Terms of Service

These terms are an agreement between you and BranchBeat LLC, a California limited liability company (“BranchBeat”, “we”, “us”). They cover this website and the BranchBeat mobile app. By creating an account or using the app, you accept them. If you do not agree, please do not use BranchBeat.

Who can use BranchBeat

You must be at least 13 years old to create an account, or older where the law of the place you live requires it (up to 16). We ask for your date of birth and where you live when you sign up, and we do not create accounts for anyone below the minimum age there. Based on where you tell us you live and where you connect from, new accounts are not yet available to people who live in, or connect from, Mississippi or Tennessee, and an existing account there works with the practice tools only. Where the law requires a parent’s consent, or limits social features at your age, your account works with the practice tools only until that changes. Where it is a parent’s consent that is needed, a parent or guardian approves your account in the BranchBeat app, from their own adult BranchBeat account, after confirming that they are your parent or legal guardian (in Georgia, a parent also signs a consent form in the app); their approval unlocks the account, they may set a daily time limit, quiet hours and whether direct messages are on, and they may withdraw their approval at any time; if the law still requires a parent’s approval for the account, it then returns to the practice tools only. Withdrawing is final for that approval; you can send a new request from the app. You can also remove a parent from your account in the app; if the law still requires a parent’s approval for the account, it then returns to the practice tools only. The approval and the parent’s settings end automatically when you reach the age at which the law where you live no longer requires a parent. A parent or guardian who approves an account confirms that they are the teen’s parent or legal guardian; approving an account for a teen you are not the parent or legal guardian of breaks these terms. Separately, wherever you live, a teen can link a parent or guardian to their account: either of them can start it, the teen has to accept it in the app, and either of them can end it at any time, with the other told. A linked parent sees the teen’s settings, the limits they set and how long the teen uses the app each day, and can set a daily time limit, quiet hours, whether direct messages are on and whether the teen gets notifications about likes, comments, replies and new followers. A link is not a parent’s consent. Linking to the account of a teen you are not the parent or legal guardian of breaks these terms too. You must provide accurate account information and keep your password secure — you are responsible for activity under your account.

If you are under 18, or we have reason to believe you are, your account is set up differently from an adult’s, and you cannot switch those settings off yourself before you turn 18. Your posts are visible only to people you follow who follow you back; you do not appear in search or suggestions; only people you follow can follow you or message you, and someone you follow can start a conversation with you only if you follow each other; and you see no ads. We may apply these settings when what is posted on your account, a report or your app store’s age range suggests you are under 18; if that is a mistake, you can ask us in the app to look again. If we have reason to believe an account belongs to a child under 13, we lock it and hide its posts and comments while a person reviews it, and we delete it if the review confirms it. The “Children” section of our Privacy Policy explains each of these.

Your content

You own what you create. Your recordings, transcriptions, and posts remain yours. We claim no ownership of them.

To run the service, you give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, copy, back up, adapt, publicly perform and display your content, and to pass it to the providers who host and deliver it for us. That list is longer than it sounds and each part earns its place: playing your audio to another user is a public performance, turning a recording into notation creates an adaptation of it, and storing anything at all means Google Cloud holds a copy on our behalf. This licence exists only to operate BranchBeat and ends when you delete the content or your account, except where it has already been shared with others. We will not sell your content, license it to anyone else for their own use, or put it in an advertisement.

Corrections submitted through Review & Train, a tool available only to BranchBeat’s trainers, are treated differently. By submitting a correction, you grant us a licence to use that audio and its labels to train and improve our transcription models, including the shared model used by all users. Deleting your account removes your training data and rebuilds the shared model without it, so this licence ends when you do that.

Music and copyright

BranchBeat transcribes audio you provide. It is your responsibility to have the rights to any music you record, upload, transcribe, or publish. Transcribing a copyrighted work can create a derivative work, and sharing it publicly may require permission from the rights holder even though the transcription is generated by software.

Recording a song for private study is very different from posting that transcription publicly. Please consider that before you share.

Copyright complaints

Our designated copyright agent is the Copyright Agent, BranchBeat LLC, reachable at support@branchbeat.com with the subject line “DMCA Notice”, or by post at the address at the end of these terms.

If you believe content on BranchBeat infringes your copyright, send the agent a notice including:

• Your name, address, phone number, and email.
• Identification of the work you say is infringed.
• A link to, or clear description of, the content in question.
• A statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised.
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them.
• Your physical or electronic signature.

We remove infringing content and terminate repeat infringers’ accounts. Whether an account is terminated takes account of how many notices there have been, how serious they were, and whether they look genuine — we would rather judge a pattern than count strikes.

If your content was removed and you think that was a mistake, send a counter-notice to the same agent. It has to contain: identification of what was removed and where it was; a statement under penalty of perjury that you believe in good faith it was removed by mistake or misidentification; your name, address and phone number; your consent to the jurisdiction of the federal court for your district (or, if you are outside the United States, for any district where we may be found) and your agreement to accept service from the person who filed the notice; and your signature. If we receive a valid counter-notice we will pass it on, and unless the complainant goes to court we will normally restore the content in ten to fourteen business days.

A warning that runs both ways: knowingly misrepresenting that material is infringing — or that it was wrongly removed — makes you liable for the other side's costs and damages under section 512(f). Please be sure before you file either one.

Acceptable use

Do not use BranchBeat to:

• Post content you do not have the rights to.
• Harass, threaten, impersonate, or abuse other people.
• Post sexual content involving minors, or content that is unlawful, hateful, or incites violence.
• Send spam, scrape the service, or attempt to break, overload, or reverse-engineer it.
• Circumvent plan limits, share paid access, or use automated systems to create accounts.

We screen posted text automatically and review reports from users. We may remove content, limit features, or suspend or terminate an account that breaks these rules. Where practical we will explain why, but we may act immediately for serious violations.

Our Cyberbullying Policy explains how we apply the rule against harassment, and our TAKE IT DOWN notice explains how to ask us to remove an intimate image shared without consent. The Safety center brings together how to report, block and get help.

Content that sexualises or exploits a child is taken down and the account is terminated. When our team confirms apparent child sexual abuse material, or the enticement of a child, we preserve it and report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline as US law requires, as our Privacy Policy describes.

Subscriptions and payment

BranchBeat offers a free tier and, if you subscribe, paid plans: Pro, which removes ads and lifts the transcription limit, and Premium, which adds encrypted cloud backup. Subscriptions are billed through the App Store or Google Play, not by us — we never receive your card details.

Recording and live transcription are never limited. The free tier includes a daily allowance for AI refinement and file transcription, currently 10 minutes a day, which resets at midnight where you are. If you are an adult you can add minutes by choosing to watch rewarded ads, up to a daily limit. We may change these amounts; minutes you have not used do not carry over to the next day.

Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled. Cancel at any time in your App Store or Google Play account settings; to avoid being charged for the next period, cancel before the current one ends (the store sets the exact cut-off, usually at least 24 hours before). Cancelling stops future renewals but does not refund the current period. Refunds are handled by Apple or Google under their policies. If we change prices, we will give notice before the change applies to you.

Ending your account

You can delete your account at any time from within the app or at branchbeat.com/delete-account. Deletion is permanent and removes your profile, posts, recordings, backups, and training data. Messages you already sent remain visible to their recipients. We may suspend or terminate an account that violates these terms, or if required by law.

Service availability and AI accuracy

Automatic transcription is imperfect: it will misread notes, particularly with complex, polyphonic, or noisy audio. Do not rely on it as the sole source for anything that matters — check the result. We do not guarantee the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that your data will never be lost, and we recommend keeping your own copies of work you care about.

BRANCHBEAT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all implied warranties, including the implied warranties of MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, and quiet enjoyment. This paragraph is set apart and capitalised because the law requires a disclaimer like it to be conspicuous, not because we want to shout at you.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, BranchBeat is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, punitive, or exemplary damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or lost recordings. Our total liability in the aggregate, for all claims relating to the service, is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. If you use BranchBeat for free, that amount is zero. These limits apply even if a remedy is found to have failed of its essential purpose.

Two things this does not do. It does not limit liability for fraud, for gross negligence or wilful misconduct, or for death or personal injury caused by our negligence — no agreement can, and we would not want one to. And some jurisdictions do not allow limits like these at all, in which case they apply only as far as that jurisdiction's law permits, and nothing here removes consumer rights you hold under the mandatory law of your own country.

Indemnity

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless BranchBeat LLC and its members, officers, employees, contractors, and service providers against claims, damages, and reasonable legal costs arising from content you post, your use of the service, your breach of these terms, or your violation of someone else’s rights. We will tell you promptly about any claim we want covered, and we will not settle it in a way that admits fault on your behalf without asking you first.

Disputes, arbitration, and your right to opt out

This section applies only if you live in the United States. If you are in the UK, the European Economic Area, or anywhere else whose law gives consumers a right to go to their own courts, it does not apply to you and nothing in it takes that right away.

For US users: you and BranchBeat agree to resolve any dispute by binding individual arbitration rather than in court, before a single arbitrator under the Consumer Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association, and to bring claims only individually — not as a plaintiff or class member in a class, collective, or representative action. This means you are giving up the right to a jury trial and the right to participate in a class action. Either of us may still bring an individual claim in small-claims court instead, and either of us may ask a court to stop infringement of intellectual property.

You can opt out of this, and it costs you nothing. Email support@branchbeat.com within 30 days of first accepting these terms, saying that you opt out of arbitration and giving the email address on your account. That is the whole procedure. Opting out has no effect on your account and we will not treat you differently for it; if you opt out, disputes go to the courts named below. If we ever change this section, the change does not apply to a dispute we already know about.

If the class-action waiver above is found unenforceable, that waiver is severed and the dispute goes to court rather than to arbitration — the rest of these terms still stand.

Content posted by other people

BranchBeat hosts what its users upload. We do not create it, endorse it, or vouch for it, and we are not responsible for it. If you deal with another user — collaborating, sharing a recording, arranging anything between you — that is between the two of you and at your own risk.

We screen posted text automatically and act on reports, and we reserve the right to remove anything or limit any account. But we have the right to moderate, not a duty to catch everything, and reviewing some content does not make us responsible for the rest. If you see something wrong, report it — that is the fastest route, and we do read them.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in California, and you and BranchBeat consent to that jurisdiction. Nothing here removes consumer protections you are entitled to under the mandatory law of your own country.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as BranchBeat develops. The date at the top reflects the current version. For material changes we will give notice in the app or by email before they take effect; continuing to use BranchBeat afterwards means you accept the updated terms.

If we remove your content or restrict your account

We will tell you what we did and why, unless the law stops us from saying. If you think we got it wrong, reply and ask us to look again — a person will. Tell us what was removed and why you think the decision was mistaken.

If you are in the European Union, you have six months from our decision to appeal it, and you can also take the dispute to a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body in your Member State instead of, or as well as, appealing to us. We are not bound by that body's decision, but we will engage with it in good faith. None of this affects your right to go to court.

The bits Apple requires us to say

If you got the app from the App Store, Apple requires these terms to contain the following, so here they are, in as few words as the requirement allows:

• This agreement is between you and BranchBeat only — not with Apple. Apple is not responsible for the app or its content.
• Your licence to use the app is non-transferable, and limited to Apple-branded devices you own or control, under the App Store Usage Rules.
• Apple has no obligation to provide support or maintenance for the app. Support is ours — email support@branchbeat.com and you will reach a person.
• If the app fails to conform to any warranty, you may tell Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price if you paid one. Beyond that refund, Apple has no warranty obligation at all. Everything else about warranties and liability is between you and us.
• We, not Apple, are responsible for any claim that the app is defective, breaches a law, or infringes someone’s intellectual property — and for handling it.
• You confirm you are not in a country subject to a US embargo or designated as supporting terrorism, and that you are not on any US prohibited-parties list.
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and may enforce them against you directly.

The rest of the legal machinery

Short, and worth reading once. If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, that part is trimmed to what the law allows or removed, and everything else stands. If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given up the right to enforce it later. These terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between us about BranchBeat, and they replace anything said earlier.

We may transfer this agreement to someone else if BranchBeat is acquired or reorganised; you may not transfer it without asking us. If that happens, the Privacy Policy explains what becomes of your data and we will give notice first.

Some things outlive the account they came from, because they have to: the content licence for anything already shared, the limitation of liability, the indemnity, the disputes section, and this one. And neither of us is liable for failing to do something because of an event outside our reasonable control — an outage at a provider we depend on, a natural disaster, war, or a change in the law that makes it impossible.

Contact

Questions about these terms? Email support@branchbeat.com, or write to us:

Email is faster and reaches the same people. The postal address is here because a company that holds your recordings should be somewhere you can actually reach.