Terms of Use
Terms of Use
Last updated: June 26, 2026
Welcome to archive.bigthief.net (the "Archive"). The Archive is operated by Big Thief, LLC ("we," "us," or "our"). These terms are an agreement between you and us and cover what you can and can't do here. Our Privacy Policy (available at archive.bigthief.net/privacy) explains how we collect and use your information. When you create an account, we'll ask you to confirm that you agree to these terms; if you use the site without an account, using it means you agree to them. If you don't agree, don't use the site.
Questions: bigthiefarchive@gmail.com.
1. Who can use the Archive
You need to be at least 13 to use the site, and old enough in your country to enter a binding agreement. If you're under 18, you confirm that a parent or guardian has reviewed these terms and is okay with you being here. If you're in a country where a higher age applies to consenting to the use of your personal information (up to 16 in parts of the European Economic Area), you need to meet that age or have a parent or guardian's consent. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.
If we ban you or close your account, you don't get to come back under a new account without our okay.
2. Your account
You're responsible for what happens on your account. Keep your password secure, and please tell us promptly if you think someone else has accessed your account.
We can suspend or close any account that breaks these terms, abuses other users, or makes the Archive a worse place. We'll usually warn first, but we don't have to.
3. What the Archive is
The Archive is a place to listen to recordings of Big Thief and view related material (such as photographs, artwork, and documents), read context about those recordings, and build your own playlists. We make no promises about what's available, how long it stays available, or whether the site will be up at any given moment.
We may add, change, or remove recordings, features, or sections of the site at any time, including in response to requests from artists, labels, or rights holders.
4. Music and copyright
The recordings and other material on the Archive are owned by their respective rights holders, including the relevant record labels, music publishers, songwriters, photographers, and artists, and are made available under license. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to stream them through the site for personal, non-commercial enjoyment. You may not:
- Download, re-host, redistribute, or mirror recordings elsewhere.
- Use recordings in your own videos, podcasts, edits, remixes, livestreams, or other works without permission from the actual rights holders.
- Sell, license, or otherwise commercialize anything from the Archive.
- Scrape, bulk-download, or use automated tools to extract content from the site.
- Use recordings or other material from the Archive to train, develop, or test machine-learning or artificial-intelligence models.
The Big Thief name, logos, and artwork are the property of Big Thief, LLC or its licensors. Nothing in these terms grants you any right to use them, and all rights not expressly granted to you are reserved. The owners of the recordings and other material on the Archive are intended third-party beneficiaries of this section 4 and may enforce it directly against you.
5. Playlists and user content
When you build a playlist, submit artwork, or otherwise share something with the Archive ("user content"), you keep ownership of what you created. However, if your user content is based on Big Thief's name, images, artwork, or music, your ownership covers only what you created and added; the underlying material still belongs to its owners. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license, which we may sublicense to our service providers, to host, store, reproduce, display, and use that content to operate, improve, and promote the Archive. This license ends when you delete the content, except for copies kept in backups or already shared with other users.
You're responsible for your user content. By posting it, you confirm:
- It's yours, or you have the right to post it without consent from anyone else.
- It doesn't violate anyone's privacy, publicity, or intellectual property rights.
- It isn't harassing, threatening, hateful, deceptive, or illegal.
We can remove user content for any reason, or for no reason.
Playlists are personal collections of pointers to recordings already on the Archive. You can share playlist links if the site supports it, but a playlist doesn't grant access to anything outside the Archive's normal availability.
If you send us ideas, suggestions, or other feedback about the Archive, we can use it without any obligation to you.
6. Acceptable use
Don't:
- Attempt to break, probe, overload, or interfere with the site or its infrastructure.
- Reverse-engineer the site to extract recordings or bypass access controls.
- Impersonate other users, the band, the Archive's operators, or anyone else.
- Use the site to harass other users or to distribute spam, malware, or illegal content.
- Use the site for any commercial purpose without our written agreement.
Standard stuff. Be a normal person.
7. Things we don't promise
The Archive is provided as is and as available. We make no warranties — express or implied — about the site, its content, its availability, its accuracy, or its fitness for any particular purpose. Recordings may have errors, mislabels, gaps, or missing context. Features may break. The site may go down. Accounts may be lost in the event of catastrophic data loss, though we try to prevent that.
To the maximum extent allowed by law, Big Thief, LLC, its members, and the people running the Archive are not liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, or special damages arising out of your use of the site. If a court finds we or any of the people listed above are liable for something despite this, our total combined liability is capped at the greater of the amount you paid us in the last twelve months or US$100. Nothing in these terms limits liability that can't be limited by law, such as liability for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.
Some places don't allow these kinds of disclaimers, so parts of this section may not apply to you.
8. Takedown requests
If you're a rights holder and you believe something on the Archive infringes your rights, send a written notice to our designated copyright agent (details below), which you can do by email to bighthiefarchive@gmail.com with:
- Identification of the copyrighted work you claim has been infringed (or, for multiple works, a representative list).
- Identification of the material you claim is infringing, including the URL(s) on the Archive, with enough detail for us to locate it.
- Your contact information, including your name, address, telephone number, and email address.
- A statement that you have a good-faith belief that the use isn't authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
- A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information is accurate and that you're the rights holder or authorized to act on their behalf.
- Your physical or electronic signature.
Our designated copyright agent is: Copyright Agent, Big Thief, LLC, c/o Davis Shapiro Lewit Grabel Leven Granderson & Blake, LLP, 414 West 14th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10014; email: bigthiefarchive@gmail.com.
We respond to valid requests promptly. We may also remove material on our own initiative if we think it should come down, without waiting for a formal request.
If you're a user whose content was removed and you believe the removal was a mistake or misidentification, you can send a counter-notice to our designated copyright agent. It must include: your physical or electronic signature; identification of the material that was removed and where it appeared before removal; a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good-faith belief the material was removed as a result of mistake or misidentification; and your name, address, and telephone number, with a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the federal district court for the judicial district where your address is located (or, if you're outside the United States, any judicial district in which we may be found) and that you'll accept service of process from the person who sent the original notice or their agent. If we receive a valid counter-notice, we'll forward a copy to the person who sent the original notice. Unless our designated copyright agent receives notice within 10 business days that they've filed a court action seeking to restrain the alleged infringement, we'll restore the removed material, or stop disabling access to it, no sooner than 10 and no later than 14 business days after we receive the counter-notice, unless it otherwise breaks these terms.
If you knowingly misrepresent that material is infringing, or that it was removed by mistake, you may be liable for the resulting damages, including legal fees.
In appropriate circumstances, we close accounts of repeat infringers.
9. Linking and embedding
You can link to the Archive's public pages, as long as you don't misrepresent the source of the link or suggest that we endorse you or your project. You can't embed, frame, or mirror the site or its player on any other site or app without our written permission.
10. Indemnification
If your user content, your use of the Archive, or your breach of these terms leads to a claim, demand, or proceeding against Big Thief, LLC, its members, affiliates, or licensors (including the labels and publishers whose material appears on the Archive), or the people running the Archive, you agree to defend and indemnify them against the resulting losses, liabilities, damages, judgments, settlements, fines, and penalties, and reasonable costs and expenses, including legal fees. We can take control of the defense of any such claim, and you'll cooperate with us if we do. This doesn't apply to the extent a claim is caused by our own willful conduct.
11. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms from time to time. When we do, we'll change the date at the top. Material changes will be announced on the site or by email to account holders where appropriate, and we may ask account holders to accept them the next time they sign in. Continuing to use the Archive after a change means you accept the new terms.
12. Termination
You can stop using the Archive at any time. We can also stop providing it — to you specifically, or to everyone — at any time, with or without notice.
Sections 4, 5 (including the license you grant us in your user content), 7, 10, 12, 13, and 14 survive termination, along with any other provisions that by their nature should survive.
13. Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Any disputes will be handled exclusively by the state and federal courts located in New York County, New York, and you and we consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts, unless local consumer-protection law gives you a right to do otherwise.
14. Miscellaneous
If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still applies. Our not enforcing a term in one case doesn't waive our right to enforce it later. You may not transfer these terms without our consent; we may transfer them in connection with a transfer of the Archive. You agree that we can communicate with you electronically, including by email and notices on the site. These terms, together with our Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between you and us about the site.
Contact
Big Thief, LLC, c/o Davis Shapiro Lewit Grabel Leven Granderson & Blake, LLP, 414 West 14th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10014