Terms & Conditions

These Terms & Conditions ("Terms") govern your use of this website and any service you commission from ScoreMasters®. By browsing the site, requesting a quote, or engaging us for any work, you accept these Terms in full. If any part is unacceptable to you, please do not use the site or commission our services.

1. Who We Are

This website and the services offered through it are run by ScoreMasters® ("ScoreMasters," "we," "us," or "our"), an independent music-services studio established in 1997 and based in Athens, Greece.

• Operated by: Samy Elgazzar (sole proprietor), trading as ScoreMasters®
• Postal address: P.O. Box 78520, Athens GR 17602, Greece
• Email: info@scoremastersmusic.com
• Telephone: +30 6944 917 867
• VAT / Tax Registration No. (ΑΦΜ): 046917917, registered for VAT in Greece

ScoreMasters® is a registered trademark.

2. Definitions

For the purposes of these Terms:

• "Client," "you," or "your": any individual or organization that uses this website or commissions a Service from us.
• "Consumer": a Client acting wholly or mainly for purposes outside their trade, business, craft, or profession.
• "Services": our Orchestration & Arranging, Music Engraving & Score Preparation, Music Transcription, MIDI to Score, AI Music to Score, and any related score-preparation or teaching work we provide.
• "Source Materials": anything you send us to work from, including audio, MIDI, video, scores, manuscripts, sketches, lead sheets, reference recordings, AI-generated audio, or lyrics.
• "Deliverables": the scores, parts, notation files, audio mockups, and other work product we prepare for you.
• "Order Confirmation": our written acceptance of your project (normally by email), setting out the agreed scope, price, and timeline.
• "Accuracy-Based Services": Music Engraving & Score Preparation, Music Transcription, MIDI to Score, and AI Music to Score, where the result is judged against a fixed reference (your Source Materials).
• "Interpretive Services": Orchestration & Arranging, where the work calls for musical and artistic judgment.

3. Use of This Website

You may use this website only for lawful purposes. You must not use it in any way that breaks any applicable law, infringes anyone's rights, or is dishonest, harmful, or malicious, including sending any virus or damaging code.

Everything published on the site (text, graphics, logos, the ScoreMasters® name and marks, audio, video, score samples, and design) belongs to us or our licensors and is protected by intellectual-property law. You may not copy, distribute, alter, republish, or otherwise exploit any of it without our written permission.

We may change, pause, or take down any part of the site at any time without notice, and we may decline to provide services to anyone at our discretion.

4. How a Contract Is Formed

The prices and details shown on this website are an invitation for you to request a quote; they are not a binding offer.

A contract is created only when we send you an Order Confirmation accepting your project and, where advance payment or a deposit is required, when it reaches us. It covers only the work set out in that Order Confirmation. Anything beyond that (extra work, a change of direction, or revisions outside the agreed scope) may need a separate agreement and may be charged for.

Together, the Order Confirmation, these Terms, our Privacy Policy, and any separate written agreement (for example an NDA) make up the whole agreement between us for that project and replace any earlier discussions or representations. Written messages and confirmations we send form part of the contract and bind both sides.

By requesting a quote or placing an order, you confirm that you are of legal age to enter into a binding contract in your country of residence. If you are arranging a Service for someone below that age, for example a parent or teacher arranging lessons for a student, you do so as the responsible adult and accept these Terms on their behalf.

5. The Free Trial

For most projects we provide a free 8-bar trial so you can judge our work before you commit. The trial is for evaluation only: it is not a Deliverable, it carries no right to use, perform, distribute, or publish it, and it stays our property unless and until a contract is formed and the project is paid in full.

6. Your Responsibilities and Source Materials

By sending us Source Materials and placing an order, you confirm that:

• the information you give us is accurate and complete;
• your Source Materials are good enough quality for us to carry out the work (see Section 11); and
• you either hold the rights in the underlying music, have the rights-holder's authorization to commission the work, or accept that the Deliverables are for private, non-commercial use only as set out in Section 7.

Working out the copyright status of anything you submit is your responsibility, as is obtaining any permission, mechanical or synchronization license, or clearance needed from rights-holders, publishers, or the relevant collective management organizations before the Deliverables are used in public or commercially. In Greece those organizations are AUTODIA (autodia.gr) and EDEM (edemrights.gr); elsewhere they include PRS, ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and GEMA.

We do not give legal advice on copyright, licensing, or clearance, and we are not responsible for any unauthorized use of copyrighted material by you or by anyone you pass the Deliverables to.

7. Intellectual Property in the Work We Create

7.1 Works you own or are authorized to commission

If you own the copyright in the underlying music, or are properly authorized by the rights-holder to commission it, then once the project is paid in full the resulting Deliverables are yours: you may use, publish, perform, license, or sell them freely. Where any right does not transfer to you automatically, we assign it to you on receipt of full payment, to the fullest extent permitted by law. The specific modes of exploitation covered by this assignment (such as reproduction, distribution, public performance, making the work available online, and adaptation) are set out in your Order Confirmation, which also serves as the written record of the assignment. Beyond the portfolio and moral-rights points in Sections 7.5 and 7.6, we keep no rights in those Deliverables.

7.2 Third-party copyrighted works you are not authorized to use

If you ask us to transcribe, engrave, arrange, or orchestrate a work whose copyright you neither own nor control, the Deliverables are supplied strictly for your own private, non-commercial use, for example personal study, practice, private teaching, and performance that is not open to the public.

They may not be used in any public or commercial way. That includes, without limitation, sharing or selling them, putting them online or on social or video platforms, broadcasting or streaming them, performing them publicly or for profit, syncing them to video, or licensing them onward. We grant no rights for any of those uses. In this situation we keep all rights in the engraving, transcription, arrangement, or orchestration we produce, without affecting the original copyright owner's rights, and you must secure every necessary clearance before any public or commercial use.

7.3 AI-generated source material

If your Source Material comes from an AI tool (such as Suno, Eleven Music, Mureka, AIVA, or similar), you accept that the copyright position of such material is unsettled and still developing, that we offer no opinion on it, and that the AI platform's own terms may limit how its output can be used. For these Terms, the Deliverables are handled as in Section 7.1, and you take full responsibility for any claim connected to their use, including any claim brought by the AI provider.

7.4 Buyout of arrangement, orchestration, or notation rights

Where you do not own the underlying work (Section 7.2), we may agree separately, for an additional fee, to sell you the rights in the arrangement, orchestration, or notation we created. Any such buyout covers only our own work product; it does not give you any rights in the underlying composition, for which you remain responsible for obtaining clearances.

7.5 Confidentiality and portfolio use

We treat your Source Materials and Deliverables as confidential and do not share them publicly or with anyone outside the project, apart from trusted associates or subcontractors who are themselves bound by confidentiality (see Section 13). If you ask, and we agree in writing before work starts, we will handle the project under a formal Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).

We will not use any part of your project (score images, audio, or any other excerpt) in our portfolio or for any promotional purpose without your prior written consent. Where you do give consent, we will use only anonymized excerpts, with your name and any identifying project details removed, and you may withdraw that consent and ask us to remove the material at any time.

7.6 Moral rights and credit

Under Greek copyright law (Law 2121/1993), an author's moral rights, the right to be credited and the right to protect the integrity of the work, cannot be transferred and stay with the creator even after the economic rights pass to you. You agree not to change the Deliverables in any way that would harm the creator's honor or reputation. Where it is reasonable and customary, for instance on published or recorded works, we may ask for an appropriate credit, the wording of which can be settled in the Order Confirmation.

7.7 Our tools and know-how

Our house style, templates, engraving conventions, and professional know-how stay ours and may be reused on other projects. This does not affect your ownership of your specific Deliverables under Section 7.1.

8. Pricing, Quotes, and Payment

The prices on this website are starting points, given for guidance only. What you actually pay depends on the length, complexity, instrumentation, deadline, and any special requirements of your project, and is confirmed in the Order Confirmation. A minimum project fee of $49 applies. Quotes hold for 30 days unless we say otherwise.

We may quote in USD, EUR, or GBP. Any EUR or GBP amounts on the website are indicative only; the currency and figure you owe are those in the Order Confirmation.

Our standard terms are full payment in advance, before work begins. On larger projects we can agree more flexible arrangements, for example a 50/50 split (half to start the work, half on delivery), interest-free installments through PayPal (typically three or four), or Buy Now, Pay Later through Stripe. Stripe's Buy Now, Pay Later facilities are provided by third-party finance providers and may carry interest or fees set and charged by that provider; those charges are governed by your agreement with the provider and are neither set nor received by ScoreMasters®. Retainer or monthly billing can be arranged for publisher and institutional clients. We never add a payment surcharge greater than what the payment method actually costs us.

We release Deliverables only once all payment due has cleared in full. If you are on an installment or split-payment plan and miss a scheduled payment, we may pause the work and hold the Deliverables until you are up to date.

VAT: As a Greek VAT-registered business, we apply VAT where the law requires it. Business clients elsewhere in the EU may fall under the reverse-charge mechanism if they give us a valid EU VAT number. Business clients outside the EU are not charged Greek VAT where they provide acceptable proof of their business status, for example a US Form W-9 or an equivalent tax-residency or business-registration document. Your invoice shows the treatment that applies.

9. Delivery and File Formats

Turnaround times on the website and in quotes are honest estimates based on what we know at the time, not guaranteed deadlines. If a timeline has to move (because of complexity, Source-Material quality, or something unforeseen), we will tell you promptly. Our 12-hour response commitment is about how quickly we reply to inquiries; it is separate from how long a project takes to complete.

Unless the Order Confirmation says otherwise, every Service comes with a print-ready PDF and an audio mockup where that is indicated for the Service. Editable project files (MusicXML, MIDI, and the working Finale, Sibelius, or Dorico file) are included only where you own the intellectual property in the underlying work, or are authorized to commission it, as described in Section 7.1. Where the underlying work is a third-party copyrighted work that you are not authorized to use (Section 7.2), editable project files are not part of the standard delivery but may be supplied for an additional fee under the buyout in Section 7.4.

Rush delivery is available on request and may add a surcharge of up to 50%.

10. Revisions

Every Service includes two rounds of revisions at no extra cost.

On top of that, for Accuracy-Based Services we guarantee accuracy: any genuine error, measured against your Source Materials, is fixed free of charge. For Interpretive Services, the two included rounds cover adjustments to interpretation and taste, and you accept that this kind of work involves a degree of artistic judgment.

Covered by your included revisions: fixing errors, and small changes within the agreed scope such as transposition, tempo, dynamics, or minor layout tweaks.

Treated as a new project (needing a fresh quote): reworking the structure (adding or cutting sections, reordering), significant reharmonization or arrangement changes, altering the instrumentation, merging separate projects, or changing the overall direction or style.

Please check Deliverables soon after you receive them. Revision requests should reach us within 30 days of delivery; if we hear nothing within that time, the Deliverables are treated as accepted.

11. Accuracy and Source-Material Quality

We aim for the highest standards of accuracy and craft, but you should understand that:

• how good the Deliverables can be depends on how good your Source Materials are: weak recordings, unclear manuscripts, or missing references may force interpretive choices, and we are not responsible for limits that stem from poor Source Material;
• transcription calls for professional interpretation wherever a passage is ambiguous or hard to hear, and you can refine those choices through revisions;
• Interpretive Services involve artistic judgment; and
• unless we have specifically agreed it, we do not promise that Deliverables will meet the particular submission or formatting rules of any third-party publisher, label, competition, or licensing body.

12. Cancellation, Refunds, and Consumer Rights

12.1 Custom work

Because our work is made to order, the following applies. If you cancel before we start, any payment or deposit you have made is refunded in full. If you cancel after we have started, we may keep a fair amount for the work already done, and we may hand over the finished portion at our discretion.

As a rule we do not refund completed work; instead we revise it under Section 10 to put right any reasonable concern. In the rare case where we cannot meet your expectations even after genuine revision, we may consider a partial refund at our discretion. We do not give refunds where the Deliverables match the agreed scope, where you have simply changed your mind or direction after work began, where the Source Material was not good enough, or where you have not replied to revision requests within 30 days.

12.2 Right of withdrawal for EU/EEA consumers

If you are a Consumer resident in the EU or EEA, you normally have the right to withdraw from a distance contract within 14 days without giving a reason.

However, under Article 16 of Directive 2011/83/EU (as implemented in Greece), this right does not apply to (a) goods or services made to your specifications or clearly personalized, and (b) services that have been fully performed where performance began with your prior express consent and your acknowledgment that you would lose the right of withdrawal once the service is fully performed.

Because our Services are bespoke and personalized, when you ask us to begin work before the 14-day period ends you expressly consent to that early start and acknowledge that you will lose your right of withdrawal once the Service is fully performed. We record this consent in the Order Confirmation. If work has not yet begun, you remain free to withdraw within the 14-day period using a clear statement (or the model withdrawal form, which is available on request) sent to the contact details in Section 1.

12.3 Pricing errors

If we discover an error in a quoted price, we will tell you as soon as we reasonably can and let you reconfirm at the correct price or cancel for a full refund of anything already paid.

Nothing in these Terms removes or limits any statutory right you have as a Consumer that cannot lawfully be excluded.

13. Associates and Subcontractors

We may bring in qualified associates or subcontractors to help deliver a Service. They are held to the same confidentiality obligations, and ScoreMasters® remains answerable to you for the quality and timely delivery of all Deliverables.

14. Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability

We provide this website and our Services with reasonable skill and care but, so far as the law allows, without other warranties, and we do not promise the website will always be available or error-free.

So far as the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses of any kind (including lost profit, lost data, lost opportunity, business disruption, or harm to reputation) arising from your use of the website or the Services. For any claim relating to a Service, our total liability will not exceed what you paid us for that Service.

We are also not liable for loss arising from your misuse of the Deliverables, your failure to obtain the rights, licenses, or permissions you need, limits caused by Source-Material quality, your use of Deliverables outside the agreed scope, or any action a rights-holder takes against you over unauthorized use of their material.

None of this limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow us to exclude, including any statutory rights you have as a Consumer that cannot be waived.

15. Indemnification

So far as the law allows, you will cover ScoreMasters® for any claim, loss, or cost (including reasonable legal fees) that results from: a misstatement by you about who owns or has authorized the copyright; your use or exploitation of the Deliverables in breach of these Terms; any third-party claim that your Source Materials infringe their rights; your failure to get the licenses or clearances required; any claim from an AI provider about AI-generated Source Materials; or any other breach of these Terms by you. This duty continues after the project ends. If you are a Consumer, this indemnity applies only to losses arising from your unlawful use of the Deliverables or your misrepresentation of the rights you hold, and only so far as the law permits.

16. Force Majeure

We are not responsible for any failure or delay caused by events outside our reasonable control, for example natural disasters, serious illness, power or telecommunications failure, cyber-attacks, or government action. We will let you know as soon as we reasonably can and resume as soon as we are able. If such an event lasts more than 30 days in a row, either of us may end the affected project, and we will refund anything paid for work not yet done.

17. Termination

We may suspend or end a project straight away if you breach a material term, give us false information about copyright ownership, fail to pay on time, treat our staff or associates abusively, or where carrying on would put us at legal risk. If we end a project for one of these reasons, no refund is due. If you end a project, Section 12 applies.

Sections 7, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18, 19, and 20 continue to apply after a project ends.

18. Complaints and Dispute Resolution

If something is wrong, please come to us first at info@scoremastersmusic.com so we can try to sort it out informally; we aim to reply within five business days.

If a Consumer dispute cannot be settled directly, you may take it to the Hellenic Consumer Ombudsman (Συνήγορος του Καταναλωτή, synigoroskatanaloti.gr) or to an accredited alternative dispute resolution (ADR) body in Greece, such as ADR Point (adrpoint.gr) or StartADR (startadr.org).

19. Governing Law and Jurisdiction

These Terms, and any dispute arising out of them, are governed by Greek law, including Law 2121/1993 on copyright, and the courts of Athens, Greece have jurisdiction. If you are a Consumer living elsewhere in the EU or EEA, you also keep the protection of the mandatory consumer-protection rules of your home country, and nothing here takes that protection away. In particular, if you are a Consumer you may bring proceedings in your country of domicile, and we will bring any proceedings against you only in that country.

20. General

Severability: if any part of these Terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable, the rest stays in force.

Waiver: if we do not enforce a right straight away, we do not lose it.

Assignment: you may not transfer your rights under a contract without our written agreement; we may transfer or subcontract our side in line with Section 13.

Changes: we may update these Terms at any time by posting a new version here and changing the date above. For projects already under way, the version in force when we issued the Order Confirmation continues to apply. If you keep using the website after we post changes, that counts as accepting them for future orders.

21. Contact

Questions about these Terms can be sent to:

ScoreMasters®
P.O. Box 78520, Athens GR 17602, Greece
info@scoremastersmusic.com · +30 6944 917 867