Terms & Conditions for Book of Drum Stars

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

Book of Drum Stars is a drum-learning website for young learners, their parents and carers, and their drum teachers, at bookofdrumstars.app (the "Service"). It is run by Dean Haydn Jones and Anthony Capel, trading as Book of Drum Stars ("we", "us", "our"). You can contact us at dean@glorifico.co.uk, and we'll give you a postal address for written notices if you ask for one.

These terms are the agreement between you and us for your use of the Service. They apply to teachers who use the Service with their pupils, to parents and carers who pay for a subscription, and to the learners who log in. By using the Service, or by paying for a subscription, you accept these terms. If you don't accept them, please don't use the Service.

Separate documents also apply. Our Privacy Policy at bookofdrumstars.app/privacy-policy explains what we do with personal information. Teachers additionally sign an Intellectual Property & Non-Disclosure Agreement before their account opens, and where that agreement says something different about our materials, that agreement wins. Merchandise and the physical rewards described below are sold by our shop at bookofdrumstars.com under that shop's own terms.

2. The words we use

• Teacher: a drum teacher we have invited, who has used their invite code and signed the teacher agreement.
• Learner: a child whose account a teacher has created, who logs in with a made-up drummer name.
• Parent: the parent or carer who sets up and pays for a learner's subscription.
• Subscription: one of the Bronze, Silver or Gold plans, paid monthly or yearly.
• Content: the lessons, pages, exercises, sightreading sets, audio and images in the Service, whether ours or uploaded by a teacher.

3. Teacher accounts

Teacher accounts are by invitation. We give an invite code to the email address of a teacher we've agreed to work with; the teacher signs in with that email address (through Google or an email sign-in link), enters the code once, and signs the teacher agreement. Until both of those are done, the account can't reach anything.

A teacher account is personal to the teacher it was issued to. Don't share your sign-in, your invite code or your account with anyone else, including colleagues at the same school — ask us and we'll invite them too. Tell us straight away if you think someone else has got into your account.

Teachers are responsible for what happens under their account: the learners they create, the content they upload, the material they assign and the points they award.

4. Learner accounts and made-up names

A teacher creates each learner's account with a made-up drummer name, and that is the name the learner logs in with. Learners have no password and no email address, and the made-up name is the only name other learners ever see, including on the class leaderboard.

Teachers must not use a child's real name, initials, school, or anything else that identifies them as the drummer name, and must not put personal information about a child anywhere else in the Service. A teacher must have the permission of the child's parent or carer before creating an account for them, and must make sure the parent or carer has seen these terms and our Privacy Policy.

Because a learner signs in with a name alone, anyone who knows that name could sign in as that learner. A learner account is read-only — it shows that learner's own progress and their class leaderboard, and nothing about anyone else — but teachers should still choose names that aren't easy to guess, and should tell us if a name is being misused.

Learners don't enter into a contract with us. A learner's use of the Service is under the agreement between us and their parent, and it is for the parent and the teacher to supervise it.

5. Subscriptions, prices and payment

A teacher sends a parent a private link for one learner. On that link the parent chooses Bronze, Silver or Gold, monthly or yearly, and pays. The learner can log in as soon as the payment goes through.

Prices are shown on that page in pounds sterling and include any VAT. What you are charged is whatever Stripe shows you at the checkout for the plan you picked. Payments are taken by Stripe, on Stripe's own pages, under Stripe's terms — we never see or hold your card number.

A subscription renews automatically, each month or each year, at the price then in force, until it is cancelled. If a payment fails, Stripe will retry it; the learner keeps their access while it does, and loses it if the retries run out and the subscription ends.

If we change the price of a plan, we'll tell the parent by email at least 30 days before it takes effect, and the parent can cancel before it does.

Each subscription covers one learner. If you have more than one child, each needs their own subscription; ask your teacher about a sibling discount code, which is entered at the checkout.

One of our offers is a hybrid subscription at £12.95 per month that includes both digital access and physical tutor books. For this offer only, the first two months' payments are the minimum commitment. This protects the cost of the two tutor books that are supplied at the start; if you cancel within those first two months you remain liable for those two payments and they are not refundable.

6. Cancelling, and refunds

A parent can cancel at any time, in Stripe's customer portal, which is reached from the home page or from the link in your receipt. The learner keeps their plan until the end of the period already paid for, and then loses access. We don't refund part of a period, and we don't refund a yearly plan part-way through.

You have a legal right to change your mind within 14 days of taking out a subscription and get your money back. That right is lost once the service has been fully provided, and by taking out a subscription and having the learner's access switched on straight away, you ask us to start supplying it immediately and accept that you'll lose the right to cancel once it has been supplied in full. In practice, if you tell us within 14 days that you've changed your mind and the learner has barely used the Service, we'll refund you.

None of this affects your statutory rights if what we've supplied is faulty, not as described, or not provided with reasonable care and skill.

A learner's account, progress and avatar are kept after a subscription ends, so they can pick up where they left off if a parent subscribes again later. A teacher can delete a learner at any time, and that deletes their progress with them.

7. What each plan includes

The plans and what they open up are set out on the payment page. In summary: the Free plan costs nothing and opens the Mission Tracker, the first reading lesson, the first level of the Drumstick Dash game and a starter alien avatar; Bronze opens all the reading lessons, whatever the teacher sets as practice, the leaderboard, the whole game and the whole avatar shop; Silver adds all three Book of Drum Stars ebooks, monthly bonus avatar points and a merch discount; Gold adds more monthly points, a bigger merch discount and a poster and personalised design item.

A learner whose paid subscription ends moves to the Free plan rather than losing their account. Anything their teacher had set them, and anything they'd bought for their avatar, is kept and comes back if a parent subscribes again.

We may add to, change or remove features as the Service develops. If we take away something significant that you're paying for, we'll tell you, and you can cancel and get back what you've paid for the part of the period you won't get to use.

We sometimes give a learner free access to a plan by hand — learners who were here before subscriptions existed, or anyone else we decide to let in. Free access is a favour, not a purchase: it has no cash value, it may have an end date, and we can end it at any time.

8. Points, avatars and the leaderboard

Learners earn points from their Mission Tracker stickers, from bonus points their teacher awards, and — on Silver and Gold — from points added each month. Points buy items for a learner's alien avatar.

Points and avatar items are not money. They have no cash value, can't be bought with money, can't be swapped, sold or moved to another learner, and can't be exchanged for anything outside the Service. The monthly points on Silver and Gold count only towards the avatar shop, never towards the leaderboard.

The leaderboard only ever shows the learners of one teacher, by their made-up names. We may correct points, remove items or reset a leaderboard where something has gone wrong, been awarded in error, or been obtained by cheating.

9. Merchandise and physical rewards

Silver and Gold include a discount on merchandise at our shop, bookofdrumstars.com, and Gold includes a poster and a signature design item. Those items are sold and sent by the shop, and the shop's own terms cover prices, delivery, returns and refunds.

Discounts apply while the subscription is live, are for the subscribing household only, have no cash value, and may not be combined with other offers unless the shop says so. If an item isn't available we may send something else of a similar kind and value. A physical reward is sent once per learner, to a UK address unless we agree otherwise.

10. Our material, and what you may do with it

Everything in the Service that we made — the books and ebooks, the Mission Tracker, the notation, the exercises, the reading lessons, the artwork, the characters, the audio, the name Book of Drum Stars, and the software itself — belongs to us and is protected by copyright and other rights.

While a subscription is live, we give the learner a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use that material for their own learning at home, and their parent to print it for that learner's use. While a teacher's account is open, we give the teacher a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use it in their own teaching with their own pupils.

That licence does not let you, and you must not:

• Copy or share: reproduce, publish, post, stream or hand on any part of the material, or share ebook passwords or sign-in links, beyond the use allowed above.
• Sell or build on: sell, rent or sub-licence any part of it, or make adaptations, courses or competing teaching material from it.
• Feed it to machines: scrape, crawl or bulk-download the Service, or use any part of it to train, fine-tune or otherwise develop artificial intelligence or machine learning systems.
• Strip protections: get round the ebook passwords, the sign-in checks or anything else that controls access, or remove any notice of ownership.

The licence ends when the subscription or the teacher account ends, and material downloaded or printed must not be used after that. Teachers should note that their separate agreement with us goes further than this section, and applies as well as it.

11. What teachers upload

Teachers can build pages, exercises and sightreading sets, and upload images and audio. You keep whatever rights you already have in what you upload.

By uploading, you confirm that it's yours or that you have permission to use it, that it doesn't infringe anyone else's rights, and that it contains nothing unlawful, offensive or unsuitable for children — and you give us permission to store it, and to show it to the learners you assign it to, for as long as your account is open. If you publish something to the shared library, you also give other teachers on the Service permission to use it with their own pupils in the same way, and that permission carries on for material already in use even if you later take it down.

We can block, unpublish or remove anything uploaded, without notice, if we think it breaks these terms or doesn't belong in a children's service. Blocked material stays yours — it simply leaves the library and can't be assigned.

Don't upload personal information about a child, or a recording or photograph of a child, into the Service.

12. Using the Service properly

You must not:

• Break in: try to reach an account, learner or teacher's material that isn't yours, or interfere with the sign-in checks.
• Break it: attack, overload, probe or disrupt the Service, or introduce anything harmful to it.
• Misuse it: use the Service unlawfully, dishonestly, or to contact or approach a child other than through the ordinary teacher relationship the Service is built for.
• Fake it: pretend to be someone else, or set up accounts for learners who don't exist or whose parent hasn't agreed.

13. Safety while you drum

The Service teaches drumming, and drums are loud. Learners should use hearing protection where appropriate, keep headphone volume sensible, set their kit up safely, warm up, take breaks, and stop if anything hurts.

Younger learners should have an adult nearby while they practise. We give teaching material; we can't supervise a learner and we aren't responsible for what happens at the kit. If you have any concern about a learner's health, ask a doctor.

14. Keeping the Service running

We try to keep the Service available and working, but we can't promise it will never be down, and we may take it offline for maintenance or changes. Where we can, we'll give notice of anything significant.

The Service depends on other companies — Stripe, our hosting, our database and our storage — and on your own internet connection and device, none of which we control.

We may change, add to or withdraw parts of the Service, and we may stop offering it altogether. If we stop offering it, we'll tell subscribers and refund what they've paid for any period they won't get to use.

15. Suspending or ending accounts

We can suspend or close an account if these terms are broken, if a teacher breaks their teacher agreement, if the Service is being misused, or if we have to in order to keep learners safe. Where it's fair to do so we'll warn first and give a chance to put it right.

A parent can end their agreement with us by cancelling the subscription. A teacher can end theirs by asking us to close their account; their learners lose access when it closes, so please give their parents notice.

If we close a paid account for something that isn't the parent's fault, we'll refund what they've paid for the period they won't get to use.

16. Our responsibility to you

We don't limit our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law doesn't allow us to limit. Nothing here takes away your rights as a consumer.

Beyond that, we're responsible for loss you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care and skill. We're not responsible for loss that isn't foreseeable, and we're not responsible for business losses — lost profit, lost business, lost opportunity — since the Service is supplied for private and teaching use.

Where the law allows us to limit it, our total liability to a parent is limited to the amount that parent paid us in the 12 months before the problem arose, and our total liability to a teacher, who pays us nothing, is limited to £100.

The Service is a teaching aid. We don't promise any particular result, grade or rate of progress, and we're not responsible for the material a teacher uploads or assigns.

17. Privacy

How we look after personal information — especially children's — is set out in our Privacy Policy at bookofdrumstars.app/privacy-policy, which forms part of these terms. It explains why learners use made-up names, when we hold a child's real first name and surname initial, and how a parent can have that deleted.

18. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms, for example when the Service changes or the law does. The current version is always on this page with the date it was last updated.

If a change affects you significantly — a change to what you're paying for, or to your rights — we'll tell subscribers by email at least 30 days beforehand, and you can cancel before it takes effect if you don't accept it. Smaller changes take effect when they're posted here.

19. If something goes wrong

Please tell us first: email dean@glorifico.co.uk and we'll come back to you. Most things are sorted out quickly that way, and we'd much rather fix a problem than argue about one.

20. General

• The agreement: these terms, the Privacy Policy, and (for teachers) the teacher agreement are the whole agreement between us about the Service.
• Transfer: you can't transfer your rights under these terms to anyone else. We may transfer ours if the business changes hands, and we'll tell you if we do; your rights won't be affected.
• If part of it fails: if a court finds any part of these terms unenforceable, the rest carries on.
• Delay isn't waiver: if we don't insist on something straight away, that doesn't stop us insisting on it later.
• Other people: nobody other than you and us has any right to enforce these terms.

21. Which law applies

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and disputes can be brought in the courts of England and Wales.

If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring proceedings in the courts there, and you keep the protection of any consumer law that applies where you live.