Terms of
service

PatchBay is a network for real-life musicians. You publish a profile — gear, skills, availability, sound — and connect with other musicians to work together. PatchBay is the introduction and the workspace, not a party to your deals: agreements, payments, and deliverables are between you and the musician you work with.

Zero commission. PatchBay takes no cut of anything you earn through it. If you pay another musician, only the payment provider's own fees apply. That is a product principle, not a promotional rate.

The offer. The first 300 activated accounts get every PatchBay feature free, permanently. We may close the offer twelve months after launch even if slots remain; everyone who claimed a slot before it closes keeps it, for good.

Activation. A founding slot is claimed when onboarding completes — a profile with the three core blocks (gear, skills, availability) filled in. An email signup alone holds nothing. Slots are assigned server-side, in order, timestamped and auditable.

One slot per person. One account per natural person. Founding status is tied to you, not to an account row, and is non-transferable and non-sellable. Duplicate or sockpuppet accounts created to hoard slots forfeit founding status on all of them.

Individuals only. The founding offer is for individual musicians and creators. Studios and commercial facilities cannot claim founding slots; a studio's employee can be a founding member as an individual artist.

What "free forever" covers. All features, at no cost, for the life of the service. It does not mean unlimited resources: fair-use limits on storage and bandwidth apply to everyone — currently 20 MB per file in chat and a 500 MB per-account storage quota. Quotas may evolve, but founding members always get at least the standard tier's limits at no cost.

Dormancy. A founding account inactive for a continuous 24 months can be flagged. Status is restored on return; the flag exists so slots can't be squatted, not to take anything from working musicians.

Voided slots. Slots obtained through automation, referral fraud, or exploitation of bugs can be voided and reassigned to the next legitimate users in line.

Once the founding offer ends, joining PatchBay costs a one-time fee — you buy your profile like you'd buy an app, and it's yours. An optional subscription will cover remote-work tools: verified file delivery and, later, online payment between musicians. Prices will be published before the founding offer closes.

Three things will not change: viewing any profile and browsing the network stay free for everyone, signed in or not; PatchBay never takes a commission; and founding members never pay the joining fee.

You keep all rights to the music and material you upload. You grant PatchBay only the license needed to host it and display it to the people you share it with.

Upload only what you have the rights to. Copyright complaints go to report@patchbay.city: we review, remove when warranted, and give the uploader an appeal route. Repeat infringement closes the account.

Deliverables you exchange in chat belong to whatever agreement you made with your collaborator — PatchBay does not arbitrate ownership disputes.

Your exact location is never stored. You give a city and a coarse area; if you place yourself on the map, the pin is blurred by roughly a kilometre before it is saved, and only the blurred point exists anywhere in the system. You can remove the pin at any time.

The same rules for everyone, founding members included: no spam, no scraping, no reselling access, no impersonation, no harassment. Requests exist so nobody can message you without your accept. Breach can suspend or close an account, with the same appeal path for founders and non-founders alike. Appeals: hello@patchbay.city.

If PatchBay is ever discontinued or fundamentally restructured, founding members are told first and treated best — but "forever" is scoped to the life of the service. We put this here in plain sight rather than burying it.

hello@patchbay.city — questions and appeals.

report@patchbay.city — copyright and abuse reports.