The rules,
in plain English.

What Hypetize is

We give you a page, tools to sell things and collect fans, and a way to message them. We handle the software and the checkout. You handle the music, the products and the promises you make to your fans.

We are not your record label, your manager or your employer. You are running your own business and you remain responsible for it.

Your account

• You must be 18 or over to receive payouts, because our payment provider requires it. Under 18s can use the product with a parent or guardian on the payment account.
• Keep your login details to yourself. Anything done from your account is treated as done by you.
• One person or business per account. Managing several artists is what Team accounts are for.
• Give us real information. Payment providers verify identity and false details will get your payouts frozen.

Money

• Free to start. We take 7% of what you sell and nothing else. Founding members pay 0% on their first $25,000 of sales each year.
• Card processing of roughly 2.9% plus 30¢ is charged by the payment networks, not by us.
• You get paid into your own connected account on the schedule you choose, subject to standard holding periods for new accounts.
• You are responsible for your own taxes. We don't withhold anything.
• Chargebacks are deducted from your balance along with the fee the card networks charge us.
• If we ever change our rates, we'll tell you before it happens and you're free to leave with all your data.

Founding 500

If you bought a founding spot, here is exactly what it means:

• $100 once. No monthly fee, ever.
• 0% commission on your first $25,000 of sales in any calendar year. The allowance resets on 1 January and does not expire.
• Above $25,000 in a year, the standard rate applies to the amount above it only — never retroactively.
• It is not transferable. It belongs to you and your account and cannot be sold or moved.
• It lapses if the account goes completely unused for 12 months. We'll email you twice first, and your page and fan list stay yours regardless.
• Full refund within 30 days of purchase, no questions asked.

The queue and hype guarantee

• If you charge for queue slots, any paid submission you don't get to before the session ends is refunded automatically. That promise is enforced by us, not by you.
• You can refund and skip any submission at any time, for any reason, and you never have to explain why.
• Marking submissions as played when they weren't is fraud. Submitters can dispute, and accounts with a high dispute rate get suspended.
• Payouts on queue and hype revenue are held briefly so disputes can be resolved before money moves.

Credits

• Credit is dollar for dollar. $10 in means $10 of spending power — there is no exchange rate and no bonus currency.
• Credit never expires.
• Unspent credit is refundable to your original card within 30 days of top-up. After that it stays as credit.
• Credit can be spent on any artist on Hypetize. It is not tied to whoever you topped up for.
• We take our standard 7% when credit is spent, and nothing at top-up.
• Fan balances are held separately from our operating funds and remain the customer's money until spent.
• Credit has no cash value beyond the refund window and cannot be transferred, sold or exchanged between accounts.

AI and virtual artists

AI-assisted and fully AI-generated music is allowed on Hypetize. You must tag it as AI-assisted so buyers know what they are purchasing, and you must still hold the rights to what you upload — AI does not change that. Misrepresenting AI work as entirely human-made where a buyer would reasonably expect otherwise is a breach of these terms.

What you can't do here

• Sell or upload anything you don't have the rights to.
• Sexual content involving minors, or any content sexualising minors. Reported to the authorities, no exceptions, no appeals.
• Harassment, threats, or content targeting people based on who they are.
• Illegal goods, weapons, drugs, counterfeits, or anything our payment provider prohibits.
• Fake scarcity, fake counters, invented testimonials, or promises to fans you don't intend to keep.
• Spam. Messaging people who never agreed to hear from you, or importing a list you didn't collect yourself.
• Money laundering, card testing, or fraud of any kind.
• Selling AI-generated work without tagging it as AI-assisted. The music is welcome — the buyer just has to know.

Break these and we can suspend or close your account. For anything serious we'll do it immediately.

Messaging your fans

You can only message people who gave you permission through Hypetize or who you can prove opted in elsewhere. Every message carries an unsubscribe. Anti-spam law — CAN-SPAM, CASL, GDPR, TCPA for texts — applies to you as the sender, and we will act on complaints.

Your content

Everything you upload stays yours. You give us permission to host it, show it to your fans and deliver it to buyers — nothing more. We don't use your music for anything else and we don't claim any ownership of it.

Your fan list

It's yours. You can export it in full at any time on any plan. We process it on your behalf and don't market to your fans ourselves. If you leave, you keep it.

Leaving

Cancel any time from your settings without talking to anyone. Your data stays exportable for 90 days afterwards. We can also close an account that breaks these terms, and we'll tell you why.

The boring but necessary part

The service is provided as-is. We work hard on uptime but we don't guarantee it will never break. We're not liable for lost profits or indirect losses, and our total liability is limited to what you paid us in the previous twelve months. Nothing here removes rights you have under consumer law where you live.

Changes

We'll email you before anything meaningful changes. Carrying on using Hypetize after that means you accept the new version.