Frequently Asked Questions

Tape Trade is a worker-owned app for storing, sharing, and listening to your mixes, demos, beats, and masters, on the web and iPhone. Upload your audio, organize it into collections, then send private links or invite collaborators. We don't scrape data and we don't sell ads. It's built by a small team with no investors, for people who love listening, not people who love tech.

Upload your tracks to a collection in Tape Trade and send a private share link; only people with the link can hear it. Each collection can have several links, each with its own settings: add a password, allow or block downloads, or set an expiration date. You can see how many times a link was opened and when, and revoke it whenever you want. Your unreleased music stays yours to send, and yours to pull back.

No. Anyone with a Tape Trade link can listen in their browser on any device, with no account, no app, and no login. That makes it easy to send demos to labels, press, venues, or a producer who isn't signing up for one more thing. Turn downloads on for a link if you want them to keep the files; otherwise they just listen.

Create a collaborative collection in Tape Trade and invite your bandmates by email. Editors can upload, rename, retitle, and reorder tracks (so make sure you trust them). Listeners can save the collection and play it on the web or in the app under "Shared with Me." Only one person needs the $4.99/month Two plan; everyone else joins with a free account and gets the full mobile app. No more digging the latest mix out of the group chat.

Put the album in a Tape Trade collection in track order and share it as a playlist, so people hear it front to back the way it'll come out. Tape Trade plays the exact file you uploaded, and the iOS app guarantees gapless WAV playback, even on the lock screen, so segues land where you meant them. Password-protect the link and set an expiry for press and early listeners, then revoke it when the record drops.

No. Tape Trade doesn't scrape your music or your data for AI or ad networks, and we don't sell ads. You pay for the service with a subscription; your work isn't the product. As a worker-owned company with no investors, we're not stockpiling data to dress ourselves up for a buyer, and that won't change. You can delete your account and all your data yourself, in the app, any time.

Yes. Tape Trade plays the file you upload, with no hidden re-encoding and no compressed previews, so the WAV you upload is the WAV your listener hears. Playback supports WAV, MP3, M4A, and AAC files. That matters when you're asking someone for notes on a mix: they're hearing the low end and the reverb tails you actually printed, not a streaming-grade copy.

Tape Trade starts at $0.99 a month for 1 GB, with unlimited collections, sharing, and playback. Pretty straightforward.

• One, $0.99/month: 1 GB, unlimited collections, sharing, and playback
• Two, $4.99/month: 50 GB, plus collaborative collections, collection-level passwords, and expiry controls
• Three, $9.99/month: 100 GB, same features as Two

You need a subscription to upload. Listening to a link, or joining someone else's collection, is free. New accounts get two weeks free.

Yes, if what you need is private sharing rather than public promotion. SoundCloud is built around public streaming and discovery; Tape Trade is built for the stuff that isn't ready yet: demos, works in progress, mixes waiting on notes. Listeners don't need an account, you control passwords, downloads, and expiry, and playback is the exact file you uploaded. And there are no ads, and no one is scraping your uploads.

For sharing music, yes. File-sharing tools hand people a folder of files; Tape Trade hands them a player. Collections play back in order as playlists, with gapless WAV on iOS, and anyone can listen in a browser without downloading a thing. You still get storage (1 to 100 GB depending on plan), optional downloads, and your library synced across devices, plus collaborative collections for the band starting at $4.99 a month.