The obvious question first: if listening is free, what's the catch?

For now, there isn't one. The whole catalogue is open, in full length, without ads and without a daily limit. You only need an account if you want to keep something. That is because The Riff is still being built – nothing can be booked or paid for yet.

What is planned

It will not stay free forever, and we would rather say so up front. Music, servers and the people behind them cost money. Three subscriptions are planned:

Listening for €2.99 a month: the whole catalogue, every direction, work modes.
Studio + sponsoring · 100 GB for €9.99 a month: plus the studio in the browser and 100 GB of storage.
Studio + sponsoring · 2 TB for €19.99 a month: the same with 2 TB of storage. The storage is meant for music projects – recordings, stems, samples – not as a general backup.

35 % of every subscription is meant to go to the artists. The two studio subscriptions add 15 % sponsoring for clubs and the scene. Free listening previews will stay available. When the subscriptions start is not decided yet; until then, none of it can be booked.

What that means for the music

Every track is freely licensed and free of collecting-society claims. That is not a detail: it means we can show music without triggering a billing chain on every play. Today that is mostly free music under Creative Commons licences. Musicians can apply with their own pieces; we listen, and they keep their rights.

People choose the music. No algorithm, no artificially generated sound. That is slower and it scales badly, and we accept both. A list someone put together sounds different from one calculated from listening times — you notice it by the third hour at the latest.

And the clubs

Clubs close every month. That is the second reason The Riff exists. We want to bring musicians into the rooms that are still there – Berlin first, then Europe. The idea: whoever listens here helps shape who plays there. We see which music is played in which area and invite exactly those people. The sponsoring from the studio subscriptions is meant to carry that.

For now this is a plan. Today there are no evenings you can book and no clubs we already support. When that changes, you will read it here.

What you can do now

Listen – free for now. Create an account if you want to keep music or try the workshop. If you make music, send it to us. And if you have a room where an evening could happen one day, write to us – we'll be in touch once we're ready.