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Terms of Service

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These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and [Legal entity name], doing business as Royalty Detective ("Royalty Detective," "we," "us"), based in Cooper City, Florida, USA. They cover your use of royaltydetective.com (the "Site"), our free scan and waitlist, and the basic framework for our paid services. Please read them. By using the Site or signing up, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy.

Contact: legal@royaltydetective.com placeholder: inbox not set up yet

1. The short version

We audit how your songs and recordings are registered and help you fix the paperwork so the societies pay you directly. You approve every filing.
We are not your publisher, administrator, collection society, collection agency or lawyer. We never take your rights, and we never receive, hold or handle your money: societies keep paying you directly.
The free scan costs nothing. Paid services (Deep Audits, fix support, Flat Fix, monitoring, manager plans) will be covered by a separate Engagement & Success Fee Agreement that you sign before any paid work starts.
Our optional success fee is 15% of back pay paid to you within 12 months after a fix you approved. If no back pay arrives, you owe nothing, and we never take a cut of your future royalties. Prefer no success fee? Choose the Flat Fix package instead.
We can't guarantee we'll find anything or that any society will pay.

2. What we are, and what we are not

Royalty Detective reviews registration data (for example at performing rights organizations, The MLC, SoundExchange and distributors), identifies possible problems such as unregistered works, conflicting writer or split information, missing shares and duplicate registrations, and prepares fixes for you to approve.

We are not:

a music publisher or publishing administrator: we don't own, co-own, control or administer your copyrights;
a performing rights organization, collective management organization or collection society;
a collection agency: we don't demand or collect payments for you. Royalties are paid by the societies directly to you or your existing payees, and we never receive, hold or route your money;
a law firm, accountant or financial adviser. Nothing we provide is legal, tax or financial advice, and no attorney-client or fiduciary relationship is created. For legal questions, such as disputes with co-writers or contract interpretation, talk to a qualified professional.

We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting for BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, GMR, SOCAN, The MLC, SoundExchange or any distributor. Their names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used only to describe the services we check.

3. How the work gets done: AI-assisted research

Much of our work is performed by AI software agents: building your catalog, matching identifiers (like ISRC, ISWC and IPI), cross-checking registries and drafting fixes. Reports are prepared with AI-assisted research against public registry data. You should confirm the findings before filing, and no filing is made without your explicit approval. AI tools can make mistakes, so each finding includes the evidence it's based on, and you should review findings before approving any action.

4. Eligibility and accounts

You must be at least 18 (or the age of majority where you live) to use our services. If you're younger, a parent or legal guardian must sign up and agree to these Terms for you.
If you sign up for someone else (for example, as a manager for an artist), you confirm you're authorized to act for them and to share their information with us, and these Terms bind both of you.
Give us accurate information and keep it up to date. If we create an account for you, keep your login secure and tell us promptly about any unauthorized use. You're responsible for activity under your account.

5. The free scan and waitlist

The free scan is free. It uses the information you give us and public registration data to produce a preliminary view, such as a gap score and sample findings. Because it's limited to public data, it may miss problems or flag issues that turn out not to be real. Joining the waitlist doesn't oblige you to buy anything, and doesn't oblige us to offer you a paid service. We may change, limit or end the free scan at any time.

6. Paid services and the Engagement & Success Fee Agreement

Our paid services are:

Service	Price (USD)
Deep Audit, up to 25 works	$149 one-time (founding price: $99 for our first 200 Deep Audit customers)
Deep Audit, up to 100 works	$299 one-time, plus $2 for each additional work
Success fee (with Deep Audit)	15% of Back Pay Received within 12 months after a fix you approved; nothing if none
Flat Fix (proposed pricing), up to 25 works	$399 one-time: Deep Audit + ready-to-file fix packets, no success fee
Flat Fix (proposed pricing), up to 100 works	$699 one-time: Deep Audit + ready-to-file fix packets, no success fee
Monitoring, Solo	$12/month or $99/year
Monitoring, Producer	$29/month
Manager plan	$99/month for up to 5 artists, plus $15/month per additional artist

Before any paid work starts, you'll sign a separate Engagement & Success Fee Agreement that sets out the scope, the accounts or documents we'll access, the success-fee calculation (if any), invoicing and payment details. If the Engagement & Success Fee Agreement conflicts with these Terms, the Engagement & Success Fee Agreement controls for those paid services. Prices may change, but a change won't affect a Deep Audit you've already paid for or a success-fee rate in an agreement you've already signed. Taxes may apply.

6.1 How the success fee works

It applies only if you choose it (it doesn't apply to Flat Fix), and only to back pay (royalties for past periods) that the society pays directly to you or your payees after a fix we identified, and that you receive within 12 months after you approve that fix ("Back Pay Received").
It does not apply to future royalties. Once a fix is in place, ongoing royalties are 100% yours.
We invoice after the money arrives, with the evidence that links the payment to our fix (for example, the statement line). How that evidence works will be set out in the Engagement & Success Fee Agreement.
To keep it simple, we'll ask you to keep a payment card on file for success-fee invoices, as described in the Engagement & Success Fee Agreement. We'll always send the invoice and its supporting evidence before charging.
If no back pay arrives, you owe no success fee.

6.2 What our services don't cover

State-held unclaimed property. Our services and fees do not cover money or property held by any state unclaimed-property program (for example, the Florida Department of Financial Services). If our intake or audit suggests money is held by a state program, we'll tell you and point you to the state's free official claim process. We won't charge any fee related to it.
Legal documents and disputes. We don't draft split sheets, split agreements, assignments, demand letters or other legal documents for you, and we don't advise on ownership or split disputes. We can show you conflicting registration records; for anything legal, please consult a music attorney.

6.3 Subscriptions, renewal and cancellation

Monitoring and manager plans renew automatically (monthly or yearly) until you cancel. We'll show the price and renewal terms before you subscribe and, where required by law, send a reminder before an annual renewal. You can cancel anytime from your account or by emailing us; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and you keep access until then. We don't provide partial-period refunds except where required by law.

6.4 Refunds

Deep Audit and Flat Fix: if we can't deliver your audit report (for example, because we can't access enough data to complete it), we'll refund the audit fee in full. Once the report has been delivered, the fee isn't refundable, except where required by law. A report that finds no problems still counts as delivered.
Success fee: if a payment we invoiced against is later reversed or clawed back by the society, tell us with the evidence and we'll credit or refund the matching success fee.
Nothing in these Terms limits any refund rights you have under applicable consumer law.

7. Your responsibilities

Accurate information. Give us accurate catalog, credit and split information. Our findings are only as good as the data we're given and can see.
Rights and authority. Submit only catalogs, accounts and data that you own or are authorized to manage. Don't submit someone else's catalog without their permission.
You approve every filing. We'll prepare fixes for you. We will never sign, submit or file anything in your name, or contact a society, publisher or co-writer on your behalf, without your explicit approval for that specific action.
Co-writers and other rights holders. Some fixes affect other people's shares. You're responsible for resolving split agreements with your collaborators. We can show you the conflicting records but can't decide who's right, and we don't draft split agreements; consult a music attorney.

8. Account access

Paid audits may require statement exports or access to your society, MLC, SoundExchange or distributor accounts. We'll ask for read-only or delegated access wherever the platform allows it, and prefer exports to passwords. You can revoke access at any time. Exactly what we access, why and for how long will be set out in the Engagement & Success Fee Agreement and our Privacy Policy (which will be updated before we collect this kind of data). You're responsible for complying with each platform's own terms when granting us access.

9. No guarantee of findings or payments

We can't promise that we'll find any issues, that our findings are complete, or that any fix will result in payment. Societies, The MLC, SoundExchange, distributors and other third parties make their own decisions on registrations, disputes and payments, on their own timelines (often months or quarters), and may reject or delay claims. Any estimate or timeline we give is a good-faith estimate, not a promise.

10. Intellectual property

Your stuff stays yours. You keep all rights in your music, your catalog data, statements and other information you provide ("Your Data"). Using our services never transfers any rights in your songs or recordings to us.
License to provide the service. You give us a limited, non-exclusive license to use Your Data only to provide, support and improve our services for you, as described in our Privacy Policy. This license ends when you delete your data or end your use of the services, except as needed to meet legal obligations or finish work you've approved.
Our stuff. The Site, our software, branding, report templates and methods belong to us. Reports we deliver to you are yours to use for your own purposes, including sharing them with your team, lawyers, co-writers and societies.
Marketing. We will only use findings from your audit, even anonymized, in our marketing or case studies with your prior written consent.
Feedback. If you send us suggestions, we may use them without any obligation to you.

11. Acceptable use

Don't:

scrape, crawl or bulk-download the Site or our reports, or use them to build a competing database;
try to break, overload or bypass our security, rate limits or bot protections;
submit false information, impersonate anyone, or submit catalogs or accounts you're not authorized to manage;
use our services to file fraudulent or knowingly incorrect claims;
break any law or anyone else's rights while using our services.

We may suspend or end access for anyone who does.

12. Third-party services

Our services rely on third parties, such as societies, registries, distributors, payment processors and hosting providers (see our Privacy Policy). We don't control them and aren't responsible for their websites, data, decisions or outages. Their own terms apply to your relationship with them.

13. Disclaimers

Except as expressly stated in these Terms or in an Engagement & Success Fee Agreement, the Site and services are provided "as is" and "as available." To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy and non-infringement. Some places don't allow these disclaimers, so they may not all apply to you.

14. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows:

we aren't liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost royalties or lost data, even if we were told they were possible; and
our total liability for any claim relating to the Site or services is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose (or $100 if you haven't paid us anything).

These limits don't apply to liability that can't be limited by law, such as for fraud or gross negligence where the law prohibits limitation.

15. Indemnity

If you use our services in breach of these Terms, for example by submitting a catalog you weren't authorized to manage or false information, and a third party brings a claim against us as a result, you agree to cover our reasonable losses and costs from that claim, to the extent the law allows.

16. Termination

You can stop using the Site and ask us to delete your waitlist information at any time (see our Privacy Policy). Paid services end as described in your Engagement & Success Fee Agreement. We may suspend or end your access if you breach these Terms or if we stop offering a service. Success fees owed on Back Pay Received within the 12-month window after fixes approved before termination remains payable as set out in your Engagement & Success Fee Agreement. Sections that by their nature should survive (such as intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity and disputes) survive termination.

17. Disputes

Talk to us first. If you have a problem, email legal@royaltydetective.com. We'll try in good faith to resolve it informally within 30 days.
Courts. If we can't resolve it, either of us may bring a claim in small claims court if it qualifies, or otherwise in the state or federal courts located in [County], Florida, and we both consent to those courts' jurisdiction.
Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Florida and applicable US federal law, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. [Placeholder: to be confirmed by counsel.] If you're a consumer living elsewhere, you may also have the protection of mandatory laws where you live.

18. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as our services change. We'll post the new version here and update the "Last updated" date. If a change is material, we'll notify people on our list or customers by email before it takes effect. Changes won't apply retroactively, and they won't change a signed Engagement & Success Fee Agreement unless you agree.

19. General

These Terms, our Privacy Policy and any Engagement & Success Fee Agreement are the entire agreement between us about their subject. If any part is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. Our not enforcing a provision isn't a waiver. You may not transfer these Terms without our consent; we may transfer them in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets.

20. Contact us

[Legal entity name] (Royalty Detective)
Cooper City, Florida, USA
Email: legal@royaltydetective.com