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Your recordings are yours. Anyone republishing them, or building a site or service around them, needs your permission, and doesn't have it. This is how you find out it's happening and how to stop it.

Set expectations honestly: about half of first notices work on their own. The other half need chasing, and that's normal rather than a sign it's failed. The steps below are ordered so the easy wins come first.

Finding out

Set up a Google Alert for your artist name, and another for a distinctive track title in quotes. It's free, takes two minutes, and it works, a site reposting your music has to be findable to be worth anything, so if it's hiding from search it has no audience either.

Watch your own numbers. Your editor shows plays alongside payments received. If plays climb and payments don't, something is playing your music without paying for it. That's your early warning, and it's worth glancing at monthly.

What to do about it

  1. Find who hosts it

    Put the site's address into a lookup tool, searching "who is hosting this site" will find several free ones. You want the hosting company, and their abuse or copyright contact, usually at abuse@ or on a page called Copyright or Legal.

    If the answer is Cloudflare, that's a middleman rather than the host. Report to them anyway at their abuse form, they don't remove content, but they will forward your notice and tell you who the real host is.

  2. Send the host a notice

    Use the template below. Hosting companies act on these because their own legal protection depends on it. Keep a copy and note the date, you'll need both if you have to escalate.

  3. Get it out of Google, do this at the same time

    Don't wait for the host. Report it to Google Search in parallel.

    This is often the most effective single thing you can do. You may never get the site itself taken down, but removing it from search removes its audience, and without an audience there's no reason for it to exist.

  4. If the host is in Europe

    Under the Digital Services Act, any hosting provider in the EU must give you an easy electronic way to report illegal content, must act without undue delay, and must send you a written explanation of what they decided. If they ignore an ordinary email, ask specifically for their Article 16 notice and action mechanism. Naming it tends to produce a faster response.

  5. Escalate if you're ignored

    In order: the domain registrar (a lookup will name them), then any advertising network or payment processor visible on the site. Both drop infringing sites, because they have their own exposure. Include the dates you contacted the host and that they didn't act.

A notice you can copy

Fill in the bracketed parts. Send it as plain email to the host's abuse address.

Subject: Copyright infringement notice - [your artist name]

To whom it may concern,

I am the owner of the copyright in the sound recordings identified below.
I am writing to report that they are being hosted and made available to
the public on a site you host, without my permission.

INFRINGING MATERIAL
  [paste the exact page addresses, one per line]

MY ORIGINAL WORK
  [your own page address, e.g. https://yourname.workers.dev]
  [your track titles]

THE TERMS I PUBLISH
These recordings are published under terms that expressly do not permit
redistribution, rehosting, or inclusion in any service providing access
to others. Those terms are published at:
  https://github.com/besethda/amply.stream/blob/main/spec/licence/personal-1.md
and are referenced in the manifest at my address above.

I have a good faith belief that the use described above is not authorised
by me, my agent, or the law.

I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this notice is
accurate and that I am the copyright owner or authorised to act on the
owner's behalf.

  Name:     [your full legal name]
  Address:  [your postal address]
  Email:    [your email]
  Phone:    [your phone number]
  Signed:   /[your full legal name]/
  Date:     [today's date]

The perjury line is real. It's a sworn legal statement, not boilerplate , which is exactly why hosts take these seriously. Only send one about recordings you actually own, and don't send one if you're unsure.

Why your notice is stronger than most

Most notices assert "this is mine, please remove it," and the host has to take the sender's word for it.

Yours can point at terms you published, at a fixed address, dated before the infringement, stating in writing exactly what isn't permitted. That's the difference between a complaint and a documented case, and hosts move faster on notices from people who look like they know what they're doing.

What Amply does here

Nothing, and that's deliberate. We don't monitor your music, don't know who's listening to it, and have no standing to act on your behalf. Your recordings are yours; so is the decision about what to do when someone takes them.

What we can do is make sure you know the recourse exists, because most musicians don't.