Terms of Service

1. What Crate is

Crate is for the records you own. It is a place to keep that crate, pull one copy for tonight, log a spin, read liner notes, and keep a journal.

It is not a shop. It is not a streamer. It is not a catalog of every pressing on earth. It does not sell vinyl and it does not play the record for you.

2. Who this is for

You must be 18 or older. If you pay for membership, you must be able to enter a contract and use the payment method you give Stripe.

3. Your account

You sign in with email or Grok. You are responsible for that login. Tell us if you think someone else is using it.

The crate in this browser is a local copy. The crate on the server is yours after you sign in, if it was saved. Sign out on a shared machine.

We may close an account that is abused, unpaid when it must be paid, or used to break these terms.

4. What we store

On the account: name, email, sign-in data, session (including IP and browser), plan, note balances, and Stripe customer/subscription ids if you pay. We do not store your card number.

On the shelf: the records you add (artist, album, year, genre, cover, grades, catalog ids, tracklists once filled), spins, journal, Discogs username. Your Discogs token stays in this browser, not on our server.

Liner notes you generate are stored so they stay on that album.

Invites: we keep the friend’s name and email so we can send that one letter and award notes if they join. We do not mail them again.

Recommendations: the album and the note you sent.

Letters you send through Contact: name, email, message, and the time you sent them. We keep those so we can read and answer. We do not publish an operator email.

5. Your crate, your copies

You tell us what you own. We do not verify that you hold the vinyl. Do not load a wishlist and call it a crate.

You can add records by Discogs, search, type, or a spreadsheet. A free account holds 200 copies. Membership is the whole shelf.

You may remove records. Deleting the account is how you ask us to drop the shelf, notes, and login. Ask us in writing; we will do it in a reasonable time except where we must keep a record of a payment or a dispute.

6. Discogs and other catalogs

Discogs is a door, not Crate. We are not Discogs, not affiliated with them, and not their app. If you paste a username and token, you do that under Discogs’ own terms. We load vinyl you marked as yours, keep grades on first pull, and stop at 200 on a free account.

Covers, years, genres, grades, and tracklists come from that catalog (or from what you type). They can be wrong. Original year is what we try to show, not the reissue date, when we have it.

If Discogs is down, rate-limits us, or changes their API, that door may fail. That is not a Crate outage we can fix from the platter.

7. Tonight, spins, journal

Tonight is one copy on the platter. “Why it came off the shelf” is play history on your copy, not a review of every pressing.

A spin you log (rating, vinyl, sleeve, side, mood, notes) stays on that copy and in the journal. Tracklists on Tonight cost no notes. They are catalog facts, folded until you open them.

8. Liner notes

Notes are not a feed. One note writes deep liner notes for one album you own. After that, they stay on that record. We do not charge again to re-read them.

New listeners start with a few notes. A friend can send ten more. Membership refills the month. Golden notes do not expire.

The writing is generated. It can be wrong about sessions, credits, or the cut. It is not a substitute for the jacket in your hands. Do not treat it as reporting.

You may not sell, scrape, or bulk-copy liner notes off Crate. They are for you, with the copy on the platter.

9. Membership and money

Free is a real crate: 200 records, starting notes, invites, tonight, journal, pulse.

Membership is the whole shelf and monthly liner notes. Price is as shown at checkout. Stripe handles the charge. Subscriptions renew until you cancel. Cancel from Crate with Manage billing — Stripe opens. Or write us before the next period if that flow is stuck. We do not prorate a month already started unless the law says we must.

Golden packs never expire. Gift codes are as written when issued.

If a payment fails, membership may drop to free. A shelf over 200 may not take new copies until you are a member again. We will not silently throw away records you already saved.

10. Friends

You may send ten free notes to a friend who is not already on Crate. If they join, they get those ten on top of the new-listener notes, and you get ten golden notes. One letter. That is the deal.

You may recommend a record you own. The note must be about the record, not a shop, a link, or a pitch. We may drop a recommendation that is spam. A recommend to another listener is anonymous. If you hold Vouched on an album, your name may appear on Tonight and the sleeve, and your last recommend for that album may show when someone hovers the name.

Do not invite people who did not ask, in bulk, or by scraping addresses.

11. Acceptable use

Do not:

• Pretend Crate is a store, a stream, or Discogs
• Hammer the catalog doors or our servers
• Upload malware, scrape the site, or resell access
• Harass anyone through recommends or invites
• Reverse-engineer the note writer to run it as your own product

We may refuse, rate-limit, or close an account that does this.

12. Whose words, whose pictures

Crate’s name, design, and the site itself are ours. Covers and catalog facts belong to their owners and to the catalogs we query. You get a limited license to use Crate for your own listening. You do not get a license to copy the service.

You keep whatever rights you have in notes you type into a spin or a recommend. You give us a license to store them and to show them back to you (and, for a recommend, to the person you sent it to).

13. The site will break sometimes

We run Crate as a serious hobby of the ritual, not a bank. Catalogs go down. Deploys happen. We do not promise unbroken uptime, perfect data, or that a particular pressing will match the jacket on your shelf.

14. Disclaimer

Crate is provided “as is.” To the full extent the law allows, we disclaim warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that liner notes are accurate or that the crate is a complete inventory of what you own.

15. Liability

To the full extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data, or vinyl you thought was in the crate.

Our total liability for a claim about Crate is capped at the greater of $50 or what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim.

Some places do not allow these limits. In those places, they apply only as far as they can.

16. Ending it

You may stop using Crate at any time and ask us to delete the account. We may stop offering Crate, or a part of it, with notice when we can. Paid time already bought is the most we owe unless the law says more.

17. Changes

We may change these terms. The date at the top will move. If a change is material, we will say so on the site. Using Crate after that is agreement to the new terms. If you cannot live with them, close the account.

18. Law

These terms are governed by the laws of North Carolina, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, unless a mandatory consumer law in your place says otherwise. Courts in North Carolina are the venue, except where the law requires your local courts.

19. Contact

Questions about the crate, membership, or these terms: write us on the Contact page. We do not publish an email.