Starcast
Terms of Use
The short version
- The Starcast app is licensed to you under Apple’s standard licence agreement for apps. These terms add a few things specific to Starcast.
- Podcasts belong to the people who make them. Starcast plays them from the podcasts’ own hosts; it doesn’t copy or rehost them.
- Starcast Pro is an Apple subscription. Apple charges for it, and you manage or cancel it in your Apple Account settings.
- Use Starcast’s information about who is on which podcast for your own listening. Don’t scrape it, bulk-download it, or copy it into another product.
The app
Starcast is a podcast player. The licence to use it is Apple’s Licensed Application End User License Agreement, linked above. Where these terms and that agreement differ, that agreement wins for the app itself.
Podcasts and other content
Episodes, artwork and show notes come from public podcast feeds and belong to their creators. Starcast fetches them from the podcast’s own host when you ask it to. Some podcasts are explicit; Starcast does not filter them.
Information about the people on podcasts (who hosted or guested on which episode, what they were promoting, photos and short facts) is built from public podcast feeds, episode descriptions and public sources such as Wikipedia and Wikidata, partly with automated tools. It can be wrong. If something about you is wrong or you want it removed, see the corrections and removal policy.
Links to books, music and other things guests promote may be affiliate links, which means Starcast may earn a small commission if you buy. It doesn’t change the price you pay.
Starcast’s people database
The facts in a podcast feed are public. The work of collecting, checking, linking and arranging them into one database of who hosted and guested on which episode (“the Starcast database”) is Starcast’s, and the database belongs to us. You may look things up in it through the app and this website for your own personal, non-commercial use. You may not, without our written permission:
- scrape, crawl, bulk-download or otherwise copy the Starcast database, or a substantial part of it, whether by hand, by script or bot, or from the files the app downloads;
- use it to build, train or improve another database, directory, app, service or AI model;
- sell, publish, share or license copies of it, or of anything made from it.
To use the data in bulk, ask us about access. We may slow down or block traffic that looks automated, and the database includes markers that let us recognise a copy of it.
Starcast Pro
Pro is an auto-renewing subscription, monthly or yearly, sold through the App Store. New subscribers get a free trial; payment is charged to your Apple Account when it ends. The subscription renews automatically unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Refunds are handled by Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.
Things you send us
When you request a show, report a mistake or answer a question in the app, you let us use what you sent to improve Starcast’s information, including the Starcast database above: in the app, on this website, and in copies of the database we license to other companies. What goes into the database is the fact you confirmed or corrected (for example, that a person was on an episode), never who sent it. You keep any rights you have in what you sent; this permission is free, worldwide and doesn’t end, so a fact you helped check can stay in the database after you stop using Starcast. Please don’t send anything that isn’t true or isn’t yours to share.
Claimed pages
If you claim a page, or ask us to change one, you confirm that you are that person or are allowed to act for them or for the show. Links, photos and text you send for a page are yours; you let us show them on that page in the app and on starcastapp.com, and include them in the Starcast database, including copies we license to other companies. You can ask us to take them down at any time; we then remove them from the app and the website, and companies we license the database to must apply the removal within 30 days. We may decline or remove anything that is misleading, isn’t yours, or breaks the law, and we may undo a claim that turns out not to be genuine. Claiming a page doesn’t remove real appearances on public episodes (see the corrections and removal policy), and it doesn’t mean Starcast endorses you or you endorse Starcast.
This website and the waitlist
Joining the waitlist means we may email you about Starcast’s beta and launch. The privacy policy says what we keep and how to leave.
If Starcast changes hands
If Starcast, or the part of it these terms cover, is sold, merged or otherwise transferred to another company, these terms and the permissions you have given under them pass to that company, which must keep to them. The privacy policy says what happens to your information.
No guarantees
Starcast is provided as it is. We work to keep it accurate and running, but we can’t promise it will always be available, error-free, or right about every person and episode. To the extent the law allows, we aren’t liable for indirect losses from using it.
Changes
If these terms change, we’ll update the date above, and say so in the app if the change is significant.