Terms of Service

Chords.fm is software that analyzes an audio recording you provide and returns a transcription of its musical content — typically chords, lyric timings, a beat grid, and — as an experimental feature — a polyphonic guitar tab. Chords.fm is a tool, like a tuner, a DAW plug-in, or a transcription assistant. We do not host or distribute a library of songs and we do not serve other users’ audio to you.

You must be at least 13 years old (or the minimum age of digital consent in your jurisdiction) to create an account. You are responsible for activity that happens under your account. Sign in uses Google or an email magic link provided by Supabase Auth; keep your email inbox secure.

When you upload audio to Chords.fm, you represent and warrant that:

• You own the recording, or you have the right — by license, permission, or applicable exception under copyright law (for example, a limited personal/educational fair-use analysis) — to process it through a transcription tool;
• You are using the resulting transcription for your own personal, non-commercial study, practice, performance preparation, or educational use, and not to redistribute someone else’s recording;
• You will not upload audio that is unlawful, infringing of third- party rights, or that you have been instructed to stop using.

You retain ownership of your audio. By uploading, you grant Chords.fm a limited, non-exclusive license to store, process, and analyze that audio solely to provide the transcription service to you and to keep your transcription retrievable in your library. We do not share your audio with other users and we do not sell it.

Audio files you upload are stored in private, per-user buckets. Signed URLs used to hand audio to the transcription worker expire within an hour. After a transcription finishes, Chords.fm deletes the source audio from its servers. We keep the resulting chord chart or tab (which is what you came for); the original recording is not retained.

Opt-in retention for guitar tabs.Guitar-tab mode is labelled experimental, and the quickest way to improve it is by comparing our output to the real recordings that produced it. So the upload form for guitar tabs — and only the upload form for guitar tabs — has a separate, unchecked-by-default checkbox labelled “Let Chords.fm use this audio to improve our guitar-tab results (you can delete anytime).” If you actively tick that box for a given guitar-tab upload, Chords.fm skips the post-render delete for that file and may use it to evaluate and improve the guitar-tab software that powers the service. Chord-chart uploads have no such checkbox and are always deleted after rendering. You can see every retained file under your account at /account, and you can delete any or all of it there at any time. Revocation takes effect immediately: the file is removed from our storage and the tab is flagged so the retention flag won’t re-apply on a re-render. Retention is always per-upload — unchecking the box on a later upload has no effect on earlier files, which stay retained until you purge them from /account.

Even when you opt in, retained audio is used only to improve Chords.fm itself. We do not share your audio with other users, we do not sell it, and we do not publish it. Audio you havenot opted in to retain is deleted after rendering and is never used for improvement work.

The transcription Chords.fm returns to you — chord symbols, lyric timings, beat grid, MIDI, ASCII tab — is generated by our software from the audio you provided. You may use these outputs for personal study, private practice, and your own educational purposes.

The underlying musical composition (the song itself) may still be subject to copyrights owned by songwriters, publishers, and collecting societies. Nothing in these Terms grants you a license to reproduce, perform publicly, or distribute someone else’s composition. If you plan to share, publish, or perform transcriptions of third-party songs publicly, it is your responsibility to clear the appropriate rights (for example, via a print-license or display-license from the publisher or rights administrator).

Chords.fm is a private convenience tool for your own creative practice. It is not a publishing platform, a social network, or a catalog. Concretely:

• We do not download audio from third-party platforms for you.
• We do not host a catalog of songs or stream other users’ uploaded audio.
• We do not sell, publish, or share your uploaded audio.
• We do not provide any feature to make a transcription public, to share it with other Chords.fm users, or to distribute it from within the Service. Your library is visible only to you.
• We retain source audio only for the brief window needed to generate your transcription, after which it is deleted. The one exception is a guitar-tab upload where you ticked the opt-in retention checkbox on the upload form, in which case the file is kept until you purge it from /account (see §3).

Chords.fm offers a free tier with a monthly transcription quota and a paid Pro plan that removes the quota and unlocks export features. Billing is handled by Stripe. Pro renews monthly until you cancel from the billing portal; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current period. Transcriptions you created on Pro remain in your library after cancellation, but new creations revert to the free tier’s quota.

You agree not to:

• Upload audio you have no right to process, or use Chords.fm to circumvent a rights holder’s technical protection measures;
• Use Chords.fm to harass, defame, or harm others; to process illegal content; or to violate applicable law;
• Abuse the service (e.g. automated scraping of your own account, reselling transcriptions, or reverse-engineering our systems beyond what applicable law allows).

We may suspend or terminate accounts that breach these terms, and we may remove content if we receive a properly formed takedown notice under applicable law. Consistent with 17 U.S.C. § 512(i)(1)(A), we maintain a policy of terminating, in appropriate circumstances, the accounts of users who are repeat infringers of copyright.

If you believe audio you own has been uploaded to Chords.fm without your authorization, send a notice containing the information required by 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3) to dmca@chords.fm. Because audio is only accessible to the uploading account, we will also need enough identifying information to locate the file (e.g. the account email it was uploaded under, if known).

If content of yours has been removed in response to a takedown notice and you believe the removal was in error or misidentified your material, you may send a counter-notification under 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3) to the same address. Knowingly submitting a false claim or a false counter-notification may subject you to liability for damages under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f).

The transcriptions Chords.fm produces are the output of statistical analysis and will contain mistakes. They are provided on an “as-is” basis for study and practice. Chords.fm makes no warranty that a transcription is accurate, complete, or suitable for performance or publication, and disclaims all implied warranties to the fullest extent permitted by law.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Chords.fm’s aggregate liability for claims arising out of or relating to the service is limited to the amount you paid Chords.fm in the twelve months before the claim arose. Chords.fm is not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages.

We may update these Terms as the product evolves. Material changes will be reflected by updating the “Last updated” date above; we will also try to notify active users by email. Continuing to use Chords.fm after an update means you accept the revised Terms.

Questions about these Terms? Email hello@chords.fm.