Copyright takedowns and AudD: what we store, what we license, and where to send notices

If you are a rights holder — or acting for one — and you found your work in an AudD recognition result, this page explains what AudD actually stores and licenses, why recognition works the way it does, and where a takedown notice is effective. The short version:

• AudD stores no audio recordings. There is nothing on AudD to listen to, stream, or download.
• The metadata and reference material are licensed from AudD’s partners in the music industry, and AudD is contractually obliged to keep the matching available.
• Cover art rights are certified by the album’s publisher at distribution; if you believe that certification was wrong, the most effective takedown goes to the distributors and platforms hosting the image — and you can also send a DMCA notice to [email protected].
• If music is being distributed without permission, the effective target is the platform or distributor doing the distributing — and recognition results can help you document your case against them.

What AudD does — and does not do

AudD is a music recognition service. Send it a piece of audio and it answers one question: what recording is this? The answer is factual metadata — artist, title, album, label, release date, identifiers like ISRC — about a recording you already have.

AudD does not host music, stream music, sell music, or provide music for listening in any form. A recognition result is information about a recording, in the same way a discography entry is; it is not a copy of the recording and cannot be turned into one.

What we store: fingerprints, not recordings

To recognize music, AudD keeps audio fingerprints — compact mathematical signatures derived from recordings. A fingerprint:

• cannot be played back;
• cannot be reconstructed into the recording, in whole or in part;
• exists solely so that an unknown piece of audio can be matched against a known one.

Fingerprints are not audio recordings, and as a transformative derived representation they are not protected by copyright in the way the recording itself is. The recordings used to compute them are provided by AudD’s industry partners for exactly this purpose, and the recordings themselves are not what AudD’s database holds.

Where the catalog comes from

AudD’s reference catalog and metadata come from partners in the music industry — the companies that publish and distribute the recordings — who provide the recordings for fingerprinting and the accompanying metadata under license. AudD has all the rights required for this use. Those agreements also work in the other direction: AudD has contractual obligations to its partners to keep the metadata and the matching available, which is why identification results are not something AudD can simply switch off on request.

Recognition is how rights get enforced

AudD is the identification layer that labels and publishers, PROs and collection societies, and music lawyers and investigators use to find unauthorized use: to detect their catalog in user uploads, to monitor airplay for royalties, and to gather evidence — including exact timestamps — for enforcement.

Removing a work from recognition would not remove it from a single platform where it is actually available. It would only blind the tools used to investigate where the work appears and who is using it. If your goal is enforcement, recognition is on your side.

Music being distributed without permission?

If your concern is that a recording is being distributed without authorization — on streaming services, stores, or user-upload platforms — direct your notice at the platform through which the music is distributed and at the distributor that delivered it there. That is where a takedown changes what listeners can access. AudD’s role, if anything, is to help you document the infringement: its results identify the recording and, on long-form content, exactly where it appears.

Cover art and images

Cover art shown in recognition results follows the album through digital distribution. When publishing the album on digital platforms, the publisher of the album has certified that they have the right to use the image as the cover art without additional restrictions.

If you believe the music publisher did not have the necessary rights, the most effective step is to send a takedown notice directly to the distributors and music platforms hosting the image — that is where the artwork is actually stored and served across the ecosystem. You can also send us a DMCA takedown notice.

Sending a DMCA takedown notice

DMCA takedown notices should be sent to [email protected]. A notice should include:

• The copyright owner’s name.
• Your phone number.
• Your relationship to the copyright owner.
• Your full address, including your country, postcode, city, and street address.
• A certification that you have a good-faith belief that the use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
• A certification that the information in the notification is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you are the owner — or an agent authorised to act on behalf of the owner — of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
• Your signature, containing your full legal name.

Incomplete notices slow everything down: a notice missing the certifications or the signature cannot be acted on as a DMCA notice.

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This page describes AudD’s practices and policies; it is not legal advice.

Related

• AudD for music lawyers and licensing investigators
• AudD for record labels and publishers
• GDPR and music recognition
• How AudD identifies songs