Terms of Service

You must be at least 13 years old (or the minimum digital-consent age in your jurisdiction, whichever is greater) to create an account. If you are under 18, you represent that you have a parent or legal guardian’s permission to use the Service and to enter into these Terms. By using the Service you also represent that you are not on any government denied-party, embargo, or sanctions list.

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. Pick a strong, unique password. Notify us immediately at privacy@thesecondmessenger.com if you suspect unauthorized access. We are not liable for losses caused by unauthorized use that results from your failure to keep your credentials secure.

Account information (email, username, and, if provided, your name and ZIP code) must be accurate, current, and belong to you. Impersonation, fraudulent signups, and bulk-creation of accounts are prohibited. Usernames that impersonate the artist, staff, or third-party brands may be reclaimed at our discretion.

We may suspend or terminate your account, cancel your Crew subscription, and/or remove your content at any time if we reasonably believe you have violated these Terms, applicable law, or the rights of any third party; if required by law; or if continued access would create a material risk to the Service or other users. Where practical, we will give you notice and an opportunity to cure. Termination does not relieve you of amounts already owed.

You may delete your account at any time from Account Settings, or by emailing privacy@thesecondmessenger.com. See the Privacy Policy for exactly what is deleted and what is retained.

Crew ranks (Ensign, Lieutenant, Commander, Captain, and the invite-only Admiral) unlock different levels of access to the Vault, forum, voting, credits, and community features. The Ensign rank is free. Paid tiers are billed monthly in advance. Tier perks may evolve over time; we will not materially reduce advertised perks during a billing cycle you have already paid for.

All payments are processed by Stripe, Inc., our third-party payment processor. When you subscribe, upgrade, or update your card, you are redirected to Stripe-hosted pages and Stripe collects your payment information directly. We do not store raw credit-card numbers, CVCs, or full billing addresses on our own servers. Your use of Stripe is also governed by the Stripe Services Agreement.

Paid Crew subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period until canceled. You can cancel, upgrade, or downgrade at any time from Manage Billing in Account Settings. Upgrades and downgrades use Stripe’s standard proration rules. Cancellations take effect at the end of the current paid period; your rank downgrades to Ensign after that.

We may change subscription prices with at least 30 days’ notice via email or an in-app notice. If you do not accept the new price you may cancel before it takes effect; continued subscription after the change constitutes acceptance.

Because Crew perks (including digital downloads from the Vault) are generally delivered instantly, paid memberships are non-refundable except where required by law or at our sole discretion. If you believe you were charged in error, contact privacy@thesecondmessenger.com within 30 days of the charge.

Prices are quoted exclusive of applicable taxes. Stripe calculates and collects any sales, VAT, or GST required by your billing location.

All music, recordings, stems, sheet music, artwork, text, graphics, video, source code, logos, and other materials made available through the Service (collectively, the “Artist Content”) are owned by or licensed to The Second Messenger and are protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws. Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership of the Artist Content to you.

When you are an active Crew member with the appropriate rank, we grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable license to:

• Stream the audio and video made available through the Service for your own personal enjoyment;
• Download Vault files for which you have clearance (including those hosted on Vercel Blob and Cloudflare R2) for your own personal, non-commercial use; and
• Create a reasonable number of personal backup copies of files you have downloaded.

Unless we give you written permission in advance, you may not:

• Redistribute, re-upload, share, sell, sublicense, lease, or rent any Artist Content — including stems, multitracks, MIDI, sheet music, lyrics, patches, unreleased audio, or Vault archives.
• Post Vault downloads to file-sharing sites, torrents, Discord servers, Telegram channels, or any public / semi-public repository.
• Incorporate Artist Content into a commercial release, NFT, remix for sale, sample pack, stock-music library, podcast theme, or background music for monetized content, without a separate written license.
• Use Artist Content to train, fine-tune, or generate outputs from any artificial intelligence or machine learning model.
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or circumvent DRM, signed-URL expiry, watermarks, or rank-based access controls.
• Claim Artist Content as your own on YouTube Content ID, SoundExchange, any PRO/CMO, or any monetization platform.

Remixes, covers, fan edits, and non-commercial transformative works shared on your personal social accounts are generally welcome — tag us — but do not grant you ownership of the underlying Artist Content.

If you send us ideas, feedback, or suggestions, you grant us a perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide license to use them without obligation to you.

“The Second Messenger,” the Crew rank insignia, and associated logos and wordmarks are trademarks of the artist. You may not use them without prior written permission except for fair, non-endorsing references.

The Service lets you submit content — forum posts, comments, replies, avatars, bios, presave data, and YouTube comments you post through our connected-account flow (collectively, “User Content”). You retain ownership of your User Content.

By posting User Content, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable license to host, store, reproduce, display, distribute, and adapt that User Content as needed to operate and promote the Service. This license ends when you or we delete the User Content from the Service, except for copies kept in backups until they expire in the ordinary course and uses of content you have already made public (for example, quoting your comment in a blog post).

You represent that you own or have all necessary rights to your User Content; that it does not infringe any third-party rights; and that it complies with these Terms and applicable law.

We may review, edit, or remove User Content at our discretion, but we are not obligated to monitor it. We are not responsible for User Content posted by other users.

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will revise the “Last updated” date at the top and, for material changes, give notice through the Service or by email. Continued use after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms.

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service.

If any provision of these Terms is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain in effect. Our failure to enforce any right is not a waiver of that right.

You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our prior written consent; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets.

Legal notices should be sent to privacy@thesecondmessenger.com.