What you are responsible for
Before you publish anything to listeners, you must own it or have permission for it. That covers every part of a release:
- Compositions: the music and lyrics, including co-writers’ shares.
- Master recordings: the recorded performance itself.
- Samples and beats: anything you did not create from nothing, including leased or purchased beats and their license terms.
- Covers: a recording of someone else’s song needs the right license for the song.
- Artwork and video: photographs, designs, footage and anything in them.
- Voice and likeness: any person’s voice, name, image or likeness, including an imitation of it made with AI, needs that person’s permission.
By publishing on VIBE you confirm that you own or control what you publish. If you are unsure about a right, settle it before you publish, and ask a lawyer where the answer matters.
A recording is not the song
A track usually involves two separate copyrights. One is in the musical work: the composition and any lyrics. The other is in the sound recording: the particular recorded performance. They are often owned by different people. Owning a recording, or having paid for studio time or a beat, does not by itself mean you own the composition, and owning the composition does not give you someone else’s recording of it.
The U.S. Copyright Office explains the difference in Circular 56A, Copyright Registration of Musical Compositions and Sound Recordings.
AI-assisted work and authorship
VIBE’s AI features help you write, mix and repair. What you make with that help is yours to decide about, and VIBE claims no ownership of it. Whether copyright protects it is a question of law that VIBE cannot answer for you.
The U.S. Copyright Office has published guidance on this. In summary, it has said:
- Copyright protects material that is the product of human authorship.
- A work that contains AI-generated material can be registered, but the registration covers the human-authored parts. Applicants are asked to identify AI-generated material that is more than minimal.
- Using AI as a tool to assist your own creative work does not by itself affect protection. Whether a person contributed enough is judged case by case.
- In its 2025 report on copyrightability, the Office’s view was that prompts alone generally do not give a person enough control over the output to make them its author.
That is our summary, not a legal conclusion, and the guidance may change. Read the source at copyright.gov/ai, and keep a record of what you wrote, played and decided yourself. The law in other countries may differ.
What VIBE takes
VIBE does not take ownership of your music, your recordings, your artwork or your relationships with your listeners.
To run the service, VIBE needs a limited operational license: permission to store, copy, convert and deliver the files you choose to publish, to the listeners you choose, for as long as you keep them published. For example, the apps make a streaming copy of a song and deliver it to an invited listener’s device. That license covers running VIBE for you and nothing else. It ends for a work when you unpublish or delete it.
Your published catalogue is stored in your own iCloud, not on HitFluence servers. Privacy & Security explains how.
Listeners: private means private
Music on VIBE is shared with a listener personally, by invitation. A listener may play it in the VIBE app on their own devices. A listener may not record, copy, share, post, sell or redistribute it, and the apps have no share or export function for it. A musician can remove a listener’s access at any time.
Reporting infringement
If you believe something on VIBE infringes your copyright, tell us with the copyright report form. A report needs:
- your name and contact details, including a postal address and email;
- the copyrighted work you say was infringed;
- the material you are reporting and enough detail for us to find it, such as the artist and title shown in VIBE;
- a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorized by the owner, its agent or the law;
- a statement that the report is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the owner or authorized to act for the owner;
- your physical or electronic signature.
Catalogues on VIBE are private and stored in each musician’s own iCloud, so we may need to work with the musician, and with Apple where appropriate, to act on a report. Where the law provides a notice-and-takedown process, we will follow it. Knowingly making a false report can have legal consequences.
Counter-notice
If your material was removed or disabled because of a report and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, you can send a counter-notice through the contact form. Where the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act applies, a counter-notice must identify the material and where it was, state under penalty of perjury that you believe it was removed by mistake or misidentification, give your name, address and phone number, consent to the jurisdiction of the appropriate federal court, and be signed. We will pass it to the person who made the report, as that law requires.
Repeat infringement
Where applicable, and in appropriate circumstances, VIBE will end the access of account holders who repeatedly infringe other people’s copyrights.