Clef

Clef/Legal

Terms of Service

Last updated: October 20, 2026

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

Clef is operated by Daniel Dratschuk, Schölerpad 235, 45355 Essen, Germany, phone+49 1567 9798338, email hello@playclef.com (see the legal notice). These terms govern your use of Clef on the web, iPhone, iPad, and Android and your subscription. They are written for consumers; Clef is not currently offered to businesses. The contract language is English.

2. The service

Clef is a piano practice and memorization tool: it displays sheet music from a curated catalog, listens to your playing through a MIDI connection, gives per-note feedback, and schedules from-memory reviews of what you've learned.

Clef is actively developed: features will evolve, and the catalog is curated and grows over time. Section 12 describes how changes to the service are handled; nothing in this section limits your statutory rights regarding the conformity of digital services.

3. Your account

  • You must provide accurate information and keep your credentials confidential.
  • One account per person; accounts are personal and may not be shared or resold.
  • Clef is not directed at children under 13, and you must be at least 13 years old to create an account.
  • If you are under 18 — or under 16 in the EEA — you may only use Clef if your parent or guardian has reviewed and agreed to these terms on your behalf.

4. What you need to use Clef

Clef requires a digital piano or keyboard that sends MIDI over Bluetooth or USB. You can use the Clef app on iPhone or iPad, the Android app on a phone or tablet, or Chrome, Edge, Brave, or desktop Firefox on a laptop or desktop computer. Safari is not supported for web use. This is stated here and on theGetting Started page before you subscribe. Clef cannot hear acoustic pianos. Please check your setup during the free trial.

5. How the contract is concluded

Creating a Clef account is free and does not start either the trial or a paid subscription. You start the free trial, and with it the paid subscription that follows it, in one of two ways:

  • On the web, you pick the monthly or the yearly plan in Clef and start the 14-day free trial on a checkout page operated by Stripe, where you enter a payment card. The checkout page summarizes your plan, its price, the trial, and the date of the first charge, and you can review and correct your entries at any time before submitting. Selecting the button "Subscribe with obligation to pay" (or its equivalent in the language of the checkout page) concludes the paid subscription contract with Clef (Daniel Dratschuk). Link ("Sold through Link"), a Stripe company, handles the payment, the tax on it, and the receipts, acting as merchant of record for payment and tax.Link's termsare the purchase terms for the payment. Clef remains the provider of the service.
  • In the iPhone, iPad, and Android apps, you buy the trial and the subscription in the app store: through Apple's in-app purchase in the App Store, or through Google Play's billing in Google Play. You buy under the store's terms. In the EU, you buy from Apple Distribution International Ltd. (App Store) or Google Commerce Limited (Google Play), not from Clef. The store shows the plan, its price, and the trial before you confirm the purchase with your Apple ID or Google account. Confirming submits a binding order, and the purchase is concluded when the store confirms it. The store bills the subscription to your Apple ID or Google account, and you manage and cancel it in the store's subscription settings. Your use of Clef is governed by these terms.

App versions that cannot sell subscriptions offer the trial without a payment method instead (see section 6), and you can subscribe on the web. A subscription bought any of these ways covers Clef wherever you sign in to your account.

We store the version of these terms you accepted together with your account, and the current terms are always available on this page. After you subscribe on the web, we send you a confirmation email with the essential contract terms and the statutory withdrawal instruction. The contract text itself is not separately archived beyond this; keep the confirmation email for your records. Link emails you the receipts for web payments. For a purchase in an app, the store emails you the receipt.

6. Trial, fees, and billing

  • Each account can have one 14-day free trial with full functionality; the App Store and Google Play also limit trials per Apple ID or Google account. The trial does not start automatically. On the web, starting it requires a payment card; in an app, you start it with your Apple ID or Google account. Nothing is charged during the trial. When the trial ends, the first payment for the plan you chose is charged automatically, unless you cancel before the trial ends. In the App Store, cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends. For a web trial, you receive a reminder email 7 days before the trial ends.
  • App versions that cannot sell subscriptions let you start the trial without a payment method. That trial ends after 14 days, nothing is charged, and it does not turn into a paid subscription. To continue, you subscribe on the web or in the store.
  • On the web, the plans cost $19 per month or $159 per year (USD). Where Stripe converts prices into your local currency, the checkout page shows the price in that currency and charges it in that currency. Prices include VAT or sales tax where it applies. In an app, the price is the one the store shows you in your local currency before you buy.
  • The monthly plan renews every month until you cancel. The yearly plan renews every year at $159, paid in advance. Its first year is a fixed term. After the first year, you can cancel the yearly plan at any time with one month's notice, and we refund the unused part of the year pro rata (see section 7). A subscription bought in an app renews under the store's terms.
  • We change the price of an existing web subscription only with your express consent. We ask for it by email at least 30 days before the new price would apply. Price changes never apply retroactively.
  • On the web, Link and Stripe process the payment (see theprivacy policy); Clef never receives your card details. In an app, Apple or Google processes the payment.

7. Cancellation

You can cancel a web subscription at any time on theCancel contracts here page, linked at the foot of every page of this site. It works without signing in. You can also cancel in Clef under Settings → Billing, or on link.com. The cancellation takes effect as follows:

  • During the free trial: the subscription ends when the trial ends, and nothing is charged.
  • Monthly plan, and yearly plan in its first year: at the end of the current billing period. You keep access until then.
  • Yearly plan after its first year: one month after we receive your cancellation, or at the end of the paid year if that comes first. We refund the unused part of the paid year pro rata, to the payment method you used.

Your statutory right to cancel for good cause is not affected. Cancel a subscription bought in an app in the store's subscription settings, in the App Store at least 24 hours before the current period ends. It ends at the end of that period.

Account deletion is separate from ordinary cancellation. You can permanently delete your account from Settings → Account using the emailed same-session confirmation link. Confirmation ends access immediately, cancels a web subscription, and cannot be undone; you do not keep access through the paid period. Clef cannot cancel a subscription bought in an app. It continues until you cancel it in the App Store or Google Play, and the store keeps billing it until then. Records that Clef must preserve for tax, refunds, disputes, and teacher-referral payouts are retained separately as described in the privacy policy. Deleting an account does not remove any refund right described in the refund policy.

8. Withdrawal and refunds

If you are a consumer in the EU or EEA, you have a statutory right to withdraw from a web subscription within 14 days of concluding it, without giving any reason. You can withdraw on the Withdraw from contract here page, which works without signing in, or by any other unambiguous declaration to us, for example an email to hello@playclef.com. Your first payment on the web or in Google Play, monthly or yearly, is also covered by our 30-day money-back guarantee. The refund policy describes both, including what we refund and the model withdrawal form.

In the EU, the store is the seller of a subscription bought in an app, so you withdraw from that purchase with Apple or Google. Apple decides on refunds for App Store purchases; request one atreportaproblem.apple.com.

9. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • interfere with or disrupt the service or circumvent its access controls,
  • reverse engineer, decompile, or extract the service or its content, except where statutory law expressly permits it (e.g., §69e UrhG),
  • share, resell, or provide your account to others,
  • use the service for anything unlawful.

The catalog — its scores, the score data the app receives, engraved pages, recordings and audio, and fingerings (together, "catalog content") — is provided for your own practice inside Clef. You also agree not to, yourself or through others:

  • copy or extract catalog content in bulk or systematically, whether by scraping, scripts, bots, or any other automated retrieval,
  • analyze or reverse engineer how the app requests, receives, or stores catalog content in order to obtain it outside Clef,
  • reuse, publish, redistribute, or sell catalog content, or make it available to others, including for building another product or training machine-learning models.

Ordinary use of Clef, including the copies your device keeps while you practice, is not affected, and nothing here restricts what statutory law expressly permits. If we have concrete indications that an account is being used for any of these activities, we may suspend it without prior warning while we look into it, and terminate the contract for cause under section 13.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that materially breach these terms, after warning where reasonable (see section 13).

10. Liability

We are liable without limitation for damage caused intentionally or by gross negligence, for injury to life, body, or health, and under the Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz).

For slight negligence, we are liable only for breach of essential contractual obligations (obligations whose fulfillment makes the proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose fulfillment you regularly rely), and in that case limited to the foreseeable damage typical for this kind of contract. Any further liability is excluded. This exclusion does not apply to liability for fraudulently concealed defects, under a guarantee we have expressly assumed, or under mandatory statutory provisions, including your rights regarding digital services (§§327 ff. BGB).

11. Intellectual property and your data

  • The Clef app, its score engravings and renderings, and the site content belong to us. Your subscription grants you a personal, non-transferable right to use them within the service for the subscription's duration.
  • The classical works in the catalog are in the public domain; the engraved editions Clef presents are our own work.
  • Your practice data is yours. We use it to provide the service as described in the privacy policy, and you can request a copy or deletion at any time.

Scores you import

  • You can import your own score files (MusicXML, MuseScore, or Humdrum kern) to practice them in Clef. An imported score is private to your account: no other user can see, find, or practice it, and we do not add it to the catalog.
  • Only import files you have the right to use, for example because the work is in the public domain, you wrote it, or its rights holder allows it. You are responsible for the files you import.
  • You keep all rights in your files. You allow us to store, convert, engrave, and show them to you inside Clef, and only for as long as you keep them in your account. If you ask us to prepare a reviewed version, we receive only the title and composer you entered, never your file.
  • Clef practices an imported score as written. We do not review imported files and do not guarantee that a conversion matches your original exactly.
  • When you delete an imported score or your account, we delete the file and everything Clef made from it. If we receive a substantiated notice that an imported file infringes someone else's rights, we may remove it and will tell you.

12. Availability and changes to the service

We aim to keep Clef available around the clock but do not guarantee uninterrupted availability; maintenance and updates may cause short interruptions. Clef's features will change and usually improve. If a change materially reduces functionality you reasonably relied on, you may terminate the contract early from the moment the change takes effect, and your statutory rights for digital services (§§327 ff. BGB) remain unaffected.

13. Termination by us

We may terminate your subscription with reasonable notice to the end of a billing period, and immediately for cause — such as material breach of section 9 or unresolved payment default — normally after a prior warning. Paid periods you cannot use because we terminated without cause will be refunded pro rata.

14. Governing law

These terms are governed by German law, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). If you are a consumer, this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of the country where you habitually reside. There is no arbitration clause; disputes belong to the ordinary courts.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as the product evolves. For material changes, we will notify you by email at least 30 days in advance; if you do not agree, you can cancel before the change takes effect. Changes never apply retroactively, and we will not treat silence as consent to changes that alter the essential balance of the contract.

16. Severability

If a provision of these terms is or becomes invalid, the remaining provisions stay in force. The invalid provision is replaced by the statutory rules.

17. The app from the App Store

If you use the Clef app downloaded from Apple's App Store, the following also applies. These terms are concluded between you and Clef only, not with Apple. Clef, not Apple, is responsible for the app and its content, and for its maintenance and support; Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for the app. Clef, not Apple, handles any claims by you or third parties relating to the app or your use of it, including product liability claims, claims that the app does not meet a legal or regulatory requirement, claims under consumer protection, privacy, or similar law, and claims that the app infringes someone else's intellectual property.

If the app fails to conform to an applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price of the app to you. To the extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation for the app. Your right to use the app is limited to Apple-branded products that you own or control, as permitted by the Usage Rules in the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions.

You confirm that you are not located in a region subject to a U.S. Government embargo or designated by the U.S. Government as a "terrorist supporting" region, and that you are not listed on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties. When using the app, you must comply with the third-party terms that apply to you, such as those of your mobile data plan. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and may enforce them against you. Send questions, complaints, or claims about the app to Clef at the address in section 1 or hello@playclef.com.