Draft — pending solicitor review. These pages are a working draft to get terms in place quickly. They have not yet been reviewed by a solicitor and should not be relied on before that review is complete, particularly the Terms & Conditions, IP & Licensing and Refund & Cancellation sections below.
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These Terms & Conditions ("Terms") govern your use of the Penned & Pressed website and service (the "Service"), operated by [Legal company name] (company number [Company registration number], registered office [Registered office address]) ("we", "us", "our"). By creating an account or placing an order, you agree to these Terms.
We provide a service through which you submit lyrics you have written, purchase a production package, and receive two original song productions created from those lyrics by our production team. You may select one song to take forward, request edits to it, and choose to release it for worldwide digital distribution.
You must provide accurate information when creating an account and keep your login details secure. You're responsible for all activity that happens under your account.
See IP & Licensing below for what you own, what we own, and what you're free to do with your finished track.
You must not submit lyrics that are unlawful, defamatory, hateful, obscene, or that infringe someone else's rights. We may refuse to produce, edit, or release a track, and may suspend or terminate your account, if we reasonably believe your content breaches this section.
See Distribution & Release Terms below.
See our Refund & Cancellation Policy below, which forms part of these Terms.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total liability to you arising out of or in connection with the Service is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose. We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses, including loss of profits, revenue, or anticipated savings. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.
We may suspend or terminate your account for a material breach of these Terms, including a breach of Section 6. You may close your account at any time by contacting us; this does not entitle you to a refund for work already completed.
We may update these Terms from time to time. We'll post the updated Terms on this page and update the "last updated" date; continued use of the Service after a change means you accept the new Terms.
These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales will have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, without prejudice to any mandatory consumer protections in your country of residence.
Questions about these Terms? Contact us — get in touch.
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You retain all ownership and copyright in the lyrics you submit. By submitting lyrics, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable licence to reproduce, adapt, record and incorporate your lyrics into the songs we produce for you, and to distribute and exploit those songs worldwide as set out in these Terms.
All other rights in the songs we produce — including the musical composition, arrangement, and the sound recording (master) — are owned exclusively by [Legal company name]. This means that, other than your lyrics, you do not own the finished song, the underlying composition, or the master recording, whether or not you have paid for the package or released the track.
This isn't a generic custom-song hand-off: we register and release every track to the public worldwide — the ISRC and rights-society registration, the ongoing distributor relationship, and the liability of being the party of record on the release all sit with us. That's closer to a record-label deal, where the label owns the master because the label carries the release and its risk, than a simple work-for-hire production job. Your words are always yours to take anywhere else; we're only ever talking about the specific recording we make.
[Confirm: does the customer receive any ongoing royalty share from streaming/distribution revenue, or does the company retain 100% of any such revenue? This draft currently assumes the company keeps all revenue, consistent with owning the composition and master outright.]
We grant you a licence to be credited as the lyricist on the release, to stream and personally enjoy the finished track, and to share links to it (for example on social media) for non-commercial purposes. You may not otherwise reproduce, sub-license, sell, or commercially exploit the recording or composition without our prior written consent.
You confirm that the lyrics you submit are your own original work (or that you have all necessary rights to submit them), and that they do not infringe any third party's copyright or other rights. You agree to indemnify us against any claim, loss or cost arising from a breach of this warranty.
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This section explains what happens when you release a track through Penned & Pressed.
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This policy explains your right to cancel an order and when refunds are available. It should be read alongside our Terms & Conditions.
Under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, you normally have 14 days to cancel an order for a full refund. Because our Service involves bespoke, personalised production work that begins as soon as you pay, this 14-day right ends early once production starts, in line with the Regulations' exception for personalised/bespoke goods and digital content supplied with your consent. In practice, this means:
An extra edit round is non-refundable once our production team has started work on the requested changes. If you change your mind before work starts, contact us and we'll refund it in full.
Because this is a creative, subjective product, "I don't like the style" is not on its own grounds for a refund once production has started — that's what the free-text edit process is for. A refund is available if we fail to deliver the service you paid for (for example, we don't deliver the two songs at all, or fail to act on a valid edit request).
Contact us with your order details. We'll confirm whether you're eligible and, if so, process the refund to your original payment method within [X] business days.
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[Legal company name] ("we", "us", "our") is the data controller for personal data collected through this website and Service.
We share personal data with third parties who help us run the Service, including:
We do not sell your personal data.
Because we distribute music worldwide, some of your data (for example, the lyrics and metadata for a released track) will necessarily be transferred to and processed in other countries by distribution platforms. Where we transfer personal data outside the UK/EEA, we put appropriate safeguards in place as required by UK GDPR.
We keep account and order data for as long as your account is active and for a reasonable period afterwards to meet our legal and accounting obligations. [Confirm specific retention periods.]
Under UK GDPR, you have the right to access, correct, delete, or restrict our use of your personal data, to receive a copy of it in a portable format, and to object to certain processing. To exercise any of these rights, contact us. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
This Service is not directed at children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children.
We may update this policy from time to time; the "last updated" date at the top will always reflect the latest version.
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Cookies are small files stored on your device. We use:
You can control or delete cookies through your browser settings, and where required we'll ask for your consent to non-essential cookies via a cookie banner when you first visit.
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We respect the intellectual property rights of others and expect our users to do the same.
If you believe content on our Service or a track we've distributed infringes your copyright, send us a written notice including:
We will review valid notices and may remove or disable access to the material and, where appropriate, suspend the responsible account. The affected user may submit a counter-notice if they believe the material was removed in error; we'll follow a similar process to evaluate it.
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We want Penned & Pressed to be usable by as many people as possible, and we aim to meet WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines across the site.
If you find any part of the site difficult to use, please tell us and we'll do our best to help and to fix the underlying issue.
[Add specifics once an accessibility review has been done, e.g. keyboard navigation, screen-reader support, colour contrast.]