Terms of Use

These terms cover everyone who uses Clearable: creators who make their sounds clearable, and artists who clear them. Using the site means you accept them.

1. Who runs Clearable

Clearable (clearable.io) is operated by [Legal entity — fill before launch]. Write to info@clearable.io for anything in these terms. In these terms, creator means the person whose sound is being cleared, and buyer means the artist clearing it.

2. What Clearable is — and is not

Clearable is a facilitator, not a party to your clearance. We provide the agreement template, the payment rails and the audit record. The clearance itself is an agreement between the creator and the buyer. We are not the licensor, we are not a rights owner, we are not your lawyer, and nothing on this site is legal advice.

We do not verify that a creator owns what they clear. The creator warrants that (section 6). If that warranty turns out to be false, your claim is against them; ours is against them too.

3. Eligibility

You must be 18 or older, or the age of majority where you live, and able to enter a binding contract. Creators must be able to complete Stripe onboarding in a country Stripe supports; without it we cannot pay you and cannot take money on your behalf.

4. Accounts

• Creators need an account. Keep your login details to yourself; you are responsible for what happens under your account. Your display name and @handle are public — buyers search them to send you a request, so do not impersonate anyone.
• Buyers do not need an account. A clearance runs from one unguessable tracking link, emailed to you. That link is your key and your signature: anyone who has it can view and act on the request, so do not share it. If you lose it, recover it here.

5. How a clearance works

• A buyer names the sound and the creator, and gives their release details. No price exists until the creator sends one. Clearable computes a suggested figure privately for the creator; the creator decides, and the buyer can counter.
• Clearances are non-exclusive by default. The creator keeps licensing the sound to other people for other songs.
• Non-exclusive clearances carry tiered usage caps (Standard, Premium or Unlimited), fixed by the buyer’s declared size at signing and written into the agreement. Exceeding a cap is an upgrade, not a breach: re-clear at your new size and the rights extend.
• An exclusive buyout retires the sound: the creator will not license it again after that clearance.
• Acceptance is a click, recorded with the accepting email address, a timestamp, the IP address, the Stripe payment reference and a SHA-256 hash of the exact terms. That record is the point. It is never edited in place — a correction is a new agreement with a new hash.
• The current agreement template is itself marked draft pending legal review. Read it before you sign it.

6. What the creator promises

By clearing a sound you warrant that you own or control it, that it is your own work or that anything sampled inside it is already cleared, and that clearing it does not infringe anyone else. Clear only rights you actually hold. If you cannot say that honestly about a sound, do not put a price on it.

7. What the buyer promises

The fee is calculated from the monthly-listener count and label status you declare, so accepting an agreement confirms those numbers are accurate. If they were made up, the creator can cancel the clearance. Do not submit fabricated statistics, screenshots or artist links. You also confirm your use of the sound stays inside the scope you were cleared for.

8. Fees and taxes

• Clearable takes 12% of a completed clearance. It is collected as a Stripe platform fee on a destination charge, so the creator receives the cleared amount less that 12%, in the same transaction as the payment.
• If no money moves, Clearable costs nothing. No listing fee, no subscription, no charge for a request that never closes.
• Prices are shown and charged in US dollars. Your bank may add its own conversion charge; that is between you and them.
• Each party handles its own taxes on its own income. We do not give tax advice. Stripe may require tax details from creators as part of onboarding.

9. Payments

• Buyers pay by card through Stripe Checkout. No card details ever touch Clearable— they are entered on Stripe’s page and held by Stripe.
• Creators are paid through Stripe Connect Express. You accept Stripe’s connected-account terms and complete Stripe’s identity checks directly with Stripe; payout timing follows your Stripe payout schedule. Until Stripe enables charges on your account, buyers cannot pay you — we block the payment rather than take money we cannot pass on.

10. Refunds, cancellations and chargebacks

• A refund voids the clearance. If the payment is returned, the permission ends with it: the buyer no longer has the rights the agreement granted and must stop using the sound in the released song.
• A voided agreement is marked void and kept for the audit trail, never deleted. If a deal needs correcting, we void it and reissue a fresh one.
• A chargeback is handled the same way. We may contest it with the audit record, void the clearance, and recover the amount from the creator’s balance where the money has already been paid out.

11. Acceptable use

• Clear only rights you actually hold, and claim only rights you actually hold.
• No false ownership claims, no impersonating another creator, no fabricated statistics or doctored screenshots.
• Do not use Clearable for unlawful material, or to launder a right you know is disputed.
• Do not abuse the request, invite or report forms, and do not attempt to defeat rate limits, scrape the site or reach data that is not yours.
• Do not treat someone else’s tracking link as your own.

12. Rights claims

If a sound on Clearable uses music you own, or you need to file a DMCA takedown, use the report form. Every report is read by a person. We may suspend a creator while we investigate, we may void and refund affected clearances, and we may pass your report to the creator concerned. Report only rights you actually hold — knowingly false claims have legal consequences.

13. Suspension and termination

We can suspend an account pending a rights investigation, or for suspected fraud or breach of these terms. While an account is suspended, new clearances against it are blocked and payments to it are stopped. Agreements already signed stay valid unless they are separately voided. You can stop using Clearable whenever you like; we keep the clearance, payment and agreement records we are required to keep.

14. Availability

The service is provided as it is, without any promise of uninterrupted availability. We depend on Stripe, Supabase, Resend and Vercel, and an outage at any of them is an outage here.

15. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows: Clearable is not liable for the underlying rights in any sound, for either party’s breach of a clearance, or for indirect, incidental or consequential loss including lost revenue, lost streams or takedowns. Our total liability for any claim relating to a clearance is capped at the platform fees we actually received on that clearance. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including your mandatory rights as a consumer.

16. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top changes when we do, and continued use after that means you accept the new version. This does not touch an agreement you have already signed: those are frozen by their content hash at the version you signed, and change only by reissue.

17. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by [Governing law — fill before launch], and disputes about them go to the courts of that place. This clause covers your relationship with Clearable. The per-clearance agreement between a creator and a buyer carries its own terms.

18. Contact

info@clearable.io. Also see our Privacy Policy.