What Counts as Personal Use

Anything you create using RISR — your music, your recordings, your performances, your projects, your presets, your patches, your configurations — belongs to you. We claim no rights of any kind over your creative work. We do not access it, store it, transmit it, or use it for anything.

You may sell your music, license it for film or games, perform it live, stream it on Spotify, give it away free, broadcast it, or never share it with anyone. None of that requires anything beyond your subscription. None of it gives us any claim on your work.

Personal use is broad. Here are concrete examples of things you can do with a RISR Studio personal subscription, with no additional permission needed:

• Compose, record, and release an album. Sell it on Bandcamp, Spotify, vinyl, or wherever you like. Keep all the money.
• Score a film, a game, an advertisement, or a podcast using RISR. The score is yours; the contract with the production company is between you and them.
• Perform live with RISR. On stage, in a venue, in a studio, in your bedroom, on a stream. Sell tickets, sell merch, sell records. The performance is yours.
• Teach a class or run a workshop where you demonstrate RISR. Each student who uses RISR for their own work needs their own subscription, but using RISR yourself in an instructional context is fully permitted.
• Make YouTube videos, Twitch streams, TikToks, or other content that uses, demonstrates, reviews, or teaches RISR.
• Use RISR in academic research. Acknowledgment in a paper is appreciated but not required.
• Share your .risr project files with collaborators. They can edit and remix your projects with their own RISR Studio subscription.
• Install RISR on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows PC, and Android phone.

If what you want to do is in the spirit of any of the above, you’re fine.

There is exactly one thing personal use does not cover: redistributing the RISR engine itself by embedding it inside a product you sell or distribute.

Here are concrete examples of things that need a separate license — they are not permitted under the personal subscription:

• Building and selling a VST, AU, or AAX plugin that embeds RISR's audio engine, routing graph, or other components.
• Building and selling a hardware synthesizer, controller, or instrument that runs RISR or includes RISR components inside the firmware.
• Building a SaaS, mobile app, or web service that exposes RISR's functionality as a feature your users access.
• Building a software library, framework, or developer tool that wraps RISR or re-exports its capabilities.
• Sharing your subscription credentials with other people so they can avoid getting their own subscription.
• Reselling, sublicensing, or transferring your subscription to someone else.

The pattern is: making things with RISR is unlimited and permitted; redistributing RISR itself inside something you sell is not.

If any of those bullet points describe what you’re trying to do, it’s not that you’re being shut out — it’s that we’d like to talk to you about a Team or Enterprise license that fits. Get in touch.

“I’m a teacher. Can I install RISR on the school’s lab computers and let students use my account?”

That’s outside personal use, even though your intentions are good. Each user needs their own access. We have school-friendly Team licensing for exactly this case. Contact us — we want educators to be able to teach with RISR without the licensing being an obstacle.

“I’m in a band. Can the four of us share one subscription?”

Personal subscriptions are for one user. If only one of you ever uses RISR, that’s fine. If multiple of you use RISR for your own work, each person needs their own subscription. (Or: ask us about a small Team plan; we want to be reasonable here.)

“I want to build a Max for Live device that uses RISR’s pitch-detection algorithm.”

If you keep that device private and use it only for your own music, you’re fine — that’s personal use. If you want to distribute or sell it, that crosses into the embedding-RISR-in-a-product-you-distribute category. Contact us.

“I want to write a paper analyzing how RISR’s routing graph works.”

Yes, fine. Academic study and writing about RISR is unlimited under personal use.

“I want to build my own modular synth that uses RISR-derived ideas.”

If you write your own implementation inspired by what you learned from RISR — you’re using ideas, which aren’t restricted. If you copy our code or use our binaries inside your hardware — that’s redistribution and needs a license. The line is between being inspired and redistributing.

“I’m uncertain whether what I want to do crosses the line.”

Email us at [email protected] and describe what you’re planning. We’d rather have the conversation than have you guess wrong.

We want to be transparent about the reason for the embedding restriction.

RISR’s value is in the engine, the routing graph, and the design of the primitive components. If anyone could include that engine inside a competing product they sell, the value of RISR — and the ability for us to keep building it — would erode quickly. Restricting embedding to a separate license tier is how we keep RISR sustainable while keeping the price for individual artists at a level anyone can afford.

The restriction is narrow. It applies only to redistributing the engine itself. It does not apply to anything you create with the engine.

You can: make and distribute anything you create with RISR, including for commercial use, on stage, in films, in games, on streams, in classes, in research.

You can’t: wrap up RISR’s engine and ship it inside a product you sell.

That’s the whole boundary. If you have any doubt at all, ask us.