These terms apply when you buy software from smokingmedia.com and whenever you install or use our audio plugins, whether you paid for them or not.
The document has two parts. Sections 1 to 6 are the terms of sale: who you are buying from, what you pay, and how the software reaches you. Sections 7 to 21 are the end user license agreement (the EULA): what you may and may not do with the software once you have it.
In this document, “we”, “us” and “our” mean TODO_REGISTERED_LEGAL_NAME, trading as Smoking Media, whose full registered details are set out in the business details block at the foot of this page. “You” means the person or organisation buying or using the software. “Software” means our audio plugins, in every format and edition we publish, together with any installers, presets, factory content, documentation and updates we supply with them.
1. Who you are contracting with
The licence to use the Software is granted by TODO_REGISTERED_LEGAL_NAME, a besloten vennootschap (B.V.) registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce under number TODO_KVK_NUMBER.
The payment transaction itself is with a different company. Section 2 explains why, and what it means for you.
2. Who sells you the product
Our checkout is operated by Paddle, specifically TODO_PADDLE_MERCHANT_OF_RECORD_ENTITY. Paddle acts as the merchant of record and is the seller of record for your transaction.
In practice that means:
- Paddle, not us, is the party that charges your card or your payment method.
- Paddle calculates, collects and remits VAT and any other sales tax that applies where you are, and handles B2B reverse charge where it applies.
- Paddle issues your invoice or receipt. We do not issue a separate one.
- Paddle’s own terms and privacy notice apply to the payment transaction, alongside these terms.
- Refunds are processed by Paddle. See our refund policy.
- Paddle handles billing enquiries. Anything about the software itself comes to us at TODO_SUPPORT_EMAIL.
We never see or store your card details. See the privacy policy for what we do receive.
3. Prices and tax
Prices shown on the site are in euro and are the base price, excluding tax. Paddle adds the tax that applies in your country at checkout, so the total you confirm at checkout is the total you pay. If you buy in another currency, Paddle converts at its own rate and shows you the amount before you confirm.
We may change prices at any time. The price that applies to you is the one displayed at the moment you complete the checkout.
4. When the contract is formed
The contract is formed when Paddle confirms your payment. At that point we issue your licence key automatically and email it to the address you gave at checkout.
5. Delivery
Delivery is electronic and immediate. Within a few minutes of a completed payment you receive an email containing your licence key, a download link and activation instructions. You can also retrieve your licence key at any time from the account page by asking for a sign-in link.
The page you land on after checkout is a confirmation only. It never shows a licence key, because anyone who guesses the address could open it.
If the email has not arrived within an hour, check your spam folder first, then read support, then write to us at TODO_SUPPORT_EMAIL. A licence that was paid for and never delivered is our problem to fix, not yours.
6. Right of withdrawal and refunds
If you are a consumer in the European Union you have a statutory right of withdrawal, and there are specific rules about how that right interacts with digital content delivered immediately. Because those rules deserve their own explanation, they are set out in full in the refund policy, which forms part of these terms.
7. Licence grant: paid editions
When you have paid in full for an edition of the Software, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide licence, unlimited in time, to install and use that edition:
- on computers that you own or control;
- for any purpose, private or commercial, including producing music you sell, release, license or perform;
- for as many of your own projects as you like, with no per project fee, no royalty and no reporting.
The licence is perpetual: it does not expire, and it does not turn into a subscription. There is no recurring charge.
Each paid licence permits up to 3 simultaneous machine activations. Section 9 explains how activations work.
If you buy on behalf of an organisation, the licence is held by that organisation, and the activations may be used by its personnel on machines it owns or controls.
8. Licence grant: Lite editions
Some products have a Lite edition, which we publish free of charge.
A Lite edition is a separate product with a smaller feature set. It is not a demo, not a trial and not a time-limited version of the paid edition. Concretely:
- It never expires and it never stops working.
- It has no nag screen, no reminder, no countdown.
- Its audio output is never degraded, muted, interrupted or watermarked in any way.
- It needs no licence key, no activation and no account.
- It installs as its own plugin, with its own identifier, so a Lite edition and a paid edition of the same product can sit side by side on one machine without conflict.
We grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide licence, unlimited in time, to install and use each Lite edition on computers you own or control, for any purpose, private or commercial, on exactly the same terms as section 7 except that no payment, key or activation is involved.
Sections 11 to 20 apply to Lite editions too. Because Lite editions are supplied free of charge, we give no undertaking that any particular Lite edition will remain available for download, and support for Lite editions is offered as best effort. Nothing in this paragraph affects the rights you have by law.
9. Licence keys and activation
One key per product. Buying two products gives you two separate licence keys, one for each. Each key carries its own independent pool of 3 machine activations. Using up the activations on one product has no effect on any other product you own.
How activation works. You enter the licence key in the plugin once. The plugin contacts our activation service, which records the activation and returns a signed licence file that is stored on your computer. From then on the plugin verifies that file locally. It does not need the internet again in normal use, and it never contacts us while you are working.
Deactivation is self-service. You can free an activation at any time, either from inside the plugin on the machine in question or from the account page, which lists every active machine on your licence and gives each one a deactivate button. You do not need to ask us, and there is no waiting period. This matters when a machine is sold, reinstalled or dies.
Offline use. The licence file carries a lease. If the lease expires while you are offline, the plugin continues to work through a grace period and refreshes silently the next time it can reach us. The plugin is designed never to refuse to load and never to leave you without audio in an open session.
Sharing keys. Your licence key is personal to you. Publishing it, selling it, or giving it to people outside your household or organisation is a breach of these terms and lets us revoke it under section 15.
10. Your music and your presets
You own everything you make with the Software. We claim no rights of any kind in the audio you produce, the projects you build, the presets you create, or the works you release, and you owe us nothing for them. You may use, sell, license and sublicense that output freely, including in works that you license onward to others.
The presets and factory content we ship with the Software stay ours, and section 11 covers what you may not do with them. Using them inside your own music is exactly what they are for, and that use is unrestricted.
11. What you may not do
You may not:
- copy or distribute the Software, except for backup copies for your own use;
- rent, lease, lend or offer the Software as a service to third parties;
- sublicense the Software, or share your licence key beyond section 9;
- remove, hide or alter any copyright notice, licence text or identifying mark in the Software or its installers;
- redistribute our factory presets or factory content as presets or content, on their own or as part of another preset library or sample pack. Music made with them is not covered by this restriction, per section 10;
- circumvent, disable or interfere with the licensing, activation or update mechanisms, or help anyone else do so;
- use the Software to build a competing product by copying its user interface, its structure, or its distinctive presentation.
Reverse engineering
You may not reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Software, except to the extent that this is expressly permitted by mandatory law that we cannot contract out of. In the European Union that includes the rights to observe, study and test the Software, and to decompile it where that is indispensable to achieve interoperability with an independently created program, under Articles 5 and 6 of Directive 2009/24/EC as implemented in Dutch law.
If you want interoperability information, ask us first at TODO_SUPPORT_EMAIL. We would rather send you what you need than have you spend a week in a disassembler.
12. Transferring your licence
If you bought a paid perpetual licence as a consumer in the European Union, you may transfer it permanently to someone else. To do so you must:
- transfer the whole licence, not part of it;
- stop using the Software yourself, deactivate all your machines, and delete your copies;
- tell us at TODO_SUPPORT_EMAIL who the new holder is, so we can move the licence to their email address and issue them a working key.
We do not charge a transfer fee. We cannot support a transfer we do not know about, because the licence key stays tied to the original account until we move it.
13. Updates and future versions
We publish updates from time to time, and installing them is optional.
Your licence covers the edition you bought and the updates we publish for it. If a future version is sold as a separate paid product or as a paid upgrade, we will say so clearly on the product page, and your existing licence continues to work for the version you already have. A licence you bought never stops working because a newer version exists.
We do not promise a particular release schedule, a particular feature, or that any specific update will be published.
14. Availability of our services
The activation service, the account page and the download area are provided as they are and may be unavailable from time to time, for maintenance or for reasons outside our control. Because the plugin verifies its licence locally, an outage of our services does not stop you working.
If we ever discontinue the activation service permanently, we will make reasonable efforts to give existing customers a way to keep using the software they paid for.
15. Suspension, revocation and termination
We may revoke a licence key, and the entitlement behind it, if:
- the payment is refunded, reversed or charged back (see the refund policy);
- the key was obtained fraudulently;
- the key is being shared or distributed in breach of section 9 or section 11.
Where the situation allows it we will contact you first. Revocation takes effect the next time the plugin refreshes its licence, which means an already activated machine keeps working until then. That is a deliberate consequence of offline verification, not an oversight.
Your licence also ends if you materially breach these terms and do not put the breach right within 30 days of us asking you to. When a licence ends you must stop using the paid edition and remove it from your machines. Sections 10, 16, 17, 19 and 20 survive.
You may stop using the Software at any time. Ending a licence does not on its own entitle you to a refund; the refund policy says when a refund is available.
16. Warranties, and the rights you keep by law
We warrant that we have the right to grant the licence in these terms.
Beyond that, and to the fullest extent permitted by law, the Software is provided as it is, without further warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non infringement. We do not warrant that the Software will be free of defects, that it will run without interruption, that it is compatible with every host application, operating system version or hardware configuration, or that it will meet your requirements.
Nothing in these terms limits or excludes the rights you have by law as a consumer. Under Dutch and European Union consumer law, digital content must conform to the contract, and you keep your statutory remedies if it does not. Where a term of this agreement conflicts with a mandatory consumer right, the statutory right wins and the rest of these terms stays in force.
Because the Software runs in host applications and on hardware we do not control, we strongly recommend that you test it in your setup, using the Lite edition where one exists, before relying on it in professional work.
17. Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law:
- our total liability arising out of or in connection with your purchase and use of the Software is limited to the amount you actually paid for the licence in question during the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim;
- we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for loss of profit, revenue, goodwill, studio time or business opportunity, or for loss of or damage to data, projects or recordings.
These limits do not apply to liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, to liability for intent or deliberate recklessness (opzet of bewuste roekeloosheid), or to any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded under Dutch law.
Keep backups of your work. This is good practice with any plugin from any vendor, and no term of ours can restore a project you did not back up.
18. Third party components
The Software may include components licensed to us by third parties, including open source components. Where it does, the applicable notices and licence texts are supplied with the Software or are available from us on request at TODO_SUPPORT_EMAIL. Those components remain governed by their own licences.
19. Changes to these terms
We may change these terms, for example when the law changes or when we add a product or a payment method. The version published on this page applies to purchases made after it was published, and the “last updated” date at the top of the page tells you when that was.
A change to these terms never removes rights under a licence you have already bought.
20. Governing law and disputes
These terms and any dispute arising from them are governed by Dutch law, excluding its conflict of law rules and excluding the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.
Disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the competent court in TODO_COURT_CITY, the Netherlands.
If you are a consumer, this does not take away your right to bring proceedings in the courts of the country where you live, or to rely on the mandatory consumer protection rules of that country. We would much rather sort a problem out by email first. Write to TODO_SUPPORT_EMAIL and tell us what went wrong.
21. How to reach us
For anything about the software, your licence or these terms, email TODO_SUPPORT_EMAIL. For questions about your payment, your invoice or a refund, you can also contact Paddle directly, as the seller of record for your transaction.
Our full registered details are in the business details block below.