Creator & Distribution Terms

Last updated: 2026-07-31Who can upload, the rights you keep, and the licence you grant us.

Creator & Distribution Terms

These terms ("Creator Terms") govern uploading and distributing music directly through Resonance, operated by APERTURESyndicate OÜ ("APERTURESyndicate", "AS", "we", "us", "our"). They apply in addition to the Resonance Terms of Service and the general Acceptable Use Policy. Where these Creator Terms conflict with the Resonance Terms of Service on a matter specific to uploading and hosting music, these Creator Terms control.

By uploading or publishing any recording, cover art, artist name, or metadata through the Resonance Studio, you accept these Creator Terms.

These terms are published in good faith and are pending review by qualified EU/Estonian legal counsel; nothing here is a substitute for formal legal advice.

1. This is a separate track from ASMusic — read this first

APERTURESyndicate offers two independent ways to get your music onto a streaming service, and it is important you understand they are not the same thing:

  • ASMusic (Distribution & Artist Terms) sends your music out to third-party platforms — Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and others — through TuneCore, and takes a commission on the royalties those platforms pay you.

  • Resonance (these Creator Terms) is the opposite direction: you upload your music directly into our own catalogue, it is hosted and streamed on Resonance itself, and you accrue a share of Resonance's internal monthly royalty pool — described in full in the Royalty & Payout Policy, which these Creator Terms do not repeat or duplicate.

    Please read the payout section of that policy before you subscribe. Royalties on Resonance are calculated and recorded, but payouts have not launched — no royalty has been paid to anyone yet, and we are not committing to a date. Creator status today buys you publishing, an artist page, and analytics, not income.

These two mechanisms are contractually independent. You may use ASMusic only, Resonance only, both at once, or neither — using one does not require or imply the other, and the terms, rights granted, and payout mechanics of one do not carry over to the other. If you're looking for how music gets onto Spotify or Apple Music, see the ASMusic Distribution & Artist Terms instead — that is not what this page covers.

2. Who can upload

Uploading to Resonance requires an active creator status on your account, obtained one of two ways:

  • A paid Creator subscription — €7/month or €70/year, which also includes everything in Premium (see the Premium & Subscription Terms); or
  • Verified official-artist status, granted free of charge after verification.

Uploads go through the Resonance Studio (creator portal): you request a presigned upload URL, upload the file, and confirm the upload. Once confirmed, the track is processed in the background — audio analysis (tempo, energy, key) and transcoding into our AAC quality ladder (low / normal / high) — before it becomes streamable.

Age and authority. You must be at least 16 years old to hold an APERTURESyndicate account at all, and therefore to hold creator status — see the Resonance Terms of Service. If you upload on behalf of a band, label, or other rightsholder, you confirm you are authorised to bind them to these Creator Terms and to grant the licence in Section 4 on their behalf.

3. Your rights warranty

You are solely responsible for everything you upload. For each recording, composition, image, and item of metadata you submit, you represent and warrant, at the time of upload and for as long as it remains on Resonance, that you own or have obtained all rights, licences, consents, and permissions necessary to host and stream it through Resonance. Specifically, you 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 compositions — songwriting, publishing, and any mechanical or other licences required;
  • You own or have all necessary rights to the cover art and artwork you submit, and its 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, and any logos associated with your uploads, and this use does not infringe or misappropriate any third party's name, trademark, publicity, or privacy rights;
  • Any samples, interpolations, features, guest performances, or remixes in your content have been fully cleared, with all necessary permissions and licences obtained from the relevant rightsholders and contributors;
  • Your content does not infringe any copyright, trademark, moral right, performance right, neighbouring right, or other third-party right, and is not subject to any exclusive arrangement that would prevent hosting it on Resonance.

We do not pre-screen, verify, or independently clear rights before content becomes streamable — we rely on your warranty in hosting and streaming it.

4. Licence you grant us

To host and operate your catalogue on Resonance, you grant APERTURESyndicate OÜ a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable licence, strictly for Resonance purposes, to:

  • Host, store, reproduce, and back up your recordings, cover art, artist name and likeness, and metadata as needed to operate the service;
  • Stream, transmit, publicly perform, and display your content to listeners on Resonance;
  • Transcode, format, and repackage your content into the quality ladder and formats needed for playback across devices;
  • Use your artist name, release titles, and cover art in promotional material for Resonance itself — for example, featuring your release on the Resonance homepage, in editorial playlists, or on Resonance's own social channels.

This licence is limited to the above and is not a general licence to use your work in other APERTURESyndicate products. It is non-exclusive — you remain free to distribute the same recordings anywhere else, including through ASMusic or any other service, and nothing here transfers ownership of anything to us.

The licence ends with respect to specific content when that content is removed or taken down (by you, by us, or following a valid complaint), subject to a reasonable period to purge cached, backup, and CDN copies, and to the survival of any promotional material already published before removal.

5. You keep ownership

You retain all ownership of, and all intellectual-property rights in, the recordings, compositions, cover art, artist name, and metadata you upload to Resonance. Nothing in these Creator Terms assigns or transfers any of your rights to us; we receive only the limited licence described in Section 4, only for as long as it applies. APERTURESyndicate claims no ownership over your music.

6. Indemnity

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless APERTURESyndicate OÜ, its officers, employees, and agents from any claims, demands, proceedings, damages, liabilities, losses, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to:

  • Any content you upload or publish through Resonance;
  • Any breach of the warranties in Section 3, or of any other provision of these Creator 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 exclusive defence and control of any matter otherwise subject to your indemnification, in which case you agree to cooperate. This obligation survives termination of these Creator Terms.

7. Prohibited content

You may not upload or publish through Resonance:

  • 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;
  • Hateful, harassing, or otherwise unlawful content;
  • False, misleading, or impersonating artist names, credits, or metadata;
  • AI-generated content that mimics a real artist's voice or likeness without their consent; or
  • Anything else prohibited by our Acceptable Use Policy, which applies in full to Resonance.

We may remove or disable any content that violates this section, and may suspend or terminate creator status for accounts that do so.

8. Takedowns and disputes

Notice-and-action for copyright complaints — including counter-notices, appeals, and our repeat-infringer policy — is handled entirely under our Copyright & DMCA Policy; we don't repeat that process here. If a valid complaint is upheld against your content, it will be removed or disabled in accordance with that policy.

9. Metadata accuracy

You are responsible for the accuracy of all metadata you submit — artist name, track and release titles, credits, featured artists, genre, language, and release date. You must keep this information accurate, must not submit false or misleading credits, and must promptly correct any inaccuracy you become aware of. We may decline, correct, or remove content with inaccurate or incomplete metadata.

Artist and track pages. Your track can have a customisable link-out page, and you choose its design in the Studio. The designs we ship — currently Aurora, Velvet, and Classic, plus the option of no separate page at all — are rendered live to listeners, and take effect without review, because they are our own front-end designs rather than code you supply. Choosing one is a publishing act: the page and the links on it are public, and the metadata rules in this section apply to them.

Custom and raw-HTML page tiers are a separate matter: they can be saved as drafts but are not served to listeners, and they are not enabled for creators. Don't rely on one being visible.

10. Moderation

Resonance Studio administrators may review, edit, or remove any creator's catalogue where it violates these Creator Terms or the Acceptable Use Policy, independently of any external complaint.

11. Termination and content removal

You may stop uploading and remove your catalogue from Resonance at any time through the Studio. Because Resonance hosts your content directly — there is no third-party distributor in this path — removal takes effect promptly, subject to a reasonable delay to purge CDN and cached copies.

We may suspend or terminate your creator status, and remove or disable your content, where you breach these Creator Terms, where required by a valid complaint or by law, or where continued hosting would expose us or others to legal risk.

On termination or removal, the licence in Section 4 ends with respect to the removed content, subject to the CDN/cache purge period above and to the survival of promotional material already published before removal. Sections that by their nature should survive — including the rights warranty (Section 3) and indemnity (Section 6) — survive termination. Removal does not, by itself, entitle you to a refund of any creator subscription already paid for.

12. Analytics about your listeners

The Studio shows you audience analytics for your own music: stream and listener counts, a breakdown by country, and a list of your top listeners by nickname and avatar. You never receive anyone's internal handle, email address, IP address, location beyond the country, or listening activity outside your own tracks.

This is other people's data, and you receive it to understand your audience. You may not use it to identify, contact, profile, or target an individual listener, you may not combine it with other sources to re-identify anyone, and you may not sell or pass it on. On a small audience these figures can point to a single person — treat them accordingly. What listeners are told about this is set out in the Privacy Addendum.

13. Royalties

Your share of streaming activity on Resonance accrues from Resonance's internal monthly royalty pool. The pool calculation, what counts as a stream, and the current status of payouts — which have not launched — are set out in full in the Royalty & Payout Policy. We don't restate them here, but do not sign up expecting payment until that policy says payouts are live.

Contact

Operator APERTURESyndicate OÜ · Registry code 17384111 · VAT EE102972654 Priisle tee 8, Lasnamäe linnaosa, Tallinn, Harju maakond, 13914, Estonia Company registration details

These Creator Terms are governed by the laws of Estonia, with the courts of Tallinn having jurisdiction, and are subject to the GDPR, the EU Digital Services Act, and applicable Estonian and EU consumer-protection law. The English-language version of these Creator Terms is the controlling version.

Version history

  • v1.1 — 2026-07-31 — Corrected Section 9: track-page designs are rendered to listeners (the previous version said only the default layout was shown); only custom and raw-HTML tiers remain unserved. Added the Creator subscription price, made the minimum age 16 with no parental-consent exception, and added a prominent warning — here and in Section 1 — that royalty payouts have not launched. New Section 12 covers the listener analytics you receive, including country data, and what you may not do with them.
  • v1.0 — 2026-07-02 — Initial publication.
Creator & Distribution Terms | AS Docs