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Terms of Service

Last updated: 6 September 2026

1. Who you are dealing with

SongGenie is a music production business run by Max Honsinger, based in London, United Kingdom.

Maxima Music Group Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, company number

12843015, registered office 20-22 Wenlock Road, London N1 7GU. SongGenie and MixGenie are trading names of that company. You can reach us at [email protected].

In these terms, "we" and "us" means SongGenie. "You" means the person or organisation we are working for.

2. What these terms are, and what they are not

These terms cover your use of this website and the general shape of how we work together. They are not the whole deal. The specifics of any project, meaning what we are actually doing, what it costs, and when it is delivered, are agreed separately between us in writing before we start.

Nothing on this website is an offer to sell you anything at a fixed price. There is no shop here, no checkout, and no off-the-shelf package. The pages describe what we do so that you can decide whether to get in touch. Prices and scope are quoted individually, because every song is different and pretending otherwise leads to bad work.

3. How a project starts

  1. You get in touch, usually through the application form or the contact form.
  2. We talk about the song, what you want, and whether we are the right fit. If we are not, we will say so.
  3. We send you a written quote setting out what we will do, what it costs, and a rough timeline.
  4. You accept it in writing, and pay whatever is due up front.
  5. Work starts.

There is no contract between us until step 4. Filling in a form does not book anything and does not oblige either of us to do anything.

Most projects start with a call. You can book one directly at song-genie.com/book, which shows real availability and takes about twenty minutes. After that we will send you a written quote setting out the work, the price, the payment split and the timeline. A project starts when you accept that quote and the first payment clears, not before.

4. Prices, deposits and payment

Part of the price is paid before work starts and the rest on completion. The split for your project is set out in your quote, and it varies with the size and shape of the job, so there is no single figure that applies to everything.

Whatever the split, the refund position below does not change: you never pay more than half the total for work you have cancelled.

When you get your money back:

  • Before work starts, if you change your mind, you get a full refund. No questions and no deductions.
  • If we do not finish within six weeks, you get a full refund. The six weeks begin once we have everything we need from you, and pause any time we are waiting on you, because we cannot finish a song we are waiting for parts on.
  • Once work has started, you pay for the work actually done, and never more than 50% of the total. So you always get at least half of what you paid back. That holds even if the work is finished and you are simply unhappy with it.

Currency and VAT. We quote in US dollars, because most of our clients are in the United States. We are not currently VAT registered, so no VAT is charged and your invoice will not show any. If that changes we will tell you before it affects a quote you have already accepted.

If the final payment is not made. The masters are released to you when the project is paid for in full. Until then they remain ours, and we will hold the final files. You will still hear the work: we send previews so you can approve it. But the release files come with the final payment.

Releasing an unfinished version is a breach of these terms. If you release, distribute or commercially use a demo, a preview, or any earlier version of the work before the project is paid in full, that is a breach of contract, and the full balance becomes payable immediately.

5. What we will do

We will perform the services set out in your quote with reasonable care and skill. That is not us being generous, it is a term the Consumer Rights Act 2015 puts into every contract to supply a service whether we write it down or not (section 49), and we cannot contract out of it (section 57).

If we do not perform to that standard, the Act gives you the right to require us to do the work again, or to a price reduction (section 54, and sections 55 and 56).

What we do not promise. Music is subjective. We will not promise you that a finished song will be commercially successful, get playlisted, get signed, hit a particular number of streams, or be liked by any particular person. Nobody honestly can, and anyone who does is selling you something else.

6. Revisions

Production packages include ten rounds of revisions, which in practice is far more than most projects use. We treat that as a guide rather than a hard stop: if a song genuinely needs another pass to be right, we would rather do it than argue about a number.

7. What you give us, and the promise you make about it

You will need to send us material: demos, voice memos, stems, lyrics, reference tracks, samples, and so on.

When you send us anything, you are promising us that you have the right to. That means you either wrote it and performed it yourself, or you have permission from whoever did. This specifically includes:

  • Samples and loops. If it came from someone else's record, you need to have cleared it, and clearing it is your job, not ours.
  • Other people's performances. If someone else sang or played on your demo, you need their agreement. Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (section 182) a performer's rights are infringed by recording their performance without consent, so this is not a formality.
  • AI-generated material. If part of your track came from an AI tool, tell us, and make sure the tool's own terms allow you to use the output commercially. Turning AI creations into real songs with real musicians is something we actively do, so this is not a problem, it is just something we need to know about up front rather than discover later.

If it turns out you did not have the rights to something you sent us, and someone comes after us because of it, that is on you and you agree to cover us for it.

Session musicians. Most projects involve real players, which is rather the point. We find them, book them, pay them and clear their performances, so the recording comes to you free of any claim from them. You do not deal with them and you do not pay them.

You are not obliged to credit them. If you would like to, tell us and we will ask them first, because that is their decision to make rather than ours or yours.

8. Who owns the finished music

This is the section people care about most, so here is how it works by default.

Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the author of a sound recording is the producer (section 9(2)(aa)), and the author of a work is the first owner of copyright in it (section 11). In plain terms, that means the person who makes the recording owns the recording copyright unless there is an agreement saying otherwise. That is separate from the song itself, meaning the composition and the lyrics, which stays with whoever wrote it. Two different copyrights, two different owners potentially.

You own the finished master recording once the project is paid for in full. It is yours to release, license, distribute and earn from, anywhere, with no further payment to us.

We ask for one thing in return: a production credit where credits are given, in the form "Produced by Max Honsinger" or "Produced by SongGenie". That is how this kind of work gets found by the next person, and it costs you nothing.

Your rights as the writer. If you wrote the song, you keep the copyright in the song itself. Nothing we do changes that. You also have moral rights under sections 77 and 80 of the 1988 Act, including the right to be identified as the author (once asserted) and the right to object to derogatory treatment of your work.

What you actually receive. 24-bit WAV masters and MP3s as standard. Stems and alternative versions (instrumental, radio edit and so on) are yours too, at no extra charge, just ask for them.

WAV is what distributors and sync libraries want. MP3s are for sending round and getting approvals. Stems matter later, for sync licensing, live performance and remixes. Stems matter: they are what you need for sync licensing, live performance and remixes later.

Full session files, meaning the actual Logic projects, stay with us unless separately agreed. They are generally only useful to someone running the same software and the same plugins, and preparing them for handover is a job in itself.

If a refund is paid, ownership does not transfer. The master becomes yours when the project is paid for in full. If we refund you, in whole or in part, under section 4, then it has not been paid for in full, and the master remains ours until the position is settled between us. This is not about clawing anything back. It exists so that a refund and a finished record cannot both be walked away with.

9. Your legal right to cancel

This is the section it is easiest to get wrong, so it is written carefully.

Because we agree work by email, phone and video call rather than face to face, most of our contracts are "distance contracts". If you are a consumer, meaning you are buying for yourself rather than for a business, the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give you a right to cancel within 14 days of the contract being made, without giving a reason (regulations 29 and 30(2)).

One thing we are not relying on. The Regulations contain an exception for things "made to the consumer's specifications or clearly personalised" (regulation 28(1)(b)), and it is tempting to assume that bespoke music production falls under it. It does not. That exception is written for the supply of *goods*, and what we sell you is a *service*. The rules that actually govern cancellation here are the ones about services, in regulation 36, set out below.

Note for anyone revising this page. The paragraph above exists deliberately. The "bespoke goods" exception in regulation 28(1)(b) applies to goods, not services, so it does not remove the cancellation right here. It is the most common wrong turn in this area, and the paragraph is there to stop someone reaching for it later.

There are two things that genuinely change the position, and both are worth understanding before you ask us to start.

If you ask us to start within the 14 days. We are not allowed to begin work during the cancellation period unless you expressly ask us to (regulation 36(1)). If you do ask, and you then cancel part way through, you still have to pay us for the work we have already done, in proportion to the whole job (regulation 36(4)).

Once the work is finished. If you asked us to start early, and we have fully performed the service, and you acknowledged that you would lose the right to cancel once we had, then the right to cancel is gone (regulation 36(2)).

If you cancel and are due money back, we will refund you without undue delay and in any event within 14 days (regulation 34).

Note. The Consumer Contracts Regulations also require certain information to be given before a consumer commits. That belongs in the quote rather than on this page, and the checklist is in (C) Quote Template - required legal wording.md.

10. Cancellation and rescheduling outside that period

Cancelling later. If you cancel after the 14 day period described above, the same terms apply as in section 4: you pay for the work actually done, and never more than 50% of the total. One rule for refunds throughout, so there is nothing to argue about.

Moving a booked session. If you need to move a session, tell us as early as you can and we will do our best. Session musicians and studio time are booked in advance and are not always refundable to us, so a late change may mean those costs are not recoverable.

11. Timelines

We will give you a timeline in the quote and we will do our best to hit it. Music production is not entirely predictable, and neither are session musicians, so treat dates as targets rather than guarantees unless we have specifically agreed a hard deadline in writing.

If we are running late, we will tell you rather than go quiet.

If you go quiet, the project stops. We cannot mix a song we have not been sent.

If a project goes quiet. Life happens, and plenty of our clients are fitting music around jobs and families. But we cannot hold a project open forever.

If we have heard nothing from you for 90 days, we will close the project. Anything already paid is treated as payment for the work done up to that point.

Closed does not mean gone. If you come back within twelve months and want to pick it up, we will reopen it without charging you again for what was already paid for. We will just need to agree a new timeline, and any session musicians or studio time would need rebooking at current rates.

If we cannot deliver. We are a small operation, which means illness, family emergencies and the occasional disaster are real possibilities rather than hypotheticals. If something happens that stops us finishing your project, we will tell you as soon as we know.

You then choose. Either we agree a new timeline and carry on, or you take a full refund, including anything already spent at our end. That is your call, not ours, and it applies however much work has been done.

12. Confidentiality

We will not share your unreleased music with anyone outside the project without your permission. If we bring in a session musician or engineer, they get what they need to do their part and nothing more.

Using your work as an example. Once your song is released, we may use it in our portfolio, on our website, or on social media. If you would prefer we did not, just tell us and we will not. You can say so at any point and it comes down.

We do not post work in progress. Nothing from your project goes anywhere before you have released it. If there were ever something we particularly wanted to share early, we would ask you first, and a no is a no.

Beyond that, we treat unreleased music as confidential. We will not share your songs, your plans or anything else about your project with anyone else.

13. Our liability to you

If we fail to meet the obligations in these terms, we are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of that failure. We are not responsible for loss or damage that was not foreseeable.

We do not exclude or limit our liability where the law does not allow us to. That includes:

  • death or personal injury caused by our negligence (Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 65)
  • fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation
  • your statutory rights as a consumer, in particular the right to have services performed with reasonable care and skill (sections 49 and 57)

The limit of what we owe you. If something goes wrong and we are liable, our total liability is limited to the amount you have paid us for that project.

To be plain about what that means: if a song is late, or is not what you hoped, or something goes wrong at our end, you can get your money back on the terms above, but we are not liable for wider losses beyond that. We cannot take responsibility for a release date missed, an opportunity that did not come off, or income you hoped a song would earn.

Nothing here limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. Your statutory rights as a consumer are unaffected.

If you are buying as a business rather than as a consumer, the consumer protections above do not apply to you and different terms are appropriate.

14. If something goes wrong

If you are unhappy with anything, tell us first. Email [email protected] and we will try to sort it out properly. Most problems in this line of work are misunderstandings about scope, and most of those are fixable in one conversation.

Nothing in this section affects your right to take the matter further.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The version that applies to your project is the one in force when we agreed it, not whatever is on this page later.

16. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and any dispute will be dealt with by the courts of England and Wales.