Terms of Service

Archived copy. This version of our Terms of Service took effect on 13 September 2026, with the edits of 24 and 26 September 2026. It was replaced on 2 October 2026. The current version is at music.swaco.co/terms.html.

Effective: 13 September 2026

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a contract between you and SwaCo LLC ("SwaCo", "we", "us"), a limited liability company organised in the State of Pennsylvania, United States. They govern your use of the websites and applications we operate, including swaco.co, music.swaco.co (the homepage and the Community) and guitar.swaco.co (School of Guitar and Guitar Studio), and any other service that links to these Terms (together, the "Services").

By using the Services, creating an account, or clicking a button that refers to these Terms, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the Services.

1. Who may use the Services

You must be at least 13 years old to use the Services. If you are under 18, you may use the Services only with the permission of a parent or legal guardian who agrees to these Terms on your behalf. You must be at least 18 to create a teacher profile, offer or book lessons, enter a giveaway, or contribute recordings or transcriptions.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.

2. Your account

One SwaCo account works across every SwaCo service. You are responsible for keeping your password secret and for everything done with your account. Tell us promptly at the address in section 15 if you think someone else is using it. You may sign in with Google; Google's terms govern your Google account, not ours.

Your display name, bio, skills, and profile picture are public. Do not put anything in them you would not want strangers to see.

You can ask us to delete your account at any time (section 15). Deleting your account removes your profile and personal information as described in the Privacy Policy; forum posts you made may remain, without your name attached, so that other people's conversations still make sense.

3. The free tools

Guitar Studio and the other in-browser tools are free to use, with or without an account. What you make with them — your compositions, transcriptions, recordings, and practice data — is yours, and it stays on your device unless you deliberately export it, sync it to your own cloud storage, or contribute it to us. We claim no rights in it.

The tools use your microphone only when you press a control that says so, and only in your browser. Audio is never transmitted to us except when you deliberately contribute a recording under the Contributor Terms (section 6).

4. Content you post

The Community lets you post to a public forum and publish a profile. When you post, you keep ownership of what you post, and you grant SwaCo a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, display, reproduce and distribute it as part of operating and promoting the Services, for as long as it remains on the Services and, for posts you do not delete, afterwards in backups and in other users' replies.

You are responsible for what you post. You promise that you have the rights to post it, that it does not infringe anyone's copyright, trademark, privacy or other rights, and that it follows our Community Guidelines. In particular, do not post transcriptions, tablature, lyrics or recordings of music you do not own or have permission to share. Original work and public-domain work are welcome.

We may remove any content and suspend or close any account, with or without notice, if we reasonably believe it breaks these Terms, the Community Guidelines, or the law, or exposes us or other users to harm.

5. Lessons between users

The Community lets people who teach ("Teachers") post availability, and people who want to learn ("Students") request it. SwaCo is a venue, not a party to the lesson. Specifically:

• We do not employ Teachers. Teachers are independent people offering their own services. We do not verify their identity, qualifications, background, or the quality of their teaching, unless we say otherwise on a specific profile.
• Lessons happen on tools we do not control. Teachers may use video and scheduling services such as Zoom, Google Meet, Acuity or Calendly. Those services have their own terms and privacy policies. We do not see, record, or store what happens in a lesson.
• Today, no money moves through SwaCo. Booking is scheduling only. Any payment between a Teacher and a Student is between them. If we later process payments, we will say so, and additional terms will apply.
• Both parties must be adults. Lessons through the Services are for people 18 and over. A Teacher must not knowingly give a lesson to a minor through the Services, and a parent must not book one for a minor.
• Disputes are between the parties. We may help informally, but we are not responsible for cancellations, no-shows, refunds, the content of a lesson, or anything that happens during one.
• Teachers agree to the additional Teacher terms in section 5a.

5a. Additional terms for Teachers

By turning on "I give lessons" you also agree that: you are at least 18; you are an independent contractor and nothing here creates employment, partnership or agency; you are responsible for your own taxes, licences, insurance and equipment; you will use only the tools you are entitled to use and will comply with their terms; you will not record a lesson without the Student's consent; you will not teach a minor through the Services; you keep all rights to your own teaching materials and grant us only the licence in section 4 for what you post on the Services; and you will follow the Community Guidelines.

6. Contributing recordings and transcriptions

Some tools let you contribute a recording, its labels, or a transcription to SwaCo for training and evaluating music-transcription models. That is always a separate, deliberate choice, made per item, and it is governed by the Contributor Terms, which are part of these Terms. Contributions are for people 18 and over.

7. Donations

Donations through music.swaco.co support SwaCo LLC, a for-profit company. They are not tax-deductible as charitable contributions. They are processed by Stripe under Stripe's terms; we do not see or store your card details. Donations are voluntary and non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise or we choose to refund one.

8. Giveaways

Any giveaway or sweepstakes we run is governed by its own Official Rules, posted where you enter. No purchase or donation is necessary to enter or win. Giveaways are open to people 18 and over where permitted by law and void where prohibited.

9. Our content and licences

The Services, including the software, designs, text, and the SwaCo name and the schwa (ə) logo, are owned by SwaCo LLC or its licensors and are protected by copyright, trademark and other laws. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-transferable licence to use the Services for personal, non-commercial learning and music-making, and for Teachers, to offer lessons through them. Do not copy, scrape, resell, reverse-engineer, or build a competing service from the Services, except as the law allows regardless of these Terms.

Some parts of the Services use open-source software and open data under their own licences; those are listed at guitar.swaco.co/credits and nothing in these Terms limits your rights under them. Curriculum and lesson content identified as belonging to a named author is licensed to us by that author and remains theirs. Material we publish under Creative Commons or public-domain dedications (for example, in Music Commons) is available under those terms.

10. Copyright complaints (DMCA)

We respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If you believe content on the Services infringes your copyright, send a notice containing the information required by 17 U.S.C. §512(c)(3) to our designated agent:

Copyright Agent, SwaCo LLC
20 W. Montgomery Ave, Apt 202, Ardmore, PA 19003, United States
swaco.llc+dmca@gmail.com — +1 (610) 420-6639

We will remove or disable access to material that a valid notice identifies, notify the user who posted it, and accept counter-notices as the DMCA provides. We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

11. Acceptable use

Do not use the Services to break the law, to harass, threaten or deceive anyone, to send spam, to upload malware, to probe or overload our systems, to impersonate anyone, to collect other users' information, or to circumvent any limit or control. Do not use automated tools to access the Services other than ordinary search-engine indexing. See the Community Guidelines for the rest.

12. Disclaimers

The Services are provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and accuracy. We do not promise that the Services will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, that transcriptions or pitch detection will be correct, that any content is suitable for you, or that lessons will meet your expectations. Data you keep only on your device can be lost by your browser; export what you care about. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so some of the above may not apply to you.

13. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, SwaCo LLC and its members, managers, contractors and licensors will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits, goodwill or opportunity, arising from or related to the Services or these Terms, however caused and under any theory of liability, even if advised of the possibility. Our total liability to you for all claims arising from the Services will not exceed the greater of US $100 or the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. These limits do not apply to liability that cannot be limited by law.

14. Indemnity

You will defend, indemnify and hold harmless SwaCo LLC and its members, managers and contractors from any claim, loss or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from content you post or contribute, a lesson you give or take, your breach of these Terms, or your violation of any law or of anyone's rights.

15. Contact, notices, and deletion requests

SwaCo LLC · 20 W. Montgomery Ave, Apt 202, Ardmore, PA 19003 · swaco.llc@gmail.com. We may send you notices by email to the address on your account or by posting on the Services. To delete your account or exercise privacy rights, email us from the address on your account.

16. Changes to the Services and these Terms

We may change or discontinue any part of the Services at any time. We may change these Terms; if the change is material we will post the new Terms with a new effective date and, for account holders, make reasonable efforts to notify you. Continuing to use the Services after a change means you accept it. If you do not, stop using the Services and, if you wish, ask us to delete your account.

17. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Pennsylvania, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and you consent to their jurisdiction, except that either party may seek injunctive relief in any court. You and SwaCo each waive any right to a jury trial and to participate in a class action, to the extent the law allows.

18. General

If any part of these Terms is unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them to a successor of the Services. These Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Contributor Terms, the Community Guidelines, and any Official Rules you enter under are the entire agreement between you and SwaCo about the Services. This English text governs; translations are for convenience only.