other purpose. A person at Riffgarden looks at your private data only to help you when you ask and agree, to fix an error that stopped an automated process partway through, to keep the service and other people safe, or when the law requires it. The privacy policy spells out each case.
• We use third party providers for hosting, storage, error reporting, analytics, sign-in and the AI model behind the co-producer. The privacy policy names them.

9. The music you make is yours

You own what you make. That includes your projects, patterns, instruments you shape, recipes, recordings and any audio you export, and it includes material the AI co-producer helped create at your request. We claim no ownership of any of it, and you do not need our permission to release, perform or sell your music.

One honest caveat: whether and how copyright protects work made with the help of AI differs from country to country, and the law is still moving. We give you every right we could have in what you make. We cannot promise what protection the law of your country gives it.

The licence you give us is only what running the service needs. You give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, process, render and display your content to you, and to make the backups a service needs. That is all, until you share something. We claim no intellectual property rights over anything you put here. It stays yours.

When you choose to share, you also allow us to show and play that item to the people you shared it with: anyone who has the link, or everyone, depending on what you chose. Public items may appear on pages such as Explore and in search engines. You can make an item private again at any time.

When you switch on remixing for a song, you give other members a licence to open a copy of that song's project as it was when you recorded it, and to build their own music on it. Switching remixing off later stops new copies. It does not take back copies people already made.

When you share something to the library (an instrument, a recipe or a pattern), other members who are allowed to use it may copy it into their own projects and use it in their music. You keep your rights in the original.

Private by default. Nothing you make is visible to anyone else unless you share it.

We do not use your music, your projects or your prompts to train AI models. When you use the co-producer, the relevant part of your project and what you typed are sent to our AI provider to produce the reply. See the Privacy Policy.

Feedback. If you send us ideas or suggestions about the service, we may use them without owing you anything. Your music is never feedback.

Deleting. You can delete projects, recordings, library items and stem splits yourself. Deleting a project deletes its history, its branches and its recordings. If other members have already used a library item you delete, their copies stay, and the item is made private instead of removed so their records stay intact. Our licence to content ends when you delete it, apart from copies in backups, which are gone within 30 days, and copies other members made while you allowed it.

10. What we own, and what we lend you

The service itself is ours: the software, the design, the audio engine, the name and the marks. So are the built-in sounds and samples, the instrument presets and the packs we publish. You get no ownership of any of it by using the service. Please do not copy, reverse engineer or resell the service, and do not reuse its code, design or visual elements without our written permission. Ask us before using our name or logo to promote something; we may withdraw that permission if you break these terms.

You may use the built-in sounds, presets and our packs in your music, including music you release or sell. You may not redistribute them on their own or as part of a sound library, sample pack, preset pack or competing product.

Items and packs shared by other members work the same way. Using one copies it into your project, and you may use it in your music. The person who made it keeps their rights in the original. Do not resell or republish other people's items as your own.

Parts of the service are built on open source software, which stays under its own licences.

11. Imported audio and the stem splitter

You can import audio files and, where it is available, split a song into stems.

• Only import or split audio you have the right to use. You are responsible for what you bring in. Audio generated by another AI service is subject to that service's terms.
• Imported audio and stems are private to your account.
• A song that contains imported audio can be shared with a link. It is never listed publicly and cannot be opened for remixing.
• The stem splitter runs on our servers. The song you upload is deleted as soon as it has been split, or if the split fails. The stems stay in your account until you delete them.

12. The AI co-producer

• It can be wrong. It may make musical choices you dislike or explain something inaccurately.
• It edits only the project you have open, through the same operations you use. Every turn it takes can be undone in one step.
• What it produces is not guaranteed to be unique. Similar patterns may be produced for other people, and common musical ideas belong to nobody.
• Nothing it says is legal, financial or other professional advice, including anything about copyright or licensing.

13. What you may not put here

Everything you share must comply with copyright law. The Copyright and takedowns page says how a rights holder can tell us about a problem, and what we do about it.

This applies to names, titles, descriptions, anything typed to the co-producer, and any audio you share. Do not use the service for content or conduct that:

• is illegal, or infringes someone else's rights;
• is hateful, harassing or threatening, or targets people for who they are;
• sexualises minors in any way;
• contains malware, or tries to break, overload or gain unauthorised access to the service;
• impersonates a person or organisation, or misleads people about who made something.

The Fair use page has the full list of restricted uses. We do not screen what people make before it is shared, but we reserve the right, without the obligation, to refuse or remove anything on the service. Anyone can report a shared item with the "Report this" link on its page. We may remove content, remove the ability to share, or suspend or close an account that breaks these rules. An item we take down cannot be shared again.

14. Features and bugs

We build the service with care, from our own experience and from what people who use it tell us. No service pleases everybody, and we make no promise that this one will meet your particular needs or expectations.

Like all software, the service has bugs. We keep track of the ones reported to us and fix the important ones first, especially anything touching security or privacy. Not every bug will be fixed, and we do not promise a service free of errors. Export the music you care about.

15. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. Second Order Ventures LLC DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error free or free of harmful components, that your content will never be lost, or that anything the AI produces will be accurate, original or to your taste.

16. Liability

Liability comes up throughout these terms. To put it in one place:

You expressly understand and agree that Second Order Ventures LLC shall not be liable, in law or in equity, to you or to any third party for any direct, indirect, incidental, lost profits, special, consequential, punitive or exemplary damages, including, but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data or other intangible losses, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages, resulting from: (i) the use or the inability to use the service; (ii) the cost of procuring substitute goods or services as a result of anything obtained through the service; (iii) unauthorised access to or alteration of your transmissions or data; (iv) statements or conduct of any third party on the service; or (v) any other matter relating to these terms or the service, whether as a breach of contract, tort (including negligence, whether active or passive), or any other theory of liability.

WHERE LIABILITY CANNOT BE EXCLUDED, OUR TOTAL LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM AND 50 US DOLLARS.

In other words: choosing to use the service means placing a bet on us. If the bet does not work out, that is on you, not us. We do our best to be a safe bet, by running the business carefully and by keeping your music exportable at all times.

Some countries do not allow some of these limits. Where that is so, they apply only as far as the law allows, and nothing here removes rights you have as a consumer that cannot be removed.

17. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Texas, United States, without regard to conflict of law principles. Disputes will be resolved in the courts of competent jurisdiction there, unless the law where you live gives you the right to bring a claim at home.

18. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. We will post the new version here and change the date at the top. For changes that matter, we will also tell you in the product or by email before they take effect. If you keep using the service after that, you accept the new terms.

19. Contact

Riffgarden is operated by Second Order Ventures LLC, based in Texas, United States. Questions about these terms: [email protected].