What is Indemnification? A Guide to Soundstripe's Key Legal Protections as Part of the Enterprise Plan
Jourdan Aldredge
Jul 24, 2024
When creating content for any brand or business, regardless of size, the stakes are always going to feel higher than when you create content for just yourself. That’s because we all recognize and know that the rules are different for solo creators versus larger companies or organizations.
Not only are the rules different, but there is indeed more risk. As such, if you’re someone looking to find royalty free music to license for any sort of content for a company, brand, institution, etc… then you’re going to want to do your diligence to make sure that everything is on the up and up—so to speak.
Regardless of whether or not you’re a freelancer or a full-time member of a team, the best way to protect yourself and your company is to learn the importance of indemnity and what guarantees and promises of said protection you get with the Soundstripe Enterprise plan.
Alright, before we dive too deep here, let’s quickly explain what indemnity is, and what it has to do with music licensing. Indemnity is a contract law term that basically means that it's a contractual obligation of one party to compensate for the loss incurred by another party.
The two parties are often referred to as the indemnitor and the indemnitee and the contractual obligation covers any relevant acts of the indemnitor or any related party done against the indemnitee.
In music licensing, if you fail to legally license and retain the rights to use music (or any other assets for that matter) in any videos or content for your company or brand, you could be liable for any losses incurred by the indemnitee or the person you created the content for. The original copyright owner would have an infringement claim against both indemnitor and indemnitee.
Now, why is this important you ask? Well, indemnification is important because it is how you protect against any copyright issues. At Soundstripe our Enterprise Plans offer guarantees and promises that are not available in our regular plans.
And these promises about your subscription that Soundstripe will be required to provide and pay for include legal fees related to claims made against your usage and distribution of Soundstripe music. Which, depending on the size of any claims, can be a huge sum of money.
So, regardless if your company or organization is big or small, these protections can be crucial to help keep your brand in the clear from expensive legal trouble.
To expand on the above, in the business world we know that legal disputes can arise even when you have done everything correctly. For example, an artist could unjustly claim that a piece of music you’ve used belongs to or sounds similar to their song, despite it having a proper Soundstripe license. Defending against such claims can be costly and time-consuming, involving legal fees, court appearances, and significant disruptions to your business operations.
Without indemnification, your company would have to bear the full burden of these legal costs, which can quickly escalate. This is where the Enterprise Plan's indemnification provision becomes essential. It provides a safety net, ensuring that Soundstripe will take on the financial and legal responsibility.
Indemnification is a standard provision in business SaaS agreements because it protects both the vendor and the client. It assures clients that the vendor stands behind their product and is willing to defend its legitimacy. In the case of Soundstripe, this means we are committed to protecting your right to use our music without fear of unjust legal repercussions.
Now that we’ve covered what indemnification is and how it can help protect you and your clients, companies, organizations, etc… let’s look at what else is included with an enterprise plan vs a regular pro plan.
In short, the key differences between our Consumer and Enterprise Plans are:
1) User and Team Access
2) Content and usage
3) Guarantees we make (representations and warranties)
4) Promises against those guarantees (indemnification)
5) And any customization that's needed contractually
If you are just using a Pro Plan, your current subscription is an agreement between you and Soundstripe. Among other things, no one else is allowed to access your subscription and in the event you ever leave your organization, that subscription may not be passed to anyone else; you can no longer access any historical work, and more importantly, you can not access the actual music licenses.
This is important because in the event of any random artist making a claim against the music you use, you would need and want the license to show you have the rights for distribution.
Because of these reasons, we do not allow businesses to subscribe to one of our consumer plans. There's too much risk for both your company and Soundstripe and too many downsides for you and your company. Likewise, for these same reasons, most businesses require employees to have their company contract with vendors, not have the employee contract with vendors.
Ultimately though, if you’re still unsure about what plan is right for you, we’d be happy to help go through the decision with you. Just contact a Soundstripe sales representative directly here.
We can walk you through the custom pricing and term contract options and help you choose the right plan to license and protect you and your company.
