Seller Agreement

1.This agreement#

This Seller Agreement is between you and Encore Music, Inc. (“Encore”, “we”, “us”). It applies when you list any work for sale or download on Encore, and it is in addition to our Terms of Service, which continue to apply to you. Where the two conflict on a matter of selling, this agreement controls.

2.Your relationship with Encore#

You are the seller of your work. Encore is the marketplace, and the merchant of record for the transaction. We take payment from the buyer in our own name and are responsible for the payment; you are responsible for the work, for having the right to sell it, and for what you say about it.

Nothing here makes us your employer, partner, joint venturer, or agent, and neither of us can bind the other. You decide what to release, what to charge within the rules below, and when to stop. We do not take ownership of your music, and we do not take a share of anything you earn away from Encore.

This agreement is not exclusive. You may sell the same work anywhere else.

3.Eligibility and payout setup#

You must be at least 18 years old. To list any work, whether for a price or for free, you must first complete payout setup, which is handled by Stripe and requires you to accept Stripe’s Connected Account Agreement and to complete their identity verification.

Stripe collects the identity information and tax forms that verification requires, and that information goes to Stripe directly. Encore never receives your government identifiers, your date of birth, your identity documents, or your bank account details.

Payouts are currently available to sellers whose bank account is in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area, Canada, or Switzerland.

You must give accurate information and keep it current. If your payout account becomes restricted or incomplete, clause 12 explains what happens to money earned in the meantime.

4.Your work and your rights#

You confirm that, for everything you list, you own or control all rights necessary to sell it and to grant the licences described here and in the Terms of Service — including rights in the recording, the underlying composition, the artwork, and any samples, contributions, or third-party material it contains.

You are responsible for paying anyone else entitled to a share of what you earn, including co-writers, publishers, featured performers, and collecting societies, except where you have set up a split on Encore and we pay that person directly.

If a rights dispute or takedown notice concerns your work, we may remove or disable it and may withhold related earnings until the dispute is resolved.

5.Pricing rules#

You set your own prices, in United States dollars, subject to two rules:

• A work is either free or priced at $0.99 or more. There is nothing in between. Below that, payment processing costs more than the sale is worth, and you would be paying to make it.
• The same floor applies to an individual track sold on its own, for the same reason — a track sale is its own transaction with its own fixed cost.

All prices on Encore are charged in United States dollars. Encore may show a buyer an approximate price in their own currency, which is an estimate only and never changes what is charged or what you earn.

6.Encore's fee#

Encore takes 15% of the price of each item sold. That is our fee for operating the marketplace, and it does not change with your sales volume, your country, or the buyer’s.

7.Payment processing costs#

Payment processing is deducted from your earnings. This is the fee our payment processor charges on the buyer’s payment, and it is deducted as the actual amount charged on your sale rather than as an estimate or an average.

At present that is typically 2.9% of the payment plus $0.30 for a domestic card, and around 4.4% plus $0.30 where the buyer’s card was issued outside the United States. These are our processor’s rates and can change. Because the fixed portion is charged per payment rather than per item, the cost attributable to your sale can vary depending on what else the buyer bought at the same time; where an order contains items from more than one seller, processing is divided between them in proportion to what each is owed.

What this means in practice is that you keep less than 85%, and how much less depends most on price. On a $9.99 album you receive about $7.90. On a $0.99 track you receive about $0.51, because the fixed $0.30 is a far larger share of a small sale. Your pricing screen shows your expected earnings before you publish.

8.Costs Encore absorbs#

We do not pass these on to you. They are ours:

• payment processing on any tax we are required to collect;
• the processing fee retained by our processor when we refund a buyer;
• the fee charged when a buyer disputes a payment;
• the cost of sending you a payout, and any monthly account fee attached to it;
• cross-border transfer costs where you are outside the United States; and
• currency conversion when your earnings are converted into your own currency.

9.Voluntary contributions from buyers#

A buyer may add a voluntary amount to an order to support the artists in it. It is optional for them, and it is never a condition of any purchase. A buyer may add between $1.00 and $200.00 to a single order.

Encore’s fee on a contribution is tiered, per artist, per order:

• Nothing on the portion up to half of what that buyer spent on your items in that order. You keep all of it.
• 15% on the portion above that, the same rate as an item.
• Nothing on any portion beyond $100 to you in a single order.

Where an order contains items from several artists, a contribution is divided between you in proportion to what the buyer spent with each of you, with a free item counted at $0.99 for that calculation only. Counting it that way is what lets a buyer support an artist whose release was free; it is never treated as a price, and your free release remains free.

Payment processing applies to a contribution as it does to the rest of the order, and a contribution is refunded with the order if the order is refunded.

10.Collaborators and splits#

You can set up splits so that other people receive a share of what a work earns. Where you do, Encore pays each of them their share directly, and their share is theirs rather than yours — it is not routed through you and does not appear in your balance.

Encore’s fee and payment processing are applied to each person’s share in proportion to that share, so nobody can be left owing money on a sale. You are responsible for the accuracy of a split you create and for having the agreement of the people named in it.

11.When you get paid#

Your earnings from a sale are recorded when the buyer’s payment succeeds, and become available to withdraw seven days after that. The delay exists because a payment can still be reversed in that window.

You must have at least $25.00 available to withdraw, and a withdrawal takes your whole available balance. There is no amount to choose. The minimum exists because sending a payout has a fixed cost that Encore absorbs, and below that figure it costs more to send than the payout is worth.

You are paid in the currency your payout account settles in. Where that is not United States dollars, each sale is converted at the rate applying when it settles, so your balance in your own currency is fixed at that point and does not move afterwards. Because each sale converts at its own rate, your lifetime earnings in dollars will not correspond to your local balance at any single rate.

Payouts are sent to the bank account you connect through Stripe, and arrival times are set by Stripe and your bank.

12.Earnings we cannot pay you yet#

Where we cannot pay your share because your payout account is incomplete, restricted, or closed, we will hold that amount for you and transfer it once your account can receive funds. Held earnings are yours, are not Encore’s revenue, and do not expire through inaction on our part.

We will tell you when a share is held and what to do about it, and we will follow up if it stays held. If we cannot reach you, or your account remains unable to receive funds, we will handle the amount as required by applicable unclaimed-property law, which may mean reporting it to your state or equivalent authority.

It will not be paid to anyone else. An unclaimed share does not revert to the seller of the release it came from, and it is never kept by Encore.

A sale is never blocked because someone in it cannot be paid. The buyer completes their purchase, everyone who can be paid is paid, and the remaining share is recorded as owed to you.

13.Refunds#

Buyers can ask for a refund within 30 days of a purchase, as long as they haven’t downloaded it or played it past its free plays (see Refunds in our Terms of Service). Encore decides each request against those terms. A refund reverses your earnings for that sale as set out below; if you have already withdrawn them, your balance is carried forward as set out in Negative balances.

Where a buyer is refunded, the earnings recorded for that order are reversed in proportion to the refund, including any contribution, and including the shares of any collaborators. Encore’s fee is reversed too — we do not keep our fee on a sale that was undone.

The processing cost our payment processor retains on a refund is absorbed by Encore rather than charged to you.

14.Disputed payments#

A buyer’s bank can reverse a payment by way of a chargeback, and that decision is the bank’s rather than ours or yours. When it happens, the earnings for that order are reversed in the same way as a refund. Encore absorbs the fee the processor charges for the dispute.

If the dispute is later resolved in our favour, we restore your earnings automatically. You do not need to ask, and you do not need to have noticed.

15.Negative balances#

If earnings are reversed after you have already withdrawn them, your balance can go negative. That amount is carried forward and recovered from your future earnings. We will not ask you to pay it back out of your own pocket, and we will not take it from any other account of yours — but you will not be able to withdraw again until the balance is positive and above the minimum.

16.Tax#

You are responsible for your own taxes on what you earn. Encore does not withhold income tax, and nothing we provide is tax advice.

Stripe collects the tax forms required for your country during payout setup, and issues any tax reporting form that applies to your payouts. In the United States that may mean an annual 1099-K where thresholds are met.

Where Encore is required to collect sales tax, VAT, or an equivalent tax on a sale, we collect it from the buyer in addition to your price and remit it ourselves. It is not deducted from your earnings, and your price is unaffected.

17.Removing listings and closing accounts#

We may remove a listing, suspend selling, or close a seller account where you breach this agreement or the Terms of Service, where a rights dispute requires it, where we are required to by law, or where we reasonably believe the account is being used for fraud or payment abuse.

If our payment processor permanently rejects your account — as opposed to needing more information from you — we will move your listings to draft, free ones included, so that no further sale can accrue money we would have no way to pay you, and we will not set up a new payout account for you. Your drafts remain yours, and if the rejection is reversed your listings can be published again.

Removing a listing does not affect a buyer’s existing purchase, and does not affect earnings already recorded.

18.Term and ending this agreement#

This agreement runs until either of us ends it. You may stop selling and close your account at any time. Whichever way it ends, earnings already recorded remain payable to you, holds and reversals continue to operate as described above, and the clauses that by their nature should survive — fees already incurred, tax, liability, and governing law — do.

19.Changes to this agreement#

We may update this agreement. We will revise the “Last updated” date above, and where a change affects your fees, your payouts, or your money, we will notify you before it takes effect and give you the opportunity to stop selling instead. Continuing to sell after a change takes effect means you accept it. A change never applies retroactively to a sale that has already happened.

20.Liability and governing law#

The disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and governing law provisions in the Terms of Service apply to this agreement as though set out here. For a seller, the liability cap is calculated on the fees you paid Encore in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim.

21.Contact#

Encore Music, Inc. — support@encoremusic.studio