Underground Platform — Terms of Service

Status: pre-launch draft for legal review

Effective date: to be set before public beta

Last updated: 25 July 2026

These Terms are an operational draft and do not replace advice from qualified counsel. All placeholders and launch-blocking items must be resolved before publication.

1. About Underground Platform

Underground Platform (the Platform, Underground, we, us) is an online service operated by Gianluca Pizzamiglio, a natural person acting as Data Controller and service operator. The Platform enables users to create profiles, manage bands, publish music and related materials, discover artists, listen through the Platform player, communicate and use related community features.

The complete operator postal or elected service address must be inserted before public beta. Current privacy contact: gianluca.pizzamiglio@icloud.com.

Underground is not a record label, music publisher, distributor, collecting society, rights-management organisation, booking agent, talent agency, employer, partnership or fiduciary of any user. Unless a separate written agreement expressly says otherwise, Underground does not sell music, collect or distribute royalties, acquire catalogues, administer publishing rights or act as merchant of record.

2. Acceptance and incorporated policies

By creating an account, uploading or publishing content, or otherwise using the Platform, you agree to these Terms and to the following policies, each incorporated by reference:

• Acceptable Use Policy
• Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy
• Notice and Action Policy
• Content Moderation Policy
• Artificial Intelligence Policy
• the Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy when published;
• any feature-specific terms clearly presented before use.

If you do not agree, do not use the Platform.

3. Eligibility and minors

You must have legal capacity to enter into these Terms. The minimum age and any parental-authorisation workflow must be fixed before launch after an assessment under Italian law and Article 8 GDPR.

If you use Underground on behalf of a band, organisation or other rights holder, you represent that you are authorised to bind that entity and to administer its profile and content.

4. Accounts, bands and permissions

Each personal account must belong to a real individual. One person may manage more than one band, and a band may be managed by multiple authorised members.

You are responsible for:

• maintaining the confidentiality and security of your credentials;
• actions performed through your account until you notify us of unauthorised access;
• granting band permissions only to authorised people;
• ensuring that collaborators act within the rights granted to them;
• keeping account and rights information accurate.

The fact that a user can technically upload or edit material does not prove that the user owns the relevant rights.

5. User Content and ownership

User Content includes music, sound recordings, compositions, lyrics, metadata, artwork, photographs, logos, trademarks, videos, comments, messages, profile information and any other material submitted through the Platform.

You and the relevant rightsholders retain all ownership, title and interest in User Content. Underground does not acquire ownership of your recordings, compositions, artwork, brands or catalogue.

Underground does not acquire, purchase, administer, commercially exploit or monetise User Content except to the limited extent strictly necessary to provide functions requested or enabled by you under these Terms.

Nothing in these Terms creates exclusivity. You remain free to publish, license, distribute, promote and monetise the same works through any other platform or service.

6. Rights and authority warranty

You may upload or publish User Content only if you own it or hold every permission, licence and authority necessary for the intended use on Underground.

For music and related materials, you represent and warrant that, as applicable, you have secured or validly control:

• rights in the sound recording and master;
• rights in the musical composition and lyrics;
• performers’ and neighbouring rights;
• mechanical, performance, communication-to-the-public and making-available rights to the extent required;
• authorisations from publishers, collecting societies, rights-management organisations or other administrators where required;
• cover-song licences and permissions;
• sample, beat, loop and interpolation clearances;
• producer, engineer, session-musician, featured-artist and union permissions or payments;
• rights in artwork, photographs, video, logos and trademarks;
• personality, image, privacy and publicity permissions for identifiable persons;
• authority to act for every co-owner or represented artist.

You further warrant that publication, hosting, technical processing and playback delivery of the User Content as contemplated by these Terms will not infringe intellectual-property, contractual, privacy, publicity, moral or other third-party rights, and that no undisclosed payment is owed by Underground to any third party because of your upload or publication.

Upon a reasonably substantiated rights dispute, we may ask you for evidence of ownership or permission. Failure to provide sufficient evidence may result in restriction or removal.

7. Limited technical licence to Underground

To provide the Platform, you grant Underground a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence, for as long as the User Content remains available through the service and for a limited technical retention period afterwards, to:

• host, store and back up the User Content;
• reproduce it as technically necessary;
• validate, scan and secure uploads;
• transcode audio or images and generate technical derivatives, previews, waveforms, thumbnails and metadata indexes;
• cache and deliver content through infrastructure, content-delivery systems and integrated playback providers;
• publicly display, perform, communicate and make available content according to the visibility and publication settings you choose;
• permit users to play or view published content through the Platform;
• maintain integrity, availability, abuse prevention, incident recovery and legal compliance.

This licence is limited to operating, maintaining, securing, technically optimising and making available the Platform. It does not permit us to sell your catalogue, grant standalone commercial licences, create unrelated derivative works, train generative models, or use your identity to imply endorsement.

We may use public band names, logos, artwork and short extracts solely to identify and surface content within Platform-controlled discovery, search, embeds and editorial presentation. Paid advertising, off-platform campaigns or materially different promotional uses require separate permission unless they merely link to or accurately identify the public profile.

The licence ends when the relevant content is deleted or the account is closed, except for copies retained temporarily in backups, security records, legal holds, dispute files or other records required by law. Retained copies will not remain publicly available merely because they exist in backup storage.

8. Licence to other users

When you publish User Content, you permit other users to access and experience it only through the functionality and visibility you selected. Unless an explicit download or reuse licence is displayed, users receive no right to copy, scrape, redistribute, synchronise, remix, resell, train models on or commercially exploit the content.

External links to lawful artist-controlled services do not transfer responsibility for those services to Underground.

9. Human creativity and artificial intelligence

Underground will not use User Content to train foundation models, generative artificial-intelligence systems or machine-learning models that generate music, audio, images, text or audiovisual works, and will not license User Content to third parties for those purposes, unless each affected rightsholder has given specific, informed and explicit prior consent.

Automated technical systems may be used for security, spam prevention, moderation support, search, accessibility, transcription, tagging or other requested product functions, provided they are not used to build a general-purpose generative training corpus contrary to the Artificial Intelligence Policy.

Content generated wholly or substantially by generative AI, deceptive synthetic impersonation, and unauthorised voice or style cloning are governed by the Artificial Intelligence Policy and may be rejected or removed.

10. Prohibited conduct

You must comply with the Acceptable Use Policy. In particular, you may not use Underground to:

• upload infringing, unlawful, fraudulent or deceptive content;
• impersonate artists or misrepresent rights ownership;
• distribute malware, phishing or harmful code;
• scrape or bulk-extract content or personal data without permission;
• evade access controls, rate limits, takedowns or suspensions;
• harass, threaten, dox or exploit others;
• manipulate ratings, metrics, recommendations or discovery;
• use content to train AI systems without authorisation;
• interfere with Platform security or availability.

11. Hosting role and content responsibility

Users, not Underground, choose and provide User Content. Underground does not proactively verify ownership or legality of every item before publication and does not endorse User Content merely by hosting it.

We may use automated or human review where required by law, following a notice, where reliable information indicates a possible violation, or to enforce these Terms. No moderation system can guarantee that all unlawful or infringing material will be identified immediately.

12. Copyright, trademarks and notice-and-action

We respect intellectual-property rights and will process sufficiently precise, adequately substantiated notices under the Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy and Notice and Action Policy.

Where appropriate, we may disable access, preserve evidence, request information, notify the uploader, remove content or restore it following review. A notice is not automatically proof of infringement, but a credible notice may create knowledge requiring prompt action.

Knowingly false, abusive or materially misleading notices or counter-notices may lead to account restrictions and may create legal liability.

13. Repeat and egregious infringement

Underground may apply progressive measures including warning, upload restriction, temporary suspension and account termination when a user repeatedly infringes rights or repeatedly submits content without sufficient authority.

We may act immediately in cases of egregious, systematic, deliberate or commercially significant infringement; evasion of prior enforcement; counterfeit identity; or credible risk of serious harm.

Repeat-infringer decisions consider the number, reliability and outcome of notices, the number of affected works, user conduct, counter-notices, previous warnings and evidence of deliberate evasion. A raw allegation count alone is not necessarily determinative.

14. Moderation decisions and appeals

Content or account measures are governed by the Content Moderation Policy. Where legally required and reasonably possible, we will provide the affected user with a clear statement of reasons and an available review or complaint route.

We may preserve restricted content and related records where needed for appeals, legal claims, abuse prevention or statutory obligations.

15. Credits, royalties and collecting societies

Users are responsible for accurate credits and rights metadata.

Unless a separate written service expressly states otherwise, Underground does not calculate, collect, report or distribute royalties; administer publishing or neighbouring rights; submit setlists or usage reports to collecting societies; obtain licences on behalf of uploaders; or guarantee that metadata satisfies any distributor, society or registry.

If your agreements or local law require reporting, licences or payments, you remain responsible for them.

16. External support, merchandise, ticketing and third-party services

The Platform may link to payment providers, donation services, merchandise stores, ticketing services, streaming platforms, social networks or other third parties. Unless expressly stated otherwise, transactions occur directly between the user and the third-party provider.

Third parties remain solely responsible for their services, contractual obligations, consumer-law compliance, payments, taxes, refunds, fulfilment, privacy and security. Underground is not merchant of record and does not take possession or title to third-party products.

17. Platform fees and voluntary contributions

At launch, core Platform access may be provided without a fee. We may introduce paid optional features in the future only with clear notice and any additional terms required before purchase.

Voluntary contributions support development and operation of the Platform. They do not create ownership interests, partnership rights, governance rights, preferential moderation, guaranteed features or other contractual entitlement beyond any benefit expressly offered at the time.

18. Availability and changes

We aim to provide a reliable service but do not guarantee uninterrupted, error-free or permanent availability. Features may change, be suspended or discontinued for security, legal, technical or product reasons.

We will provide reasonable notice of material adverse changes where practicable and where required by law. Changes to these Terms will be versioned, dated and presented for renewed acceptance when required.

19. Suspension and termination

You may close your account through available account controls or by submitting a request through the published support channel.

We may restrict or terminate access where reasonably necessary to enforce these Terms, protect users or infrastructure, comply with law, respond to rights claims, prevent fraud or address security risks. Where appropriate, measures should be proportionate to the conduct and risk.

Account closure does not erase obligations or records that must survive, including ownership provisions, rights warranties, dispute records, legal holds, security logs, indemnities and limitations permitted by law. Personal-data deletion follows the Privacy Policy, retention rules and applicable data-protection law.

20. Disclaimers

The Platform is provided on an “as available” basis. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we do not warrant that User Content is accurate, lawful, non-infringing, suitable, continuously available or free from harmful material.

Nothing in these Terms excludes mandatory consumer rights or liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including liability for fraud, wilful misconduct, gross negligence, death or personal injury where applicable.

21. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Underground is not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential or special losses; loss of profit, revenue, reputation, opportunity or data; third-party conduct; unauthorised uploads; external services; or decisions made by users based on Platform content.

Any monetary cap must be reviewed by qualified Italian counsel before launch and must not override mandatory consumer or statutory protections. Until that review is complete, no numerical liability cap should be published.

22. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, users acting for professional, commercial or organisational purposes agree to defend, indemnify and hold the operator harmless from third-party claims, losses, damages, reasonable legal costs and liabilities arising from:

• User Content they upload, publish or administer;
• breach of the rights warranties in these Terms;
• infringement of intellectual-property, privacy, publicity or contractual rights;
• unlawful use of the Platform;
• material breach of these Terms or incorporated policies.

This clause does not apply to consumers to the extent prohibited by mandatory law and does not cover loss caused by Underground’s own unlawful conduct.

23. Privacy

Personal data is processed under the Privacy Policy and related GDPR documentation. The current legal folder includes the controller identity, processing register, retention policy, processor register and DSAR procedure. The final public Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy must be completed before beta.

24. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by Italian law, without prejudice to mandatory protections available to consumers in their country of residence.

The competent court and any required consumer dispute-resolution information must be confirmed by qualified counsel before publication. Nothing in these Terms deprives a consumer of a mandatory forum or remedy.

25. General provisions

If a provision is invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain effective and the invalid provision will be interpreted or replaced to preserve its lawful purpose as closely as possible.

Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not transfer your account or obligations without permission. Underground may transfer operation of the service as part of a legitimate reorganisation, provided user rights and data-protection obligations remain protected.

These Terms and incorporated policies form the agreement regarding use of the Platform, except for separate written agreements expressly governing specific services.

26. Contact

General, legal and copyright-specific production contact addresses must be established before launch.

Current provisional contact: gianluca.pizzamiglio@icloud.com.