ASMusic Distribution & Artist Terms
Effective date: 1 August 2026 · Version 1.3
These terms ("Artist Terms") govern your use of ASMusic to upload, host, and distribute musical works through the APERTURESyndicate platform, operated by APERTURESyndicate OÜ ("APERTURESyndicate", "AS", "we", "us", "our"). They form a binding agreement between you and us, and they apply in addition to our general Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy.
How these fit with our other documents. These Artist Terms are product-specific, which under Section 3 of the Terms of Service means they sit below the platform-wide documents. They add detail and may impose stricter obligations; they cannot grant you something a platform-level document withholds, and they cannot lower a platform-level threshold. Where they appear to conflict with the Terms of Service or a platform policy, the platform-level document controls. Where these Artist Terms are simply more specific about something the upper layers do not address, they apply as written.
ASMusic and Resonance are different things. ASMusic distributes your works to third-party stores and streaming services through an external distributor (Section 8). Publishing on our own streaming service, Resonance, is governed by the Creator & Distribution Terms instead.
By uploading or publishing any recording, cover art, artist name, or metadata to ASMusic, you accept these Artist Terms.
We write these documents in good faith and keep them accurate to how the platform actually works. They have not yet been reviewed by qualified Estonian legal counsel.
1. Who these terms apply to
These Artist Terms apply to every person or entity who uploads, submits, or distributes content through ASMusic — artists, producers, labels, managers, and any other rightsholder or authorised representative (each, an "Artist", referred to as "you").
Age requirement. You must be at least 16 years old to use ASMusic — the platform-wide minimum in Section 4 of the Terms of Service. If you are under 18 and therefore a minor where you live, you may only use ASMusic with the consent and supervision of a parent or legal guardian, who must review and accept these Artist Terms on your behalf and who remains responsible for your use of the service. Because distribution involves a payout relationship with a third party, we may ask for evidence of that consent and may decline or remove uploads where it cannot be established.
You act with authority. If you upload on behalf of a band, label, or other rightsholder, you confirm that you are authorised to enter into these Artist Terms and to grant the licence in Section 3 on their behalf, and that they are bound by these terms.
2. Your rights warranty
Responsibility for everything you publish through ASMusic rests with you. For each recording, work, image, and item of metadata you submit, you represent and warrant that, at the time of upload and for as long as the content remains on ASMusic, you own or have obtained all rights, licences, consents, and permissions necessary to distribute it through the service. In particular, you represent and warrant that:
- You own or control, or are fully authorised to use, the master recordings you upload.
- You own or control, or have cleared, the rights in the underlying musical compositions — including the songwriting and publishing rights, and any mechanical or other licences required.
- You own or have all necessary rights to the cover art, artwork, and visual assets you submit, and their use does not infringe any third party's copyright, trademark, or other rights.
- You have the right to use the artist name, stage name, likeness, image, and any logos associated with your uploads, and their use does not infringe or misappropriate any third party's name, trademark, publicity, or privacy rights.
- Any samples, interpolations, features, guest performances, remixes, or third-party material contained in your content have been fully cleared, and all necessary permissions, releases, and licences from the relevant rightsholders and contributors have been obtained.
- Your content does not infringe any copyright, trademark, moral right, performance right, neighbouring right, contractual right, or any other right of any third party, and is not subject to any exclusive arrangement that would prevent the distribution contemplated here.
You are solely responsible for securing and, where applicable, paying for all such rights and clearances. We do not pre-screen, verify, or independently clear the rights in anything you upload — no check runs on your recordings, your artwork or your metadata before they are distributed. We rely entirely on the warranties above, and our distributor and the stores rely on them in turn.
3. Licence you grant to APERTURESyndicate
So that we can operate and promote ASMusic, you grant APERTURESyndicate OÜ a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to use the content you upload — including your recordings, cover art, artwork, artist name and likeness, and metadata — for the following purposes:
- To host, store, reproduce, and back up your content as needed to provide the service.
- To stream, transmit, publicly perform, display, and make your content available to listeners through ASMusic.
- To format, transcode, resize, and create technical copies of your content as required for delivery, playback, and compatibility across devices.
- To publish announcements and promotional material about your releases — including posts to Telegram channels associated with the platform or with your release, and to other platforms you choose to link (such as a linked SoundCloud profile) — and to use your artist name, release titles, and cover art for the purpose of promoting your content and the service.
This distribution licence is non-exclusive: it does not stop you from distributing your content anywhere else or through any other service, and it does not transfer ownership of anything to us. For distribution and hosting purposes it ends with respect to specific content when that content is removed or taken down (whether by you, by us, or following a valid complaint), subject to a reasonable period to remove cached, backup, and already-distributed copies and to the survival of any announcement already published before removal.
Use of your works in APERTURESyndicate's own products. Separately from distribution, you grant APERTURESyndicate a non-exclusive, worldwide licence to use your works in our promotional and presentation materials — platform trailers, showreels, product demos, and our own social media — for the duration of these Artist Terms. Any commercial use beyond that — advertising for a paying client, audio in a game, or a product we sell — requires your prior written consent and agreed compensation terms. If you have consented to a specific integration, that specific product may continue to be distributed after these Artist Terms end, on the terms agreed at the time of integration. You may withdraw your consent to new uses at any time, with 30 days' notice; integrations you have already consented to are not affected.
4. You keep ownership of your content
You retain all ownership of, and all intellectual-property rights in, the recordings, compositions, cover art, artist name, and metadata you upload. Nothing in these Artist Terms assigns or transfers any of your rights to us; we receive only the licence described in Section 3, and only for as long as it applies. APERTURESyndicate claims no ownership over your music.
5. Indemnity
If you are acting in the course of a business, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless APERTURESyndicate OÜ, its officers, employees, and agents from and against any claims, demands, proceedings, damages, liabilities, losses, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to:
- Any content you upload, distribute, or publish through ASMusic;
- Any breach of the representations and warranties in Section 2, or of any other provision of these Artist Terms;
- Any infringement or alleged infringement of a third party's copyright, trademark, publicity, privacy, moral, or other rights by your content; or
- Any failure by you to obtain or pay for a required right, licence, clearance, or consent.
We may, at our discretion and at your expense, assume the exclusive defence and control of any matter otherwise subject to indemnification by you, in which case you agree to cooperate with us. This obligation survives the termination of these Artist Terms.
If you are a consumer — that is, an individual artist acting outside a trade, business or profession — this indemnity does not apply to you, in line with Section 15 of the Terms of Service. You remain responsible under Section 2 for the rights in what you upload, and you remain liable for loss you actually cause us by breaching that warranty, but only to the extent Estonia and EU consumer law permits.
6. Prohibited content and conduct
You may not upload, distribute, or publish through ASMusic:
- Content that infringes any third party's copyright, trademark, or other rights, including official recordings, artwork, or logos you do not have the right to use;
- Recordings containing uncleared samples, interpolations, or third-party material;
- Content that is unlawful, or that contains hateful, harassing, or otherwise prohibited material;
- False, misleading, or impersonating artist names, credits, or metadata; or
- Anything else prohibited by our Acceptable Use Policy, which applies in full to ASMusic.
We may remove or disable any content that violates this section, and we may suspend or terminate accounts that do so.
7. Takedowns and disputes
We respond to valid complaints about content on ASMusic. If a rightsholder submits a valid notice that your content infringes their rights, we will remove or disable access to the content in accordance with our Copyright & Takedown Policy, which sets out the full notice, counter-notice, and appeal procedure.
If you believe content was removed in error, you may submit a counter-notice through the channel described in that policy. We do not adjudicate ownership disputes between you and a third party; our role is to follow the notice-and-action process correctly.
Repeat infringers. The strike ladder — what a first, second and third strike mean, how long a strike lasts, and how to contest one — is set out in a single place, Copyright & Takedown, Section 5, and that document governs. We do not restate it here. In addition, we may remove an Artist's whole catalogue where there is clear or repeated infringement, and stores or TuneCore may act independently of us on the same facts.
8. Our distributor, revenue share, and payment
Who actually distributes your music. ASMusic does not deliver releases to the stores itself. We use TuneCore as our distributor, and your recordings, cover art, metadata and payee details are passed to TuneCore so that your release can reach digital platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, SoundCloud and others. TuneCore processes that data on our behalf as a sub-processor — see Data Processing & Sub-processors — and its own terms and store requirements apply to the delivery of your release alongside these Artist Terms. If we change distributor, we will tell you.
We cover the distributor's fees and subscriptions for as long as these Artist Terms are in force. We do not provide recording-studio services and do not fund the creation of your works.
Revenue share. APERTURESyndicate retains a commission on the royalty income your works earn on those platforms; the remainder belongs to you. The exact commission depends on your individual distribution agreement and the scope of services it includes — it is typically 12–20% and is set out in the agreement you sign with us. The commission is calculated on platform royalty income and accounted for monthly. Anything you earn beyond our commission is yours.
Payout. Royalties reach you through TuneCore in line with each platform's own payment terms and schedules. Where the distributor does not pay out automatically, the payout procedure is set out in a separate written addendum agreed by both parties. Payment timing is largely outside our control: stores report to distributors on their own cycles, typically with a delay of one to several months.
No guarantee. We do not guarantee any particular number of streams, audience size, chart position, or revenue. What you earn depends entirely on platform performance and the platforms' own rates.
After termination. When these Artist Terms end, we stop taking our commission. The limited licence to use your works in our own products (Section 3) may continue as described there, but we earn no commission on your platform royalties after termination.
9. Metadata accuracy
You are responsible for the accuracy of all metadata you provide — including artist name, track and release titles, songwriter and contributor credits, featured artists, release dates, genre, and any rights or licensing information. You must keep this metadata accurate and up to date, must not submit false or misleading credits, and must promptly correct any inaccuracy you become aware of. We may rely on the metadata you provide when displaying, organising, and promoting your content, and we may decline, correct, or remove content with inaccurate or incomplete metadata.
10. Termination and content removal
These Artist Terms run for an indefinite term until ended by either party. Either party may terminate by giving the other at least 30 calendar days' written notice (by email or signed document), and the notice must state the reason for termination. We may also suspend or terminate your access, and remove or disable your content, where you breach these Artist Terms, where required by a valid complaint or by law, or where continued hosting would expose us or others to legal risk.
Transition. On termination we will give you reasonable notice of any ongoing distributor cost obligations so you have the opportunity to move your works to another distributor. If neither you nor your new publisher assumes TuneCore's costs in line with its terms, your works may be removed from the platforms in accordance with those rules, and we are not responsible for that removal.
On termination or removal, the licence granted in Section 3 ends with respect to the removed content, subject to a reasonable period for us to purge cached, backup, and already-distributed copies and to the survival of announcements already published. Sections that by their nature should survive — including the rights warranty (Section 2), indemnity (Section 5), and this Section — survive termination. Removal of content does not, by itself, entitle you to any refund or payment, and does not affect our right to retain records of complaints and actions taken as required by law.
11. Crediting APERTURESyndicate & ASMusic
When you promote a release that ASMusic distributes, you agree to credit us in promotional posts directly related to that release:
- Mention "APERTURESyndicate" and "ASMusic" in public promotional posts directly tied to the release.
- Text posts (including Telegram and social media) should end with:
ASMusic | APERTURESyndicate. - Video posts (TikTok, YouTube, Instagram Reels, etc.) should credit us in the description or hashtags:
#ASMusic #APERTURESyndicate.
12. Confidentiality
Both parties keep confidential the commercial terms of any individual distribution agreement and any commercially sensitive information learned while working together, except where disclosure is required by law or agreed in writing.
Contact
| Purpose | Contact |
|---|---|
| Distribution questions, rights matters, takedowns | [email protected] |
| Copyright and trademark notices | [email protected] |
| Payments and royalties | [email protected] |
We accept correspondence in English or Estonian.
APERTURESyndicate OÜ Registry code 17384111 · VAT EE102972654 Priisle tee 8, Lasnamäe linnaosa, Tallinn, Harju maakond, 13914, Estonia Company registration details
These Artist Terms are governed by the law of Estonia, with the courts of Tallinn having jurisdiction, and are subject to the GDPR, the EU Digital Services Act, and applicable Estonia and EU consumer-protection law. The English-language version of these Artist Terms is the controlling version.
Version history
- v1.3 — 2026-08-01 — Rebalanced the licence to use your works in our own products (Section 3): promotional use (trailers, showreels, demos, our social media) remains licensed for the term by default; any commercial use now requires your prior written consent and agreed compensation, and only integrations you've actually consented to may continue after termination — replacing the previous royalty-free, 5-years-after-termination grant with indefinite survival for already-integrated works.
- v1.2 — 2026-08-01 — Our distributor is now named: TuneCore, with what it receives and its sub-processor role stated. Document hierarchy corrected so platform-level documents prevail over these Artist Terms. Age aligned with the platform minimum of 16. Indemnity limited to business users, with the consumer position stated. Repeat-infringer ladder now points to Copyright & Takedown instead of being restated. Made explicit that nothing pre-screens uploads. Figures and contacts moved to shared placeholders.
- v1.1 — 2026-06-22 — Aligned with the ASMusic distribution agreement: commission set per individual agreement and service scope (typically 12–20%), settled monthly; distributor costs covered by us; licence to use works in our own products (term + 5 years; integrated works indefinite); 30-day termination with reason; attribution requirements; confidentiality.
- v1.0 — 2026-06-22 — Initial publication.