Emerging Stages — Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Last updated September 5, 2026 · Version 2026-09-05.2

These Terms of Service and Privacy Policy govern your use of Emerging Stages. Please read them. The short version: we help you find live music near you, we compute your recommendations from your own activity, we do not sell your data, and you can delete your account yourself at any time.

PART I — TERMS OF SERVICE

1. Acceptance of Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the Emerging Stages application and website (the "Platform"), operated by Emerging Stages LLC ("Company," "we," "us"). By creating an account or using the Platform, you agree to these Terms.

These Terms alone govern all use of the Platform, including use by claimed venues and artists. There are no separate Venue Terms or Artist Terms. The obligations that apply specifically to venues and artists appear in Sections 5 and 8 below.

2. Description of Service

The Platform helps you discover live music near you, including small local and emerging artists. The Platform displays event pricing sourced from venues, shows you the source and confirmation date of that pricing, and flags pricing that has not been recently confirmed rather than hiding it.

3. Accounts and Eligibility

1. You must be at least thirteen (13) years old to create an account. If you are under the age of majority in your jurisdiction, you represent that a parent or legal guardian has reviewed and agrees to these Terms on your behalf, where required by law.
2. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account.
3. Browsing events and venue information does not require an account. Personalized features, including saving artists or venues and receiving a match score, require one.

4. Discovery, Matching, and Recommendations

1. The Platform's match scores are computed from your own activity: artists and venues you save, shows you mark yourself going to, shows you attend and rate, and overlap in genre, sound, and other artist attributes. Two capabilities sometimes associated with recommendation engines are not active today, and this Policy will be updated before either becomes active: connecting a third-party streaming account, and using other users' activity to influence your recommendations or yours to influence theirs.
2. Match scores are displayed with an indication of confidence, and that confidence reflects how much underlying data actually supports the score. A higher match percentage does not always mean a higher-confidence recommendation, which is why the two are shown separately.
3. Sponsored and promotional placements are clearly labeled and never influence organic, match-based discovery. Purchasing sponsorship cannot improve a match score or an organic ranking.

5. Content You Submit

1. Ratings and feedback. You may submit ratings, attendance reports, and written feedback about shows you attend, and may report problems or send suggestions through the Platform. You grant Company a license to use, display, and aggregate this content to operate and improve the Platform, consistent with Part II. You are responsible for the accuracy of what you submit and represent that it does not infringe anyone's rights.
2. Audio uploads (Artists). If you manage a claimed artist listing, uploading or linking a track requires attesting, at that moment, that you hold the rights necessary to share that recording on the Platform. Company may remove disputed audio pending review through the rights-dispute process on each artist's profile page, and may permanently remove audio found to infringe.
3. Claim submissions. By submitting a claim to manage an artist or venue listing, you represent that your stated relationship to that artist or venue, and the contact and verification details you provide, are accurate. Company reviews claims before approval and may reject or revoke a claim found to be fraudulent or inaccurate.

6. Payments and Subscriptions

This section applies if you pay for Venue Pro or for a city sponsorship.

1. These are recurring subscriptions. Venue Pro is billed monthly and sponsorships are billed monthly. Your card is charged automatically every month, at the same amount, until you cancel. The amount and interval are shown to you at checkout before you pay.
2. Cancelling, if you manage a venue. Open your venue dashboard and use the billing link there. It opens Stripe's billing portal, where you can cancel, update your card, and download past invoices.
3. Cancelling, if you are a sponsor. Sponsorships are arranged directly with us and have no dashboard, so email support@emergingstages.com and we will cancel it. We will confirm in writing.
4. What cancelling does. It stops all future charges. Your access continues to the end of the period you have already paid for, and is not cut off partway through a month you paid for.
5. Refunds. We do not automatically refund a partial month, because cancelling leaves your access running to the end of it rather than ending it early. If something went wrong — you were charged after cancelling, or charged for something you did not receive — email us and we will make it right.
6. Price changes. Two commitments apply to anyone already paying:

Your price is locked for eighteen (18) months from your first payment. A price change announced during that window does not apply to you until it ends.
Any change is announced with at least sixty (60) days' notice before it takes effect, and takes effect from your own next billing date rather than immediately.

These are the settings the Platform actually enforces, not aspirations.

7. Failed payments. If a charge fails, Stripe retries it. If it keeps failing, the subscription lapses and paid features stop; nothing is sent to collections and no cancellation fee is charged.
8. What we never see. Payments are processed by Stripe. Your full card number never reaches us and we cannot charge you outside the subscription you agreed to.

7. Third-Party Links and Services

The Platform displays links to third-party ticketing pages, artist merchandise and tip pages, and artist-provided audio sources. Company does not control and is not responsible for the content, accuracy, or practices of those destinations. Payments for Venue Pro subscriptions and sponsorships are processed by Stripe under Stripe's own terms. Company does not receive or store your full card number.

8. Prohibited Conduct

You agree not to:

Misrepresent your identity or your affiliation with a venue or artist, including in a claim submission.
Submit false ratings, attendance reports, or engagement activity intended to manipulate the Platform's matching, ranking, or metrics.
Upload or link audio you do not hold the rights to.
Attempt to access another user's account or data you are not authorized to see.
Use the Platform for any unlawful purpose, or scrape or bulk-extract data beyond normal use.

9. Intellectual Property

The Platform, including its software, design, and the "Emerging Stages" name and branding, is owned by Company. You retain ownership of content you submit, subject to the license granted in Section 5.

10. Disclaimers

The Platform is provided "as is" and "as available." Company does not guarantee the accuracy of venue-submitted pricing or event details, and displays confirmation dates and sources specifically so you can judge the reliability of what you are shown. Company does not guarantee that any event will occur, occur as scheduled, or be as described.

11. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Company's aggregate liability arising out of or relating to your use of the Platform is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid Company in the twelve (12) months preceding the claim, or (b) one hundred dollars ($100).

Company is not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, in which case the limitations above apply only to the extent permitted.

12. Dispute Resolution

Company does not require arbitration and does not ask you to waive class action rights. Disputes are resolved in court.

1. Before filing, please contact us at support@emergingstages.com and give us thirty (30) days to resolve the matter directly. Most problems are faster to fix than to litigate.
2. Any dispute not resolved that way is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Douglas County, Kansas, and you and Company each consent to that jurisdiction.
3. Either party may bring a qualifying claim in small claims court instead.

13. General Provisions

1. Governing Law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Kansas, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.
2. Changes to These Terms. Company may update these Terms. Material changes will be communicated with reasonable advance notice, and your continued use after they take effect constitutes acceptance. Each version carries the date and version identifier shown at the top of this document.
3. Termination. You may stop using the Platform and delete your account at any time. Company may suspend or terminate an account that violates these Terms.
4. Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force.
5. Entire Agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy below, are the entire agreement between you and Company regarding the Platform.

PART II — PRIVACY POLICY

1. Information We Collect

1. Account information. Your email address and password, and optional profile information you provide: display name, avatar, home city and state, preferred genres, and venue preferences.

2. Location. The Platform asks your device for your location in four places. Three are things you tap; one is automatic.

Automatically, once, at signup. Immediately after your account is confirmed, the Platform makes a single request for your location to set your home area, so your first view of the app shows shows near you rather than nothing. You may decline, and declining costs you nothing beyond setting your home area yourself.
When you set your home location on your Account page.
When you use the "near me" filter on the discovery page to sort or filter shows by distance.
When you tap to check in at a show, to confirm you are there.

The Platform does not track your location in the background, does not request it continuously, and stores a home area rather than a location history. Declining any of these requests disables only that feature.

3. Activity information. What you do on the Platform, including: shows and venues you view, artists and venues you save or follow, shows you mark yourself going to, clicks on ticket links, directions, venue phone numbers and websites, which recommendations were shown to you and where they appeared, shares and invitations you send, check-ins, and the ratings and attendance reports you submit after a show. Where you scan a venue's physical discovery QR code, we log that scan and which code it was, whether or not you have an account.

4. Claim information (Venues and Artists). Your name, role, contact email and phone, and how you verified your relationship to the artist or venue.

5. Audio (Artists). Tracks you upload or link, the rights attestation made at that moment, and the numerical audio analysis derived from them.

6. Messages you send us. Problem reports and suggestions, including any email address you give us so we can reply.

2. How We Use Information

1. To operate the Platform: showing you relevant shows, computing your match scores from your own activity, and letting venues and artists manage their listings.
2. To send you messages you would expect: confirming your account, asking whether you made it to a show you showed interest in, replying to something you wrote to us, and occasional notices about the service. You can stop show-related messages by turning off notifications or telling us.
3. To measure whether the Platform is working, as aggregated counts and rates. Our internal rule is that any internal report may read identity-linked data but must return only aggregates; no internal dashboard lists which specific user did what.
4. To detect and prevent fraud, abuse, and manipulation of ratings, attendance reports, or rankings.
5. Not active today: using your activity to influence another user's recommendations, and sharing aggregated market or venue intelligence with business customers. Both are on the roadmap, and both require an update to this Policy *before* going live, not after.

1. Company does not sell your personal information, and does not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.
2. Company shares information with service providers who help operate the Platform: Supabase (database and authentication hosting), Stripe (payments), Resend (email delivery), Railway (audio analysis), and Vercel (application hosting), each subject to their own privacy practices.
3. Venues and artists see aggregate counts only for their own listing: views, saves, check-ins, scans. They never see a list of which specific people engaged.
4. If Company is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may transfer as part of that transaction. You will be notified before it becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
5. Company may disclose information if required by law, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of Company or its users.

4. Data Retention and Deletion

1. Self-serve deletion. You can permanently delete your account from your Account page at any time after confirming your password. This deletes your credentials, profile, saved artists and venues, ratings, and match scores. If you currently manage a claimed venue or artist listing, you will need to contact us to transfer or release it first, since deleting your account as the sole owner would orphan that listing.
2. Some records tied to your activity, such as a QR scan or a check-in logged against a venue, are anonymized rather than deleted. The event stays, because venues rely on it for their own aggregate counts, but the link to your identity is removed and you are not identifiable from what remains.
3. Where your activity has already contributed in aggregated form to internal metrics before deletion, that aggregate influence may not be fully reversible. This Policy does not promise removal of downstream aggregate influence beyond deletion of your own identifiable data.
4. We retain your information for as long as your account is open. We do not currently run an automatic deletion schedule for inactive accounts; deletion happens when you ask for it, either yourself or by writing to us.

5. Your Rights and Choices

Company honors the following for every user, regardless of where you live, rather than only where a particular law requires it:

1. Access. You may see the account information we hold, in your dashboard, or ask us for it.
2. Correction. You may update your profile and preferences directly.
3. Deletion. Self-serve from your Account page, or by writing to us.
4. Objection. You may tell us to stop sending you messages, and you may decline any location request without losing access to the rest of the Platform.

To exercise any of these, write to support@emergingstages.com. We do not discriminate against you for exercising them.

6. Children's Privacy

The Platform is not directed to children under 13, and Company does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

7. Security

Company uses reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards. Database access is restricted by row-level security policies scoped to each user's own data, internal analytics read aggregated output, and payment card numbers never reach our systems. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and Company cannot guarantee absolute security.

8. Changes to This Policy

Company may update this Privacy Policy. Material changes will be communicated with reasonable advance notice before they take effect, in particular before either of the not-yet-active uses in Section 2.5 goes live. Each version carries the date and version identifier at the top.

9. Contact

Questions about these Terms or this Privacy Policy may be directed to support@emergingstages.com.

Emerging Stages LLC Lawrence, Kansas