Music is valuable. Very valuable. Precious. Delicate. Anyone, and I do mean anyone, who creates music engages in an act that is mysterious, beautiful, and full of light.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that it bothers me when I see musicians doing anything to be heard, like posting their valuable music up on streaming sites that have terrible terms of use contracts, if not terrible privacy policies. It bothers me no one is even reading them!

I was recently getting more interested in posting my music on Orfium.com. Check out this zinger in Orfium.com’s Terms of Use contract (The phrases in bold scared me the most):

3.2 License.

(a) You hereby grant (and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant) to Company an irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free and fully paid, worldwide license to reproduce, distribute, publicly display and perform, prepare derivative works of, incorporate into other works, and otherwise use and exploit your User Content, and to grant sublicenses of the foregoing rights, solely for the purposes of including your User Content in the Site. You hereby irrevocably waive (and agree to cause to be waived) any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to your User Content. You grant the Company the right (a) to allow the Company Service to use the processor, bandwidth, and storage hardware on your device(s) in order to facilitate the operation of the Company Service, (b) to provide advertising and other information to you, and (c) to allow our business partners to do the same. These terms are not intended to grant rights to anyone except you and the Company, and in no event shall these terms create any third party beneficiary rights. Any failure by the Company to enforce these Terms or any provision thereof shall NOT waive the Company’s right to do so.

Moral: Reading is fun, and when you read you won't get messed with in the world of legal contracts. Do your research!