Accounts and plans

Every Stem Shovel account today is a free account, for life. There is no base subscription cost now, and there never will be one for accounts created before paid plans exist. The basics — projects, songs, stems and playback, charts, lyrics, notes, comments, sharing, members — are free.

Free for life

An account with the Free for life badge (in its settings and on Your accounts) pays nothing for the service itself, ever. What a free account has is an upper limit on stored data and on members: stems are large files, and storing them is the one cost that grows with every upload. A free account holds 20 GB of files (stems, demos and Idea Recorder takes; the playback versions we make from them do not count) and up to 6 members of any role; viewers you share with are not members and are unlimited.

The account's Settings page shows how much of each is used. When the storage is full, an upload is refused with a message until files are removed; nothing already uploaded is ever removed for you. When every seat is taken, invitations and invite codes stop working until a member is removed.

Founder accounts

The first twenty accounts ever created are Founder accounts, marked with a star. A founder account is never charged, has no storage or member limit, and gets every feature Stem Shovel ever adds, including the premium ones. After the first twenty, a founder account can only be granted by the people who run Stem Shovel.

What is coming

Paid plans are planned, in two shapes:

• Data tiers. Beyond the free limit, larger amounts of storage for a monthly price. Storage is what costs us money, so this is where the pricing will sit.
• Advanced features. Expensive features that arrive later — the ones that use a lot of computing or AI — may be part of a paid tier. Everything free accounts have today stays free.

Plans will be per account, not per person: the account's owners choose the plan, and everyone in the account benefits. Payment will be by card through Stripe, managed from the account's settings, and you will always be able to see how much of your limit you are using before you decide anything.

Where to see your plan

The badge is shown in the account's Settings page next to the title, and beside each account on the Your accounts page.