End user licence agreement

1. Who this agreement is with:

The sounds are licensed to you by [legal name of the business], [address], [VAT / company number], trading as Sound Weekends. In this document “you” means the person or the company that paid for the library, and “the sounds” means every audio file and its metadata delivered with that purchase.

This is a licence, not a sale of the recordings. I keep the copyright in the recordings at all times. What you buy is the right to use them under the conditions below.

2. What you get:

Once the payment has cleared you receive a worldwide, non‑exclusive, perpetual, royalty‑free licence to use the sounds in your own work. Perpetual means the licence does not expire and never needs renewing. Royalty‑free means there is nothing further to pay for the productions you make with it — no matter how many people see or hear them, or for how long.

The licence starts on the day of purchase and covers every file included in it, including any file added to the library later as a free update.

3. How many people may use it:

One purchase covers one person and the workstations that person works on. If you bought as a company, the licence covers the studio that paid for it and the staff and freelancers working on that studio’s own productions, on that studio’s machines.

It does not cover a second studio, a partner company, a client of yours or a school class. If several teams in different places need the files, buy a licence for each of them, or write to me about a multi‑seat licence — it is cheaper than buying the library several times.

You may hand the files to an editor, sound designer or mixer working on your production, for the duration of that production only. They delete their copy when the work is finished.

4. What you may do:

You may put the sounds into any production that contains at least one other element besides my recordings — picture, dialogue, music, voice, other sound effects, code, or your own edit of the material. Examples of what is fine:

• film, television, streaming series, documentary, animation, trailers;
• video games, apps, VR and AR, installations, planetariums and museums;
• podcasts, radio, audiobooks, audio drama;
• advertising, corporate and social‑media video, in any territory and on any budget;
• music tracks and albums, where the recordings are a layer inside the piece;
• live performance and theatre;
• student work, portfolios, showreels and personal projects.

Inside your own production you may edit the sounds as you wish — cut, pitch, stretch, filter, layer, reverse, granulate. There is no limit on the number of productions, no reporting, and no extra fee.

You may keep working copies and backups on your own machines and on your own private cloud storage, as long as the files are not publicly accessible.

5. What you may not do:

The line is simple: anything that puts the sounds themselves back into circulation is not allowed. Specifically, you may not:

• resell, rent, sublicense, give away, swap or upload the sounds — original or edited — on their own or as part of another sound library, sample pack, preset bank or asset store;
• share the files with anyone outside the people described in section 3, including on a shared drive, a torrent, a Discord server, or a company‑wide server open to other projects;
• publish the sounds as standalone media: ringtones, soundboards, alarm and notification packs, sound‑only apps, toys or greeting cards;
• build a product in which my recordings make up 25% or more of the content — that counts as a sound product and needs a separate agreement;
• claim authorship or ownership of the recordings, or register them — edited or not — with any performing rights organisation, distributor or content‑identification database;
• use the sounds in anything unlawful, or in material that incites hatred or violence.

Transferring your licence to another person or company is not allowed either, except when a whole business is sold and I have agreed to it in writing.

6. AI and machine learning:

You may not use the sounds — whole, edited, or as extracted features — to train, fine‑tune, validate or evaluate any machine learning model, including generative audio models, speech and sound classifiers, and datasets built for such training. You may not include the files in a dataset that is published, sold or shared for that purpose.

Running AI tools on your own production that happens to contain my recordings — noise reduction, separation, upmixing, restoration — is fine. The restriction is about the sounds becoming training material.

7. Credit:

Credit is not required and is never a condition of the licence. If you have room for it, Sound Weekends — soundweekends.com in the credits or the show notes is appreciated, and I like knowing where the recordings ended up — write to me if you can share the work.

8. Content ID and copyright claims:

You may not upload the sounds, or a production built mostly from them, to any content‑identification system (YouTube Content ID, Facebook Rights Manager, Audible Magic and similar) in a way that would let you claim rights over my recordings. Doing so blocks other licensees and is a breach of this agreement.

If a claim is ever raised against your work because of a sound bought here, write to me and I will confirm your licence in writing so the claim can be released.

9. Free sounds:

Sounds given away for free — through the mailing list or anywhere else on this site — are covered by exactly this agreement, with the same permissions and the same restrictions. Free does not mean public domain.

10. Delivery, refunds and re‑downloads:

The libraries are digital goods, delivered as a download link straight after payment. By buying you ask for the download to start immediately and you accept that the right of withdrawal is lost as soon as the download begins — the standard rule for digital content in the EU.

If a file is corrupted, a link expires or a download fails, write to me and I will fix it or send the files again — that is support, not a refund case. If a library turns out to be genuinely not what the page described, write to me anyway: I would rather refund than have the material used unhappily.

Download links stay live for [N] days and allow [N] downloads. After that, ask and I will re‑issue them — your licence does not expire with the link.

11. Warranty and liability:

I confirm that I recorded this material myself and that I have the right to license it to you.

Beyond that the files are provided as they are. I cannot promise they will suit a particular project or work with a particular piece of software. As far as the law allows, I am not liable for lost profit, lost work, delays, data loss or any indirect damage arising from the use of the sounds, and any liability that does arise is limited to the amount you paid for the library in question. Nothing here limits liability that cannot legally be limited, including your statutory rights as a consumer.

12. Termination:

The licence ends automatically if you break its terms. When that happens you stop using the sounds and delete every copy you hold, including backups. Productions already finished and released under a valid licence stay covered — you do not have to recall them.

13. Governing law:

This agreement is governed by the law of [country], and disputes go to the courts of [city, country]. If you are a consumer, this does not take away the protection of the mandatory rules of the country you live in.

If any single clause turns out to be unenforceable, the rest of the agreement stays in force.

14. Custom licences:

If your project does not fit — a sound‑only product, a large multi‑studio team, redistribution inside a game engine or a toolkit, a dataset, a broadcaster’s framework agreement — it is usually solvable. Write to me with what you need and I will quote a separate licence rather than say no.