Questions, answered

What is Dubplay?

A shop for records that stay yours.

Artists press runs called dubplates. You listen here, and the ones you buy you keep — playable forever, in the artist's original quality, with no monthly fee. Your copy is numbered, and it can hold Deep Cuts that other copies don't have. Most runs are open to anyone who wants one; an artist who'd rather press a hundred and no more can do that instead, and some will.

Can I play whole albums without buying?

Yes — a weekly allowance of whole records, free, start to finish.

Not clips and not shuffled singles: whole records, and one record costs one slot however many times you play it that week. It's more than most people get through. Slots come back a week after you use them, so it refills as you go rather than resetting on a Monday — and anything you own doesn't count against it at all. The number is set when we open, and the player always shows you where you are.

Do I have to pay to listen?

No. You buy a record when you want to keep it.

Browsing, searching and flipping through anything is free and unlimited, with no account at all. A free account adds the weekly allowance above. Nothing is locked until you decide something is worth keeping.

What happens if Dubplay shuts down?

Your records keep playing.

The files are yours and the proof that they're yours doesn't live on our servers. No other music service can tell you that — not the streaming ones, and not the stores, unless you remembered to download everything and kept the drive.

How is this different from Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube?

They rent you everything. Here you own a few things, properly.

A subscription spreads your money across every artist you half-listened to, and the day you stop paying you have nothing — no collection, no history, nothing to hand on. A dubplate cost you once. It plays forever, at full quality, and it would still play if this whole company vanished.

How is it different from Bandcamp?

Bandcamp sells you the files. We sell you a copy that can prove it's yours.

Bandcamp got the important thing right long before anyone else: pay the artist, keep the music. We're not arguing with that. The difference is what happens after the sale — your copy is numbered and verifiable without asking us, it can hold Deep Cuts other copies don't have, and one day it can be passed on with the artist paid again. And you don't have to choose: your Bandcamp collection can live here too, in the same library as everything else.

How is it different from buying an MP3?

It's numbered, it's provable, and it can't be revoked.

A download is a file you might lose and a streaming licence is permission that can be withdrawn. A dubplate is a specific copy — number 42 — that stays yours, can carry bonus content copy 43 doesn't have, and can be handed on.

What's a flip?

The opening of any track, as often as you like, free.

The way you'd flip through a crate in a shop — enough to know whether to stop. Flips never count against your weekly records, so you can dig for as long as you want. When something catches you, full plays it properly.

Can I play the same record over and over?

A few full plays of each track a week, then it's time to buy it.

A handful of full plays of any track in a week is plenty to decide. If you're past that, the record has stopped being something you're considering and started being something you listen to — and owning it removes every limit, permanently. You'll see the count before you reach it, never after.

What can I hear without an account?

Everything, a little at a time.

You can browse the whole catalogue, search by artist, track, label or genre, and hear the opening of anything — no account, no subscription. Previews fade rather than stop dead, so browsing still feels like listening.

What's a Set?

A list you built by hand — a mixtape, basically.

A Selector finds records; a Set is where you keep the ones you're deciding on. A line in a Set can be a single track or a whole record, the way you'd write “Rumours — the whole LP” on one line of an inlay card. Records in a Set that you don't own yet play under the normal weekly rules.

How do I keep track of things I'm interested in?

Four different kinds of “not right now”, and they don't overlap.

A Set is for things you're actively listening to and deciding on. The bag is for things you've decided on and are buying together. The wishlist is the diamond on a record — a quiet marker for later, with no price attached and no hurry. And following an artist is about the person rather than the record: you want to know what they do next.

What's a Selector?

Your own algorithm, written in plain English.

A short set of rules that goes and finds records — darker than most of what's here, nobody's played it yet, nothing I already own, no more than one per label. You can read every line of the ones we've written, and see exactly why each record turned up. Writing your own is what comes next.

Why should I have to write it? Isn't that the platform's job?

Because when a platform does it, you can't see what it's really optimising for.

Every service picks what you hear next and none of them will tell you how. Somewhere in that decision there is usually a business — a label arrangement, a promoted slot, a number being chased that isn't your enjoyment. We didn't want to ask you to trust us about that, because “trust us” is exactly what everyone says. So the rules are written down instead. Every Selector on here is one you can open and read in plain English, including ours.

What is a Selector allowed to know about a record?

Facts about the record, and facts about you. Never money.

How bright it is, how much room it breathes in, how much it shifts. Whether anyone has played it yet. Whether you already own something by the same person. The full list is published and versioned, and it's short. What is not on it: what an artist paid, what fee we take, what the price is, how many copies are left.

Can an artist or label pay to appear in mine?

No — and there is no mechanism to, which is the part that matters.

A promise not to sell placement is worth very little; anyone can make one. What's worth something is that adding money to that published list would be a visible change to a public document, and every Selector prints the signals it used. The same clause binds us — we don't favour a record for carrying a bigger fee either.

Why no moods or vibes, like everywhere else?

Because those are guesses wearing the costume of facts.

We measure things that are true and checkable — how bright a record is, how open, how much it moves. We don't guess whether it's happy, or melancholy, or good for studying. A machine deciding your record is “sad” is a machine putting a word in the artist's mouth, and then filing them under it forever. We supply the facts. You decide the mood.

Are you building a profile of what I dig through?

No history of your digging is kept, and nothing about your listening is sold.

A Selector runs from rules you can read, not from a model of you assembled quietly over months. There's no dig history to trade, and no third party buying it. We do count plays, so artists get paid, and we record how far through a track people get, so an artist can see whether a track holds people. What we don't keep is anything that measures you: no session length, no time-on-platform, no “engaged listener” score. Any number we keep is a number someone will eventually be asked to raise.

I already own hundreds of albums. Can they live here too?

Yes — your Crate holds music you already bought, next to what you buy here.

Soundcrate puts the records you bought elsewhere in the same library, the same player, the same search, the same Sets. You're not asked to abandon a collection you spent years building, or to keep two apps open because half your music is in the wrong one. What you upload is yours and stays private — nobody else can see or hear it, it isn't part of the catalogue, and nothing about it is counted, ranked or shown to an artist.

What does that cost?

The first shelf is free.

Enough for a couple of albums, which is enough to see whether you like it. Beyond that it's a subscription for the storage — the one place we do charge monthly, because storing your files genuinely costs every month, unlike selling you a record once.

If I stop paying, do I lose them?

No. You can take everything back out, any time, in any state.

Export is not a billing feature — it works whether you're subscribed, free, or cancelled, because they're your files. Anything over your limit stops being stored eventually, but you're told first, given time, and nothing is deleted silently. Your music is always yours; that's the whole idea of the place.

What do I actually get?

A numbered copy, the artist's master, and whatever's hidden in it.

Unlimited listening here, the original master file to play through the Vault app, any Deep Cuts attached to your particular copy, and — where a pressing campaign is running — the option to take the physical object, with a delivery number printed on it that matches your copy.

What's a Deep Cut?

Bonus content that lives in your copy, not on the page.

An alternate take, a video, liner notes, something the artist buried. Some go to every copy, some you choose to add, and some are hidden in particular numbers — so no two dubplates are necessarily the same. Copy 42 might hold something 43 doesn't.

What does “lossless” mean here, and why care?

You get the artist's actual master, not a copy of it.

Everything you stream is compressed, here and everywhere else. What you buy is the file the artist finished — no re-encoding anywhere in the chain. On a decent system the difference is real; on the bus it isn't, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.

What's the Vault?

The app that plays your masters, on your device.

It checks what you own, brings down the original files, and plays them locally — built for hi-fi, with true gapless between tracks. Album sides mixed to run together (live records, DJ mixes) play the way they were meant to, with no gap and no codec padding.

Do I need special hardware?

No — phone, tablet or a Mac is fine.

Dedicated hi-fi hardware is being prepared so a master can travel from your collection to your speakers without a re-encode along the way, but nothing about owning a record depends on it.

Can I sell a record on?

Not at opening — but they're built for it, and here's the idea.

A record collection has always had a second life. You find something, it turns out to be the pressing everyone wanted, and one day you pass it on — that has been part of collecting since collecting existed, and digital music quietly removed it. A dubplate is a numbered copy that can change hands, so it can come back. The difference from a real record shop: the artist gets paid again. A cut of every onward sale goes back to whoever made it, automatically and forever.

Resale won't be open on day one and we're not going to imply otherwise. What exists is the groundwork: your copy is numbered, it's transferable, and the royalty is already attached to it — so records bought early take part when it opens.

Why release here?

You set the price, the size of the run, and what's in it.

You keep your catalogue. You're paid per record sold rather than per fraction of a play, and you're paid again on every resale, forever. Nobody can pay to be recommended ahead of you.

What do I upload?

Your WAV masters, your artwork, and anything extra you want in there.

Your masters go up untouched — that's what buyers get. We make the streaming version from them, encoded exactly the same way for every record on the platform, so nobody's release is quietly louder or cleaner than anybody else's. Front cover, back, gatefold panels and Deep Cuts are all optional.

What does Dubplay take?

A share of each sale, stepping down as a release sells.

The fee drops as more copies go, so a record that does well costs you less per sale, not more. Tax comes off first, then our share, and the rest is split as you configured it: you, the label or master owner, contributors, and any recoupment you've set up. Card and processing fees come out of our side, not yours. We don't sell subscriptions, run ads, or monetise listening data. We earn when someone chooses to own something.

Are the records on here AI-generated?

No. Every artist declares the music is theirs before it goes up.

This is about the music, not the software — wholly or substantially AI-generated tracks aren't allowed on Dubplay, and neither are unconsented voice or likeness clones. Using AI while making a record is fine and always will be: stem separation, mastering, pitch correction, the tools half the industry already runs. The line is who authored the music, not what was in the studio. It's a declaration the artist makes at every single release, in writing, backed by takedown — and we don't claim to detect it, because nobody reliably can.

Can I release before you open?

Yes — write to us, and we'll set you up early.

The catalogue at opening is being built now. If you have a record ready, or one on the way, support@dubplay.app reaches a person.

What's a Soundmark?

Your permanent music identity — made for you at signup.

It's what your collection is attached to. You never have to think about it; it's made automatically and everything works without you touching it. If you ever want to hold the keys yourself, the recovery phrase is on your account page.

Why is a blockchain involved at all?

So ownership can be checked without asking us.

The useful idea isn't digital money, it's digital ownership: a record of who holds which copy that doesn't depend on our database being up or our company still existing. That's what makes a dubplate transferable and what lets an artist's royalty follow it from one owner to the next. You never have to see any of it — no browser extension, no seed phrase to write down before you can buy something, no fees in a currency you don't own.

What's actually recorded there — and what isn't?

Who holds which copy. Not your listening, and not the music.

The public record holds the release, the copy number, who owns it, the royalty split and which extras that copy is entitled to. It does not hold the audio — far too big — and it does not hold anything about what you played, when, or how often. Nothing you listen to is written to a public ledger. That's worth saying plainly, because it's the thing people reasonably assume when they hear the word.

Where do the actual files live?

On storage addressed by content, not by our server name.

Masters, artwork and extras are stored by a fingerprint of the file itself, so anyone can hold a copy and the same address still finds it. There's no single machine whose failure takes your collection with it, and no company — including us — who can quietly make a record stop resolving. What you stream day to day is served differently, from ordinary fast storage, because a stream is a convenience and the master is the thing you own.

Who can open my files?

You. Your masters are locked to your Soundmark, and we can't unlock them for you.

The key to your copies is held on your device, not on our servers — which is exactly why your collection survives us, and equally why we cannot recover it for you if you lose both your account and your recovery phrase. That is a real trade and we'd rather you knew about it on a calm day. Keep the phrase somewhere safe; it's on your account page whenever you want it.

What about energy use?

Negligible — this isn't proof-of-work.

The network we use settles a transaction for a tiny fraction of the energy a proof-of-work chain spends. Streaming the album once costs more than recording that you own it.

What is Dubplay built on?

Other people's open-source work, credited in full.

The encoder that makes every streaming version comes from FFmpeg, the measurements behind Selectors use Meyda, and a handful of other open projects do the rest. They'll be listed with their licences on our attributions page when we open. It isn't decoration — some of that work is licensed on the condition that we say so, and saying so is the least we owe people who gave the thing away.