Free to listen. Free to share. Carry the tales.

I — Free Distribution

Listeners are explicitly free to:

• stream the music without payment
• download the music for personal listening
• share the music with friends, communities, and online platforms
• share the visual artwork in connection with the music
• include the music in personal playlists, mixes, and fan content

Listeners are actively encouraged to share. The mission of the project — to keep the old tales alive and carry their message forward to the children and youth of today — is served by reach, not by gatekeeping. Every share is a small act of preservation. The wider the tales travel, the more the project succeeds on its own terms.

II — Why

This policy is deliberate, not provisional in spirit. It rests on three principles drawn from the project's mission.

• The tales were never private property. The Brothers Grimm collected the stories from oral tradition. The tales belong to the cultures that carry them. Charging at the door for a retelling of common heritage would contradict the mission.
• Reach is the message. A song nobody hears cannot teach anyone. Free distribution removes the only barrier that matters at this stage: whether the music reaches the listener at all.
• The audience is the next generation of carriers. The children and youth of today are not customers — they are the people the project is being made for. They should not have to pay to hear a warning written for them.

III — What Is Not Permitted

Free distribution is not the same as a release into the public domain. The following are explicitly not permitted under the current policy:

• Commercial resale of the music or artwork.
• Re-uploading the music under another artist name or project name.
• Removing or altering the Blutmärchen branding, credits, or quote anchors when sharing.
• Removing or obscuring the AI-assisted disclosure when sharing.
• Removing or obscuring the names of credited human collaborators when sharing.
• Use of the music or artwork to train third-party AI models.
• Use of the music or artwork in contexts that contradict the project's editorial principles — in particular: hate-group material, political-extremist propaganda, or content sexualizing or harming minors. The tales are for the children of today; nothing released under this name will be used against them.

Share freely, credit honestly, disclose openly, profit nowhere, harm no one.

IV — License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Sealed Canon)

In plain terms:

§4.1 — Authorized Collaborations Are Not Derivatives

The ND clause prohibits unauthorized derivatives. It does not, and was never intended to, prohibit collaborations authorized by the project itself.

When a human musician records a vocal performance, an instrumental part, a choir contribution, or any other element on a Blutmärchen track at the project's invitation or with the project's acceptance under theCollaboration Charter, the resulting track is not a derivative. It is a canonical release of the project, co-created with a named human contributor, issued under the project's editorial direction. Such tracks are released under this same license; the ND clause continues to protect them from unauthorized downstream modification by third parties.

ND seals the canon against outside rewriting. It does not seal the project against its own collaborators.

§4.2 — Collaborator Rights

Human collaborators on Blutmärchen tracks retain ownership over their own isolated performances. A guest vocalist owns their vocal stem; a guest violinist owns their violin stem; a guest choir owns its choir stem. These individual performances may be freely used by the collaborator on their own showreels, in their own demos, and in their own portfolios.

What the collaborator licenses to the project, under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, is the combined work — the finished Blutmärchen track containing their performance alongside the project's other elements. The combined work is released by Blutmärchen; the collaborator is credited; both names travel together with every share of that track.

Full terms — credit format, attribution language, conditions of acceptance, withdrawal rights, and dispute handling — are defined in theCollaboration Charter.

§4.3 — What ND Does Not Prohibit

What ND does not prohibit, and what remains explicitly welcomed:

• Listening, downloading, and personal-use copies.
• Sharing the unaltered tracks and unaltered artwork on any non-commercial platform.
• Embedding the music in personal videos, playlists, social posts, livestreams, and fan compilations, provided the music itself is not modified and Blutmärchen is credited.
• Writing about, reviewing, analyzing, translating-for-discussion, and teaching with the material.
• Creating original fan visual art, fan fiction, and other derivative creative response works that are clearly the fan's own creation and clearly separate from the canonical Blutmärchen output.

Permission requests for any use beyond these terms — covers, remixes, sync licensing for film or games, sample clearance, commercial distribution partnerships — are evaluated case by case on artistic fit and mission alignment.

V — Future Phases · Review Clause

This policy is fixed for the launch phase of Grimm Tales, Vol. I — In Blood and Fire and is expected to remain in effect through the full release cycle of Volume I.

A formal review will occur:

• before the release of Volume II,
• or upon any approach from a label, publisher, or distribution partner that would change the economic frame of the project.

If the policy ever changes, the change applies forward only. Anything already released under free distribution remains free, in perpetuity, under the terms it was released with. Listeners who downloaded or shared under this policy do not lose those rights retroactively. This is a permanent, non-negotiable commitment.

VI — Canonical Tagline

The tagline that binds both commitments Blutmärchen — AI-assisted music.
Free to listen, free to share.
Carry the tales.