Rights and removals

Effective 8 August 2026

Galabada publishes archival recordings. This page explains what we allow into the catalogue, what we do about material whose status we cannot establish, and exactly what happens when someone asks us to take a recording down.

Where the recordings come from

The catalogue is assembled from public archives, chiefly the Internet Archive, together with release information from open music databases and cover art from public sources. Galabada has no upload feature: everything here was selected and published by us, and we answer for it.

How we sort what we find

Every candidate recording falls into one of three groups.

Free to publish

Recordings whose rights in the sound recording have expired, and recordings released under a licence that permits redistribution. In the European Union, where this service is operated and hosted, protection of a sound recording runs seventy years from publication, with recordings that had already entered the public domain before November 2013 remaining free — which places the boundary at recordings published up to and including 1962. What matters is when the recording was made and published, not when a later compilation carrying it was issued.

Status not established

Material we found in public archives whose rights we could not confirm — an unclear recording date, an unattributed transfer, a reissue that may or may not carry older recordings. We publish it while it appears defensible, we do not claim any right in it, and we remove it immediately if a rights holder asks. If you hold rights in something in this group, you do not need to argue with us: see below.

Not published at all

Recordings that are plainly still protected. These are not downloaded, not stored and not published. Where such material entered the catalogue before this policy was written, we are removing it.

Two layers of rights

A recording carries two separate rights: one in the recording itself, one in the underlying song. The dates above concern the recording. The composition — the music and the words — is protected for the author’s lifetime plus seventy years, and can still be protected even when the recording is free. We take complaints from composers, lyricists and publishers exactly as seriously as those from record companies.

If something here is yours

Write to team@mosaic.business. You do not need a lawyer and there is no form to fill in.

We take it down while we check, not after. Removal comes first, the conversation second. We aim to acknowledge within two working days.

What removal actually does

Removal is not a flag in an interface. In order:

1. The recording is unpublished immediately — it disappears from the catalogue, from search, from artist and album pages, and from anyone’s playlists and library.
2. The audio files are deleted from storage: both the streaming versions and the original master. Nothing is kept in a hidden state.
3. The delivery cache is purged, so parts of the file already cached at our edge stop being served rather than lingering for weeks.
4. A record that the recording existed and was removed is kept, so the same material is not imported again by mistake.

If you asked for the removal, we write back to confirm it is done. If you disagree with a removal we made, write to the same address.

Artists and estates

If you are an artist, or represent one, and would rather your recordings stayed here — or would like them presented differently — we would like to hear from you. The same address works.

See also Terms of use and Contact.