Find someone to share music with.

These are the rules for using Listening Buddy. Using the site means you agree to them. Listening Buddy is run by Ian Swain, Virginia, United States — hello@listeningbuddy.fm.

You have to be 18 or over

Listening Buddy introduces you to strangers and puts you in a private conversation with them. That is the entire point of it, and it's why the floor is 18 rather than something lower: this is a small project without a moderation team, and it would be dishonest to invite teenagers into private chats with adults and pretend we could keep an eye on it.

If you're under 18, please don't sign up. If you already have, email me and I'll delete the account.

Your account

You log in through a link emailed to you, so keep your email account secure — anyone who can read your inbox can get into your account.
One account per person.
Don't pick a username that impersonates someone else, or that pretends to be Listening Buddy staff.
Everything done through your account is your responsibility.

How to behave

This is meant to be a friendly place to find people who like the same music as you. So: no harassment, no hate speech, no threats, no sexual content or advances toward people who haven't invited them, no spam or advertising, no impersonation, nothing illegal, and nothing sexual involving minors — that last one gets reported, not just removed.

Also: don't scrape the site, don't try to break into it or probe it for weaknesses without asking me first, and don't use it to build a competing dataset of other people's profiles.

Listening Buddy is not a dating app. Treat it as what it is.

Reporting, and what I can do about it

Every profile and conversation has a report link, and you can block or unbuddy anyone at any time without explanation. Reports come to me directly. I read them, but I'm one person — there's no support desk and no guaranteed response time.

I can remove content, suspend an account or delete one entirely if these terms are broken, or if someone is making the place worse for everyone else. For anything serious I won't agonise over it.

Your content stays yours

Your profile, your messages, your writing — you own all of it. You give us permission to store and display it as needed to run the service: showing your profile to other people in the pool, showing it to anyone with the link if you choose to make it public, delivering your messages to the person you sent them to. That permission exists only so the site can function, it's not exclusive, we don't get to sell it or license it onward, and it ends when you delete your account or the content.

Album and artist information comes from MusicBrainz, an open music database, and is used under its public-domain terms. Cover art belongs to whoever owns it.

Leaving

You can delete your account whenever you want, from Settings. It's immediate and permanent — see the Privacy Policy for exactly what happens. Download a copy of your data first if you want one.

The boring but necessary part

Listening Buddy is provided as-is, without warranties of any kind. It's a small project run by one person: it may go down, lose data, change substantially, or stop existing. I'll try hard for none of that to happen, but I can't promise it won't.

We match people by taste; we don't vet them. You are meeting strangers, and you should use the same judgement you'd use anywhere else on the internet. Listening Buddy isn't responsible for what other users say or do.

To the fullest extent the law allows, liability for any claim connected to Listening Buddy is limited to the greater of what you've paid us (currently nothing) or US$50, and we're not liable for indirect or consequential losses. Some places don't allow these limits, in which case they simply don't apply to you.

Law, and changes

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. If you're a consumer elsewhere, this doesn't take away rights your local law gives you.

If these terms change materially, the date at the top changes and you'll get an email before it takes effect. Carrying on using the site afterwards means you accept the new version. If a clause turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.