What this policy covers
This policy sets out what may be distributed through Run and how the workspace may be used. It applies to everything you submit: audio, artwork, release and track titles, artist names, credits, contributor and writer details, and the links you put on an artist profile. It applies on every plan, and to every account you hold.
It is the long form of the acceptable-use section of our Terms of Service, and it sits under the Distribution Agreement you accept before you release. Breaching this policy breaches both. Conduct aimed at making money dishonestly, meaning bought streams, stream farms, impersonation for gain and metadata written to game store algorithms, is covered in detail by our Anti-Fraud Policy, and the two are read together.
Stores apply their own rules on top of ours, and they decide what stays on their service. Passing our checks is not a promise that a store will accept a release or keep it up.
What we never accept
Music that is not yours to release
- Recordings, compositions, samples or artwork you do not own and have not cleared.
- Karaoke versions and backing tracks of someone else’s song.
- Soundalikes: recordings made so they can be mistaken for another artist’s work.
- A catalogue you no longer control, and anything whose licence to you has expired or was never granted.
Passing yourself off as someone else
- Releasing under another artist’s name, or under a name picked to be confused with it.
- Delivering to a store profile you do not control, or claiming a page that belongs to someone else. This is how a catalogue gets hijacked, and it is the complaint we act on fastest.
- Type-beat exploits, and any title, artist name or credit built to ride another artist’s search traffic.
- Featured artists, producers or writers credited on a track they are not on.
- Voice clones and deepfake vocals of an identifiable person, and any other use of a real person’s voice, name or likeness, without their explicit written consent and a signed agreement.
Illegal and harmful content
- Child sexual abuse material. In audio, in artwork, in a title, in any form. There is no review conversation and no appeal here: the account is closed and the material is reported to the authorities.
- Content that incites, threatens or glorifies violence, or that attacks or dehumanises people because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or any other protected ground.
- Terrorist content, and material produced for, or promoting, a proscribed organisation.
- Material that is illegal where it would be distributed, or that a court has ordered removed.
Music has always dealt with violence, drugs, sex and anger, and describing something is not the same as calling for it. What we act on is content that incites harm or dehumanises people, not a dark song.
Content submitted to game a catalogue
- Deliberately misleading metadata: invented featured artists, store or playlist names in a title, keyword stuffing, genre spam, or a version tag (“remix”, “live”, “sped up”) that does not describe the recording.
- Silence, test tones, functional noise or generated filler submitted as music to occupy a catalogue or to farm plays.
- Bulk uploads of near-identical tracks, and the same recording resubmitted as a new release to reset its position.
Why these matter, and what happens to an account that keeps doing them, is set out in the Anti-Fraud Policy.
What we accept with conditions
All of these are welcome on Run. Each carries one condition, and the condition is yours to meet: we do not clear rights for you and we do not give legal advice.
- Covers need the mechanical and publisher clearance that applies in the territories you distribute in, and the recording has to be your own, not someone else’s master.
- Remixes need written authorisation from the owners of both the master and the underlying composition, and the original artist credited properly.
- Samples and interpolations need clearance from the rights holders of the sampled work, however short the sample is and however far you have processed it.
- Public domain material needs proof for the territories concerned. A composition can be out of copyright while a recording of it is still protected, so recordings are looked at closely.
- Compilations need you to control or have cleared every recording on them, including the ones you did not make.
- AI-assisted and fully AI-generated music needs accurate disclosure. For every release you declare how much AI is in the artwork, in the recording and in the composition, and at least one credited contributor has to be a human. An original synthetic voice is fine. A voice built to sound like a real artist is not.
We may ask you to attach the corresponding document in the release flow, and we may hold a release until it arrives. The full set of promises you make when you submit is in the Distribution Agreement.
Explicit content
Mark explicit content accurately, track by track. Stores require the flag, they use it for parental controls and for editorial decisions, and a store that finds unmarked explicit lyrics can penalise the release, the artist, or a whole catalogue delivered alongside it.
We take the flag you set at face value. Nothing here reads your lyrics back to you and second-guesses the answer, so getting it right is yours to do. A clean version has to actually be clean, and it should be titled so a listener can tell the two apart. Explicit artwork and explicit titles count too, and some stores refuse them whatever the flag says.
Using the workspace
The rules for the workspace itself are short:
- One person or company, one account. Do not share your credentials, sell access, or let someone else release through your account.
- Do not scrape, crawl or automate the workspace, and do not put load on it beyond normal use.
- Do not probe or work around authentication, and do not go looking for data that is not yours. If you find a way to reach it, tell us instead of using it.
- Do not upload malware, or files built to exploit whatever opens them.
- Do not use Run, or an address you obtained through it, to send unsolicited or bulk mail.
- Do not open a second account to get around a plan limit, a rejection or a suspension.
Report a security problem to legal@run.audio, with enough detail to reproduce it. Report it rather than exploit it, access no more data than the problem needs to demonstrate, and give us a fair chance to fix it before you tell anyone else. We would rather hear from you than not, and we treat a report made that way as help.
How we enforce this
Every release is checked before it ships. Metadata and files run through automated checks against store requirements and our own rules, submitted audio is matched against a third-party fingerprint database, and the artist on a release is cross-checked against the store profiles you have connected, so a delivery does not land on someone else’s page. Anything flagged is looked at by a person: no release is rejected and no account is closed purely on an automated score.
Depending on what we find, we can:
- Ask for a change. The release is held before delivery while you fix a title, a credit, a file or a missing document.
- Reject it. The release does not ship. You get the reasons, and you can fix it and submit it again.
- Take it down. A live release is pulled from every store it reached. Stores remove it on their own schedule once the request arrives.
- Suspend or close the account. For serious breaches, and for breaches that continue after we have told you about them. We tell you why, in writing, and addresses tied to a closed account stay on our denylist.
- Report it. Where the law requires it, or where a rights holder pursues a claim, we cooperate with stores, rights holders and the authorities.
We aim to be proportionate. An honest mistake, a missing clearance document or a badly written title is a conversation, and most of what we hold gets fixed and ships. Deliberate breaches, and the same breach a second time, move faster and further down that list. We tell you what happened and why, unless the law prevents us. What happens to earnings connected to a breach is set out in the Anti-Fraud Policy.
Reporting a problem
Anyone can report content distributed through Run: a rights holder, an artist being impersonated, a store, or a listener who ran into something they should not have. Write to legal@run.audio and include, as far as you can:
- enough to identify the release: a store link, the title and artist, the barcode or ISRC;
- what the problem is, in your own words;
- for a rights or impersonation complaint, what right you hold and what it covers;
- how to reach you.
A person reads every report. We look at the release, and on credible impersonation and rights complaints we act as fast as we can, which can mean holding a release or taking it down while we work it out. The artist is told what happened and why. Run is the single point of contact for everything distributed through us, so a report does not need to go through the stores first.
If we take something of yours down and you think we are wrong, write to us with your evidence: the licence, the clearance, the authorisation, or proof that the profile is yours. A person reads that too, and where we got it wrong we put the release back.
Changes to this policy
The version in force is shown at the top of this page with the date it was published. When we change this policy materially we publish the new version here and announce it.
Because breaching this policy breaches them, a material change here normally travels with a new version of the Terms of Service and the Distribution Agreement, which you are asked to accept in the workspace. Your catalogue keeps being distributed while you decide, but you cannot submit a new release until the versions in force have been accepted.