TERMS OF SERVICE - MEMBER AREA

1. Acceptance of Terms and Conditions

This publishing agreement specifies the terms and conditions that apply to any person or legal entity using the Free-scores.com publishing website.

We reserve the right to review the relevance of your content and may choose to remove it from our site if we determine it is inappropriate. If you do not comply with these guidelines or the terms and conditions of this agreement, we reserve the right to terminate your participation in the program.

2. Changes to the Agreement

We may modify the terms of this Agreement or the Service at any time and at our sole discretion. Your continued use of the site or Service constitutes your consent to all modifications made. If you do not agree to the new or different terms, you must not use the site or Service.

3. Authorization

Free-scores.com is a platform for distributing and sharing musical Content. To do this, by publishing any Content through the member area of the site on Free-scores.com, you grant Free-scores.com and any other sites or applications belonging to the Fortemusica network a limited license to display and distribute this content or parts of it, in any form and on any medium. The license you grant to Free-scores.com is non-exclusive and valid worldwide.

The ARTIST may revoke this authorization at any time by deleting the files they have added to the site or by requesting the closure of their account.

Furthermore, the ARTIST guarantees to Fortemusica the authorization of publication rights for the ARTIST's Content on the Free-Scores.com site. The ARTIST undertakes that under no circumstances may a third party or creator claim and oppose copyright and/or industrial property rights against Free-Scores.com for the works concerned.

4. File Types

5. Donations

5.1 PayPal Donations

We may provide you with the ability to receive donations through your artist page. For this, we do not charge a commission; you must have a valid PayPal account to receive donations.

6. Licenses

The licensing service offered by Free-scores.com consists of giving your authorization for public performances and/or in an educational context for the use of your works to USERS of Free-scores.com who request it.

7. Applicable Law and Jurisdiction

The legal rules applicable to content and data transmission on and around the site are determined by French law. In case of dispute that could not be resolved amicably, only French courts under the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal of Bordeaux or Paris have jurisdiction.

8. Member Account Suspension

8.1 Grounds for Suspension

Free-scores.com may, at its sole discretion, temporarily or permanently suspend a Member's account in case of serious or repeated violations of these terms of service.

Suspension may be decided in the following cases:

• Repeated uploading of sheet music infringing copyright or publisher rights
• Publication of a Content generated, in whole or in part, using generative artificial intelligence without declaring this informationin in the section "Step 1" of adding a sheet music
• Creation or use of multiple accounts to artificially increase interactions on the platform

8.2 Procedure

The suspension decision is at the sole discretion of Fortemusica. The concerned USER will be informed of the measure by email sent to the address they provided in their personal area.

9. Terms and Conditions of Sale – Free-scores Premium Subscription

9.1 Vendor and Service

The “Free-scores Premium” service is offered by Fortemusica, 14 rue du Millénaire, 56250 SULNIAC – France, Tel. +33 (0)2 97 47 04 41. The service consists in providing paid access to features that enhance browsing on Free-scores.com (including removal of third-party ad network advertising, options to display Buying Guides, extension of daily downloads, unlocking of certain features such as Free-scores.com Analytics for active members), see 9.10.

9.2 Plans, Prices and Taxes

• Monthly Plan: €6.49 / month. Billed monthly, no commitment.
• Annual Plan: €44.99 / year (i.e. €4.17 / month). Billed annually, 1-year commitment.

Prices are shown VAT-inclusive (where applicable) and may be displayed in five currencies (EUR€; USD$; GBP£; CAD$; CNY¥) with different price amounts specific to each currency. Any exchange/banking fees are borne by the Customer. Fortemusica may change prices for the future.

9.3 Order and Payment

Payment is made online via Stripe (supported payment cards, strong customer authentication where applicable). The subscription is valid only after payment confirmation. Invoices are made available in the member area and/or sent by email. In the event of non-payment, Fortemusica may suspend Premium access until the outstanding amount is settled.

9.4 Term, Renewal and Cancellation

• Automatic renewal (monthly or annual depending on the plan) until cancellation.
• Cancel anytime from the account; the subscription remains active until the end of the current period.
• No refunds: any started period is non-refundable (no full or pro-rata refund). Cancellation stops future renewals; access remains available until the end of the current period.

9.5 Right of Withdrawal (EU Consumers)

By subscribing, the Customer requests the immediate performance of the digital service and expressly acknowledges waiving the right of withdrawal pursuant to Articles L221-25 and L221-28 of the French Consumer Code (provision of a service and/or digital content/feature supplied on a continuous basis from activation). Consequently, no withdrawal or refund is possible after activation of the Premium service.

If the Customer does not accept immediate performance and the waiver, the subscription cannot be finalized.

9.6 Conformity and Availability of the Digital Service

The Premium service is provided in accordance with the requirements of the legal guarantee of conformity for digital content and services (Art. L224-25-12 et seq. of the French Consumer Code). Fortemusica implements updates necessary to maintain conformity and may evolve features without impairing the overall service experience. Maintenance operations may lead to temporary unavailability, which will be communicated where reasonably possible.

9.7 Technical Prerequisites and Account

Access requires a member account, an up-to-date browser and an Internet connection. The Customer is responsible for keeping login credentials confidential. Any fraudulent use or breach of the Terms of Use may result in suspension or termination (see §8).

9.8 Personal Data

Data processing (billing, subscription management, fraud prevention) is carried out in accordance with the Free-scores.com Privacy Policy. Stripe acts as a processor for payments. The Customer has rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability under applicable regulations.

9.9 Governing Law and Jurisdiction

These Terms and Conditions are governed by French law. Subject to mandatory consumer-protection provisions, any dispute shall fall within the competent courts indicated in §7.

9.10 Specific Premium Features

In addition to the previous provisions, the Free-scores Premium subscription includes the following features, specific to browsing, statistics, and interactions with other members:

• Extension of the daily download limit: the Premium account allows increasing the daily limit of PDF sheet music downloads from 5 downloads/day to 50 downloads/day.
• Anonymity option in active member statistics: the Premium subscriber can enable an option to remain anonymous when downloading sheet music from active members (composers). In this case, their identity no longer appears in their statistical reports.
• Unlocking of advanced Free-scores.com Analytics features: for active members (sheet music contributors), the Premium subscription grants access to additional tools, including:
  • identifying users who download their sheet music;
  • accessing more detailed tracking of traffic related to their works;
  • viewing the ranking of users who download their sheet music the most.
• Allocation of bonus free downloads: Premium active members can distribute a certain number of additional free downloads each month to non-Premium users. These bonus downloads:
  • are not deducted from the 5 free downloads/day of standard accounts;
  • depend on the number of sheet music pieces added by the Premium active member (1 sheet music added = 1 bonus download / month) up to a limit of 10,000 downloads/month.

10. Access to Creative Commons Licensed Works and Database Protection

Certain works made available on Free-scores.com are distributed under open licenses, particularly Creative Commons licenses such as Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) or equivalent.

Free-scores.com does not commercialize these works and does not sell access to them. Access to the works concerned remains free for all users, without any purchase or subscription requirement, subject to compliance with these terms of use.

10.1 Technical Limitation and User Identification

In order to ensure:

• the stability and availability of the service,
• coverage of technical costs related to hosting, storage, and bandwidth,
• protection against automated extraction (scraping) and unauthorized copying of the site structure,

Free-scores.com imposes:

• identification of users downloading files,
• a daily limitation on the number of free downloads per 24-hour period.

This limitation:

• does not constitute a permanent access restriction to the works,
• does not prevent free access to Creative Commons licensed content,
• has the sole purpose of protecting the service and database against abusive or automated use,
• does not condition access to the works but only the technical load related to their availability.

10.2 Premium Subscription

The Premium subscription does not grant any additional rights to use Creative Commons licensed works. It only allows:

• to increase the daily file access capacity,
• to benefit from additional technical and functional services (ad-free navigation, analysis tools, download convenience),
• to contribute to financing the resources necessary for the service operation.

The Premium subscription exclusively compensates for the enhanced access service and not the works themselves.

10.3 Legal Protection of the Database

Independently of the licenses applicable to individual files, the selection, organization, presentation, structuring, indexing, and architecture of the Free-scores.com database constitute a protected database within the meaning of Directive 96/9/EC and Articles L341-1 et seq. of the French Intellectual Property Code.

As such, the following are strictly prohibited without prior written authorization from Free-scores.com:

• extraction,
• automated retrieval,
• reproduction,
• public disclosure,
• or reuse of a substantial or repeated part of the database,

particularly through scripts, indexing robots, or automated scraping systems.

10.4 Non-Exclusivity

Contributors who upload works to Free-scores.com are not subject to any exclusivity obligation and retain full freedom to:

• distribute their works on other platforms,
• offer downloads elsewhere,
• establish links to other distribution sites.