Hi, Tira here! It's awesome you want to cover our music! We think the vocal synth community's love of covers and animation are cool as hell, and this page is to explain the terms you can do that with our music, in an easily understandable way, because the Creative Commons website isn't the most understandable to most people. This is aimed mostly at other neurotypical people and people whose native language isn't English, any big words I use I will do my best to explain.

The TLDR for those who just want to know the terms: CC BY-NC-SA; our name [tiramika] credited and a link back to the original video, if you're interested in discussing commercial use [like putting covers on streaming platforms or using our music in a game for example] contact me at java@tiramika.net.

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A license is something that, in the area of creative works like music and art, gives you permission to do something with that creative work that you couldn't do otherwise, for example to create a cover and post it to the internet. Our original work in particular is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike. Creative Commons is an organisation that does a lot of cool stuff, but the relevant part is they make open-to-use licenses for creatives. And they're especially good for use cases like the vocal synth community, which is why we use them and plenty of other creatives do too.

Here's a breakdown:

• Attribution: This means we want to be credited for our work when others make things based off of it. In our case, that means our name [tiramika] in the description of the upload somewhere, and a link back to the original video. That's it. You're welcome to do other things in addition to that like if the platform you're uploading to has an area to enter credits or something, but our name and the link are all required by the license,.

• Non-Commercial: This means we do not [by default] allow things based off our work to be made or used for commercial purposes. In terms of music, it means you can't [again by default] upload your covers or derivative work to a site or service that will pay you for your music. This includes a lot of things, but the most well known ones are Bandcamp, Spotify, Itunes, that sort of thing. Part of the reason I decided to write out this page is to talk about this.
• In this part, “Bandcamp and similar user-controlled storefronts” refers to sites where an artist can directly make an account and upload music, and has full control over their account with no middleman service. I believe it's also called direct-to-fan:
  • Without contacting me first and receiving a reply from me giving written permission, you cannot upload covers onto Bandcamp and similar user-controlled music storefronts where there is no ability to disable purchases on a song [for example Bandcamp will let you have an option for free downloads, however someone can still buy it]. However, if you do contact me first to discuss it, there is a very very high chance I'll be fine with it as long as I know about it and where it is and we're still credited properly and it's made clear the work is a derivative work. In this situation where I allow it, I will never ask for royalties or any sort of financial compensation, even if the platform has an option for revenue sharing or whatever, you're welcome to keep 100% of the income from it.

• In this part, “Spotify and other streaming services” refers to services that aren't directly accessible to an artist, and can only be accessed using a middleman distributor like DistroKid or CD Baby:
  • Without contacting me first and receiving a reply from me giving written permission, you cannot upload covers onto distributor-managed streaming services. If you contact me, I will again likely accept with some terms [which will be discussed thoroughly in the email]: It must be marked as a cover/derivative work, cannot be released on any Meta-owned platforms, and you can't mark it eligible for content ID [for example the “Social Media Pack” on DistroKid.
• Non-Commercial also means you can't turn on monetisation on covers or other derivative videos on sites like YouTube.

• Sharealike: This means that when you release a cover or other derivative work of our music, you must publish it under the same licensing that we released ours under. This means releasing any cover, music video or similar under CC BY-NC-SA. Everything we give for use in fan works is under this same license; the final fully produced track, instrumental track[s] and stems, vocal synth files [.svp, .ust, .tssln, etc], graphic assets [title cards, backgrounds, etc] lyrics, this a non-exhaustive list but that sort of thing. If it's in the Google Drive folder for a given song then it's included.

Even if you are just making a normal cover or remix or animation or whatever, it'd be cool if you could show us. This bit isn't a Legal Requirement I just love seeing what people are doing. On Youtube you can @ us [@Tiramika] and it should theoretically notify us but also youtube studio sucks and youtube sucks so if you do that and i don't comment on it and add it to the fan playlist within a week you're welcome to comment or email or whatever with a link. If it's anywhere else then send a link; java@tiramika.net, my Bluesky is @tiramika.bsky.social, our Discord is one.two.five, and if those fail for like weird age verification reasons or something then our reddit is u/milkconcentrate but i hate using it so it will take ten times longer to see the message than with an email.

On a related note, every font and graphic and sample we use for music and videos are all either in the public domain or 100% free for commercial use so derivative works are fine in that regard [or else we wouldn't be sharing certain things] and I am very very very stringent about not screwing that up. If for whatever reason you want the source of where a sample or font came from [or you just want to know what the titlecard and sub fonts were for a cover for example] contact me and I can find it out. We will never give out actual “project bones” [.flps, resolve project archives, etc] but if you need something specific like a bunch of stems or an overlay/subs on a greenscreen or to know what effect we used for something, I can sort that too. I can get you almost literally anything you'd need for a cover/remix/whatever, just because it's not included in the Drive folder or has never been included in any folder before doesn't mean I'm not happy to get it for someone if asked :D

And here is the other reason I decided to make this page.

If you want clarification on something on this page, again feel free to email me.