Terms of service

Last updated 16 September 2026 · Covers the Staircase Radio platform, the studio, the Desk app and the listener app

Staircase Radio is a platform that independent radio stations run their station on: a website, a studio for the people who broadcast, a desk app, and a listener app. These terms are the deal between you and Staircase Radio for using any of them. Each station is run by its own operator, who is responsible for what it broadcasts and the community it hosts.

Who these terms are for

• Station operators - the people who run a station on the platform and hold its account.
• DJs and presenters - people a station has invited to broadcast, with their own studio login.
• Listeners - anyone who listens, chats, records a shout out or enters a competition on a station's website or in the app.

The station's responsibilities

A station operator is responsible for everything their station broadcasts and publishes: the music and speech on air, the recordings kept for listen again, what goes out to other platforms (Mixcloud, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and the like), the website, and the conduct of its community. That includes holding whatever music licences apply where the station broadcasts, and following the rules of any platform the station connects. Staircase Radio provides the tools; it does not broadcast, publish or moderate on a station's behalf.

Your account

Keep your login to yourself. A station operator is responsible for the accounts they create and can remove any of them. Staircase Radio may suspend an account or a station that breaks these terms, the law, or another platform's rules through the platform, and will say why.

What you may not do

• Broadcast or publish anything you do not have the right to, or anything unlawful, hateful or harassing.
• Use the platform to spam, to attack other services, or to get round another platform's rules.
• Try to break into, overload or reverse-engineer the platform or another station.

Connected services

A station may connect outside services - a Facebook Page, a YouTube channel, a Mixcloud account, a Google account - so a show can go out there or figures can show in the studio. Each connection is the station's choice, uses only the access described in our privacy policy, and can be disconnected in the studio at any time. What happens on the connected service is governed by that service's own terms; Staircase Radio removes the live posts it made unless the station chooses to keep them, and does not keep copies of the video.

Content and rights

What a station and its DJs make stays theirs. Staircase Radio needs only the rights required to run the service: to store recordings and media on the station's server, to send the stream to listeners and to the platforms the station connects, and to show the station's pages. Listeners keep the rights to the shout outs and messages they send, and grant the station permission to play and show them on air, on its website and in the app.

Paying for a station

A station is a subscription, billed monthly to the operator's card through Stripe, and can be cancelled or paused from the studio at any time; a paused station keeps its data on a smaller monthly fee. Prices are shown on staircaseradio.co before anything is charged.

The service

Staircase Radio works hard to keep stations on air, but a live service can have outages, and the platforms a station connects to can change or refuse a stream. The platform is provided as it is, and Staircase Radio's liability to you is limited to what you have paid for the service in the three months before the problem, to the extent the law allows. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

Changes and contact

These terms may change as the platform grows; the date at the top says when. Continuing to use the platform after a change means accepting it. Questions, notices or complaints: hello@staircaseradio.co. Staircase Radio is operated from the United Kingdom and these terms are governed by the law of England and Wales.