Terms of Service

• You must be at least 13 years old to use the Site.
• Artists must be 18 or older to enter, or have a parent or legal guardian enter on their behalf and agree to these Terms.
• You are responsible for keeping the information you give us accurate and up to date.
• You agree to use the Site only in ways permitted by these Terms and applicable law.

Submitting an entry, you represent and warrant that:

• You own or control all rights to the music, master recording, video, lyrics, beats, samples, performances, and footage in your submission, or have all necessary licenses and permissions, including written permission from each featured performer, producer, and rights holder.
• If your beat or instrumental was licensed from a producer or beat marketplace, that license expressly permits commercial use, public performance, and online distribution of the type contemplated by the Competition (including reposts on our social-media channels). Beat licenses that are exclusive to another artist, expired, or limited to non-commercial use do not satisfy this requirement.
• Any third-party samples or interpolations are either cleared in writing by the rights holder or fall within a recognized exception you can document on request.
• Your submission does not infringe any third party's copyright, trademark, right of publicity, privacy, or other rights, and every individual depicted or audibly performing in your submission has consented to that use.
• Your submission is your own original work and genuinely performed by you. You have accurately and truthfully answered the AI-disclosure question on the entry form; if your song's vocals, instrumentals, or lyrics were generated or substantially assisted by AI, you selected "Yes" on that question. Your answer to that question is a legally binding representation to SongBattle, and SongBattle relies on it to (a) display or omit an "AI-assisted" badge on your profile, (b) evaluate any complaint about your entry, and (c) qualify or disqualify your entry. Submitting an entry with an untruthful AI-disclosure answer is a material breach of these Terms and is grounds for immediate disqualification, prize forfeiture, prize return, and any remedies described elsewhere in these Terms.
• Your submission does not contain hate speech, harassment, threats of violence, sexually explicit material, sexually explicit material involving minors, or anything else unlawful.
• All facts in your submission (artist name, social links, bio, etc.) are accurate and not misleading.

You keep ownership of everything you submit. By entering, you grant SongBattle the following limited license to your submission and to your artist name, photo, likeness, voice, biography, and social handles:

• On-site hosting (indefinite). A non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid-up, sublicensable license to host, store, display, perform, stream, and adapt (e.g. cropping or re-encoding) your submission on the Site and on the Sponsor’s owned-and-operated channels, including for archival purposes for past Competitions, for as long as the Site continues to operate.
• Off-site promotion (Competition window + 2 years). A non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid-up, sublicensable license to reproduce, display, stream, and redistribute your submission on third-party platforms (e.g. social media, advertising, press, partner sites) for the purpose of promoting the Competition and the Sponsor’s services. This off-site license expires two (2) years after the end of the Competition you entered, after which Sponsor will not initiate new off-site promotional uses (already- distributed copies may persist on third-party platforms).
• Winner publicity. If you win a prize, the license above for your winning entry, name, likeness, and the fact that you won extends for an additional five (5) years for the purpose of identifying you as a past winner. Winners may be required to sign a separate publicity release confirming this before any prize is paid.

You may withdraw your entry from on-site display at any time by emailing legal@songbattle.co; we will remove it from the Site within a reasonable period. Withdrawal does not require recall of copies already distributed, published, embedded, or cached on third-party platforms.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, you waive any moral rights or rights of attribution and integrity in your submission for purposes of the uses above. The licenses in this Section are granted in exchange for the opportunity to participate in the Competition and the promotional value the Site provides, and are irrevocable for the duration of their respective terms.

• The entry fee (if any) for the current Competition is shown on the Enter page and is charged at the time of submission.
• Entry fees are non-refundable once your entry has been approved and posted.
• If your entry is rejected for non-compliance with these Terms, we will refund the entry fee in full.
• You agree to contact us at info@songbattle.co before disputing a charge with your card issuer. Initiating a chargeback or payment dispute without first contacting us, or initiating one in bad faith, is grounds for disqualification and may result in a permanent ban from future Competitions.
• Payment processing is handled by third-party processors and is subject to their terms. We don't store full card numbers ourselves.

• Voting is free. Each device may cast one ballot per Competition round, with the number of artists per ballot shown on the Vote page.
• Vote manipulation of any kind — bots, scripts, paid vote farms, coordinated multi-device voting — is grounds for immediate disqualification of the benefiting artist without refund.
• We may remove votes we determine to be fraudulent or anomalous, even after the Competition ends, and adjust standings accordingly.

• Prizes are described on the Site and in the Official Contest Rules. No cash equivalent or transfer except at our discretion.
• Before any prize is paid, potential winners must verify identity and eligibility and may be required to sign an affidavit of eligibility and a publicity/liability release.
• Winners must provide a completed IRS Form W-9. We will issue a Form 1099 and/or withhold amounts where required by law.
• Winners are solely responsible for all federal, state, and local taxes on their prize.
• Prizes are normally paid by ACH, PayPal, or another mutually agreed method within 14 days after the winner has completed all required documentation.
• If a potential winner can't be contacted, fails to complete required documentation within a reasonable time, is found ineligible, or declines the prize, the prize may be forfeited and awarded to the next eligible entrant.
• Additional Competition mechanics are in the Official Contest Rules. If those Rules conflict with these Terms on a Competition matter, the Rules control.

You agree not to:

• Use bots, scrapers, or automated tools to interact with the Site, except for normal browser fetching.
• Attempt to bypass our anti-cheating measures, rate limits, or watch-to-vote gates.
• Submit malware, spam, or content designed to disrupt the Site.
• Impersonate another person or artist, or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity.
• Reverse-engineer, copy, frame, scrape, or resell any part of the Site.
• Use the Site to violate any law or infringe anyone's rights.

You understand and agree that once your entry is approved, your artist name, song title, genre, bio, video, photo (if uploaded), and any social handles you provide become publicly visible on the Site and may be shared by us in promotional contexts as described in Section 3. Don’t submit information you don’t want to be public.

The Site embeds third-party content (e.g. YouTube videos) and may contain links to third-party sites. Third-party content is governed by the third party’s terms; we don’t control and aren’t responsible for it. Reaching a third-party site or service from the Site is at your own risk.

Right to remove or refuse. The Sponsor may refuse, edit, hide, take down, or decline to publish any entry, comment, or other content at any time, with or without notice, in its sole discretion — including for suspected rule violations, intellectual- property complaints, anti-fraud reasons, copyright or DMCA notices, quality concerns, or any reason the Sponsor judges to be in the interest of the Site, the Competition, other entrants, or voters. Approval and publication of an entry does not waive the Sponsor’s right to remove it later.

Disqualification and termination. We may disqualify any artist, invalidate any votes, suspend, or terminate your access to the Site at any time if we reasonably believe you’ve broken these Terms, the Official Contest Rules, or applicable law. Refunds for removed paid entries are governed by Section 4; entries removed for cause (rule violation, infringement, fraud, or chargeback abuse) are not eligible for a refund.

Survival. Sections that by their nature should survive termination (including Sections 3, 6, 9, 11–18) will survive.

The Site is provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranties arising out of course of dealing or usage of trade. We do not guarantee that the Site will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, or that entering will lead to any particular outcome.

AI-generated content. SongBattle does not independently verify whether any submitted entry uses AI-generated vocals, instrumentals, lyrics, or other material. We rely exclusively on each entrant’s answer to the AI-disclosure question on the entry form (Section 2). We are not liable for any loss, damage, claim, or dispute arising from an entrant’s false, misleading, or omitted AI disclosure, including any resulting copyright, right-of-publicity, or training-data claim brought by a third party against the entrant. Our sole remedy on discovering an undisclosed AI-generated entry is to remove it, disqualify the entrant, recover any prize, and pursue the indemnity in Section 13.

To the maximum extent allowed by law, SongBattle, its owners, officers, employees, contractors, agents, and affiliates will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or business opportunity, arising out of or relating to the Site or the Competition, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. Our total aggregate liability for any claim relating to the Site or Competition is capped at the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose or (b) U.S. $100. Some jurisdictions don’t allow certain exclusions, so portions of this Section may not apply to you.

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless SongBattle and its owners, officers, employees, contractors, agents, and affiliates from any third-party claim, demand, loss, damage, or expense (including reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs) arising out of or related to: (a) your submission or any content you provide, including any claim of copyright, master-recording, sample-clearance, beat-license, trademark, right-of-publicity, or privacy infringement, and any claim by a featured performer, producer, or co-writer; (b) any breach of the representations and warranties in Section 2; (c) your use or misuse of the Site; (d) your violation of these Terms, the Official Contest Rules, or applicable law; (e) any misrepresentation by you; or (f) any claim arising from a false, misleading, or omitted AI-disclosure answer on the entry form — including any copyright, right-of-publicity, training-data, or contract claim brought against SongBattle by a third party in connection with material in your entry that was generated or substantially assisted by AI and that you did not disclose. We may assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter subject to indemnification by you, in which case you agree to cooperate with us in asserting any available defenses.

Please read this Section carefully. It limits the ways you can seek relief from us.

Agreement to arbitrate. You and SongBattle agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms, the Official Contest Rules, the Site, the Competition, or your relationship with SongBattle (a “Dispute”) will be resolved exclusively through final and binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, instead of in court. The Federal Arbitration Act governs the interpretation and enforcement of this Section.

Class-action waiver. You and SongBattle agree that each may bring claims against the other only in your or its individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person’s claims and may not preside over any form of class or representative proceeding. If this class-action waiver is found unenforceable, then the entirety of this Section 14 shall be null and void as to that Dispute.

Exceptions. This Section does not require arbitration of: (a) individual claims that qualify for small-claims court in the county of Prince George's County, Maryland (or, if outside the U.S., your local equivalent), so long as the claim stays in that court on an individual basis; or (b) actions seeking only injunctive or other equitable relief for alleged infringement or misappropriation of intellectual-property rights.

Informal resolution first. Before starting an arbitration, you agree to first send us a written notice of the Dispute, describing it and the relief sought, to legal@songbattle.co. The parties will then attempt in good faith to resolve the Dispute for at least 60 days before either may initiate arbitration.

Where, fees, and procedure. Arbitration will take place in Prince George's County, Maryland (or by phone/video where AAA permits), in English, and will be decided by a single arbitrator. The arbitrator may award the same remedies a court could on an individual basis. The AAA Consumer Rules govern fees; we will pay the portion of administrative and arbitrator fees that exceeds what you would have paid to file in court, except in cases the arbitrator finds frivolous.

30-day opt-out. You may opt out of this Section 14 by emailing us at legal@songbattle.co within 30 days of first accepting these Terms with the subject line “Arbitration Opt-Out” and including your name and the email you used. Opting out doesn’t affect any other part of these Terms.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Maryland and applicable U.S. federal law, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. For any Dispute not subject to arbitration under Section 14, you and SongBattle consent to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the state and federal courts located in Prince George's County, Maryland.

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we will update the “Last updated” date at the top of this page and, for material changes, take reasonable steps to notify you (e.g. an on-site banner or email to the address on file). Continuing to use the Site after a change means you accept the new Terms.

We may give notices to you by email to the address on file, by posting to the Site, or by any other reasonable method. You must give notices to us by email to legal@songbattle.co or by mail to the address on the About page.

• Severability — If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.
• Entire agreement — These Terms, together with the Official Contest Rules, Privacy Policy, and Copyright / DMCA Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us about the Site and supersede any prior agreements on the same subject.
• Assignment — You may not assign or transfer these Terms or any rights or obligations under them without our consent. We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, or by operation of law.
• No waiver — Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
• No agency — Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture, employment, or agency relationship.
• Headings — Section headings are for convenience only and do not affect interpretation.
• Export and trade compliance — You agree not to use the Site in violation of any applicable export-control or sanctions law.

Questions about these Terms? Email info@songbattle.co (general) or legal@songbattle.co (legal notices and arbitration matters).