The Vault

Drop an audio file anywhere on the Vault page. Your browser opens the file once and does four things with it: draws the waveform, measures the loudness, encodes a 256 kbps MP3 stream copy, and uploads that copy. The stream copy is what plays everywhere on the site.

Premium keeps your original file alongside it, untouched, and adds a per-take download for it. On Free the stream copy is the only thing stored — so keep your master where you made it.

Uploading onto a track you already have makes a new version rather than a second track. Versions are listed newest first with their date and size, and the one everything plays is tagged CURRENT.

A take can also carry a name — “rough mix”, “final master”. Hit the pencil on a version row and type up to 64 characters; Enter saves, Escape discards, and clearing it leaves the take as just its number again. The name sits besidethe number on the timeline and in the player, never instead of it — two takes both called “final” are still v3 and v5.

• Make current — promote an older take. Share links, listings and DMs pointing at the track follow it immediately.
• Hold to compare — hold the compare button on the player and it crossfades to the previous take at the same timestamp. Let go and you're back.
• Delete a take — any take except the current one and the last remaining one. Numbers are never reused, so v4 stays v4 after v3 is gone.

A moment after a take finishes uploading we listen to it and work out its tempo. It shows on the track page and beside the take in the version list. On most web uploads the number is there before the file has finished going up — your browser runs the same detector we do, so it is the same answer, earlier.

Every reading says what it is worth: high, medium or low confidence, and a line telling you how often a reading like it turns out to be right. Those percentages are measured against hundreds of tracks whose real tempo is known, not guessed at. When there is no steady pulse to find — ambient, a cappella, very short takes — the panel says so and stores nothing rather than inventing a number.

You can set both yourself. Set BPM on the tempo card takes a whole number, and the key picker beside it takes one of the same 24 keys a listing uses. What you set is what shows — on the track page and in the version list — and it never wears a confidence badge, because you are not estimating. You wrote it.

Setting a tempo does not delete the detected one. We keep it, show it underneath when it disagrees with you, and if we improve the detector and re-read the whole vault later, your number stays exactly where you put it. Clear the field to hand the take back to the detector.

Nothing detects key. Every tool accurate enough to trust is licensed in a way we can't use, so key is yours to set or leave blank — there is no reading for it to disagree with.

Takes uploaded before tempo detection existed have no tempo and won't get one on their own. Set it yourself, or upload the file again as a new version and it gets read.

Every take also says what its audio actually is. The Filecard on the track page gives you the sample rate, the bit depth or bitrate, the channel count, the format and the size — and the short version of it sits on each take's row in the version list, so a bounce at 44.1 next to a 48 kHz original is something you can spot by scanning the column.

We read this with the same tool that makes your stream copy, off the bytes we actually stored, a moment after the upload finishes. Nothing about it is typed in or guessed.

• Lossless files get a bit depth — WAV, AIFF, FLAC and ALAC. A 24-bit 48 kHz WAV reads as 24-bit, not as the 32-bit box those samples travel in.
• Lossy files get a bitrate instead— MP3, AAC, M4A, Opus. These have no bit depth at all; the number people mean when they ask is the bitrate, so that is the one shown. You will never see “16-bit” on an MP3 here.
• The card says which file it read— the master you uploaded, or the MP3 stream copy. On Free the stream copy is the only thing kept, so that is what gets measured, and the card says so rather than describing a WAV that isn't there.

Takes uploaded before this existed have been read too, so most of your history already carries it. The handful we could not open say “Couldn't read it” — upload the file again as a new version and it gets another go.

Crates are folders. A track sits in one crate or none. Three ways to file one, all doing the same thing:

• Drag the tile onto a crate.
• Tap the crate chip on the tile and pick one — the way that works on a phone.
• Create a new crate from inside that picker, which files the track at the same time.

All tracks and Unfiled are views, not crates — you can drop onto them, but they can't be renamed, shared or reordered. Deleting a crate never deletes music: the tracks come out of it and go back to Unfiled.

A crate can also be shared as one link that plays the whole thing in order — see Sharing your music.

Every track carries a thread. A note can be pinned to a moment — start typing while the track is playing and it grabs the playhead — or left as a general note. Clicking a timestamp seeks the player to it.

• You and anyone holding a share link can leave notes.
• Reading needs nothing. Writing needs an account, because a note needs an author.
• A note written against an older take is labelled with the take it was about, so old feedback never reads as current.
• You can resolve notes. Resolved ones collapse out of the way and stay readable.
• Authors can edit or withdraw their own notes.

Feedback has an on/off switch per track, and a second one per share link — so you can take notes from one set of people and not another.

• Cover art — upload one, and every cover you've used stays in a strip you can revert to. 5MB on Free, 20MB on Premium; it's resized before upload either way, so a big export is fine.
• Lyrics and notes — plain text, saved when you change them.
• Credits — role and name, as many rows as the record needs.

None of it leaves the Vault. Lyrics, notes, credits and your master file are never included in a share link, a DM or a listing.

Storage limits go by what you pay:

• Tracks — 5 on Free. Premium is uncapped.
• Versions per track — 2 on Free. Premium keeps the full history.
• Per upload — 50MB on Free, 200MB on Premium.
• Total storage — 250MB on Free. Premium has no storage ceiling at all.
• Uploads per month — Premium can upload 100GB every 30 days. That is the only limit left, it exists to stop the Vault being used as bulk file hosting, and it is roughly 512 full-size uploads a month. Deleting a track frees the space but does not give the month's allowance back.
• Active share links — 3 per track and 3 per crate on Free. Premium is unlimited.

The tools on a track's page go by entitlement instead, so the trial gets them:

• Loudness check — Premium, and included in the trial.
• Audition desk — Premium, and included in the trial.
• Teaser links — Premium, and included in the trial.

Premium storage is unlimited, so a vault can end up holding far more than the free 250MB. If a subscription ends while it does, here is exactly what happens — in this order, with nothing left vague:

• Straight away— you can't upload anything new until you're back under the free limit. Nothing is removed, and nothing changes about what's already there.
• For 60 days — everything stays exactly as it is. Every track plays, every master downloads, every share link works. We email you when this starts and again at 30, 7 and 1 days left, and your Vault shows the date the whole time.
• After that — the overflow is scheduled for removal, not removed. We keep your oldest tracks up to the free limit and mark the rest with a date 14 days out. They still play and still download for those 14 days.
• Only then — the marked tracks are deleted permanently. That step cannot be undone.

Three things cancel all of it, at any point before that last step, and any one is enough: resubscribe, delete enough tracks yourself to get back under the free limit, or download what you want and delete the rest. Resubscribing puts every marked track straight back.

Downloading never stops working.Uploads are blocked, exports are not — your Vault has a “Download everything” button the entire time, and it hands back the original master wherever we have one, even though masters are a Premium feature. It is your file.

• In a message — pick a track from your Vault in the composer and it arrives as a player the other person can hear in the thread. They get the current version and nothing else.
• On a listing — attach a Vault track as the preview instead of uploading the file again. Promoting a new version updates the listing with it.