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First Takes: official rules

Effective 6 October 2026.

These are the full rules for First Takes, written to be read. Taking part is free and needs no purchase. Every take counts the same, whatever it says about Recordist. First Takes is separate from the early-access draw, and nothing here changes the draw or its rules.

  1. Organiser. Havihi Digital Inc., 2 McMillan Place, Welland, Ontario L3B 0L5, Canada ("we"). Questions: [email protected].
  2. What First Takes is. People who have the Recordist beta record a short take about how they use Recordist and send it to us. Each person who sends a take and confirms it holds a spot, up to 500 spots. Everyone who holds a spot when First Takes closes gets the launch gift in rule 10. Nobody judges or scores the takes and nothing is drawn at random, so First Takes is not a contest or a lottery.
  3. When it's open. First Takes opens on the day the recorder appears on recordist.app/first-takes, and we'll write the date here that day. It closes on the day we announce the official launch of Recordist on recordist.app, meaning the release of version 1.0, and no later than 31 March 2027. It's full whenever 500 spots are held, and while it's full no new take can be confirmed. If a spot opens before First Takes closes, because a take was deleted or removed, the next person to confirm a take holds it.
  4. Who can take part. You can take part if you have reached the age of majority where you live, and in any case are 18 or older; you asked for the Recordist beta and we sent you the download; and you have installed and used it. Use the address we sent the download to. Employees and contractors of the organiser, and the people in their households, can't take part. First Takes doesn't apply where the law doesn't allow it, or to people in a country or region under comprehensive sanctions (see section 16 of the Terms). If we learn that the person holding a spot can't take part under this rule, we cancel the spot and tell them why. That depends only on who they are, never on what their take says.
  5. How to take part. On recordist.app/first-takes, record a take in your browser or upload a recording you made yourself, enter the address, tick the box that confirms rule 4, rule 6 and these rules, and press Send. A first name is optional unless you let us publish your take. We email that address a confirmation link. Open it within 48 hours and press Confirm. Your spot is held from the moment your confirmation reaches our server. Nothing else is asked of you: no purchase, no sharing, no following, no tagging and no review anywhere else.
  6. What a take has to be. A take is up to 60 seconds long. The recorder stops at 60, and for an uploaded file we watch or listen to the first 60 seconds only. It is your own voice, and your own face if you use the camera; a synthetic or cloned voice or face doesn't count. Nobody else is in it. It's about how you really use Recordist. Any language is fine. Please don't record or play a meeting or a call, don't name other people or share anyone's private details, and don't share anything confidential about your work.
  7. Every take counts the same. A take holds a spot whatever it says about Recordist, whether that's good, bad or mixed. Nobody rates or sorts takes by what they say, and we never remove a take for being negative. We remove a take only for one of these reasons: (a) it isn't a real take, because it's silent, blank or not about Recordist; (b) it has someone else's voice or face in it, other people are in it, or the voice or face is synthetic; (c) it's illegal or abusive; (d) it duplicates another take, such as the same person or the same recording sent twice. That is the whole list of reasons about a take; rule 4 covers who can take part. We decide these by watching or listening, never with face or voice recognition. If we remove your take, we email you once to say which reason applied, and the spot goes back to the pool while First Takes is open. You may then send a new take if First Takes is still open and not full. If you think we got it wrong, reply to that email and a person looks again. We can remove a take for these reasons until the gifts are sent.
  8. Spots and numbers. There are 500 spots. Each confirmed take gets a number, First Take #1, #2 and so on, in the order confirmations reach our server. A number is never given out twice. When a take is deleted or removed before First Takes closes, its spot opens for the next person, but its number isn't reused, so numbers can go above 500 while no more than 500 spots are held at once. A number can also be skipped for a technical reason, and a skipped number belongs to nobody. Your number is a count, and every spot gets the same gift.
  9. One spot per person. Each person can hold one spot, however many addresses they have. If you send more than one take from the same address before confirming, the one you confirm holds the spot, and we delete the others. To replace a confirmed take, delete it first. You then give up your spot and number, and you get a new number only if a spot is open when you confirm again. If one person holds two spots, we keep the first and remove the second as a duplicate.
  10. The launch gift. We're making something for everyone who holds a spot when First Takes closes. We'll show what it is at the official launch, or on 31 March 2027 if there has been no launch by then. We don't promise a value. It's free: you pay nothing, and we pay for delivery and any import charges we can pay in advance. Within 30 days after First Takes closes, we email you once to ask where to send it, and we send it within 60 days after you answer. If we can't send it to your country, or your country would charge you on arrival, we give you twelve months of Recordist Pro instead, or add twelve months to the end of your term if you already pay for Pro. If you haven't answered within 60 days, we send you the twelve months of Pro instead. The gift can't be transferred or exchanged for cash. Any tax on it is yours where local law says so.
  11. If we cancel. If we have to cancel First Takes, or we can't make or send the gift, we email everyone who holds a spot and give each of them twelve months of Recordist Pro. We will never cancel or change First Takes because of what anyone said in a take.
  12. Publishing is a separate choice. We publish nothing from your take, including written quotes, without your permission. A separate box on the form lets Recordist publish your take with your first name on recordist.app, X and YouTube. You don't have to tick it, and ticking it or not changes nothing about your spot or your gift. If you tick it, you give us free, non-exclusive permission, for as long as your permission stands, to copy and publish the take and your first name in those places. That includes trimming silence at the start and end, cropping, resizing or re-encoding it, adding captions and the line below, and quoting it word for word next to the take. You keep ownership of your take. We never edit a take to change what you said, and since none of those changes alters what you said, you agree not to object to them on the ground of your moral rights. Anything we publish carries this line, in the video and in the post: "First Takes: a beta user who gets the same launch gift as every other First Take, whatever they said." On recordist.app it also carries: "Every First Take comes from an address we sent the Recordist beta download to." Permission doesn't oblige us to publish. Before we publish any take, we check it against one list, the same way whatever it says about Recordist: it mustn't say anything inaccurate about Recordist or another product, or state a result we couldn't show is typical; it mustn't name or show other people or anyone's private details; it mustn't share anything confidential about someone's work or describe recording people without the notice or consent the law requires; and we must be able to hear or see it clearly enough to caption it. If we ever show several takes together, we choose them without regard to what they say about Recordist, apart from that list, and the page says how we chose them. You can withdraw permission at any time with the link in your email or by writing to [email protected]. We then stop using your take in anything new straight away, and take it down from recordist.app and our own X and YouTube accounts within 7 days. We can't recall copies other people made while it was up. A take is not "feedback" under section 13 of the Terms, and we use it only as these rules say.
  13. Your information. We store your take, your email, your first name if you give it, the times you sent and confirmed it, the boxes you ticked and the wording you agreed to, and the file's size, type and length, privately with our hosting provider, Cloudflare. We watch or listen to takes to run First Takes, to check the reasons in rule 7, and to learn what to improve in Recordist. We never run face or voice recognition on a take, never use one to train an AI model, and never send one to another company for transcription or analysis; we make captions for a published take ourselves. A file you upload can carry details your device added, such as where it was recorded. We don't read them, and anything we publish is re-encoded without them. To limit repeated tries we keep a one-way hash of your connection's IP address for an hour, and of your address for a day. Only our team can play your take, through our own private admin page. A take that isn't confirmed is deleted automatically within four days. Confirmed takes are deleted 90 days after the launch gifts are sent, and in any case within 12 months after First Takes closes. The exception is a take you allowed us to publish that we have published: we keep it while it's published, and after it comes down we delete it on the same schedule, or within 30 days after it comes down if that is later. If your take was published, we keep a short record of your permission for three years after it comes down, so we can show we had it: when you gave and withdrew it, the wording you agreed to, and where and when it was published, linked to a one-way hash of your address. The Privacy Policy has the rest.
  14. Deleting your take. The page you see after sending, the confirmation email and the email with your number each have a private link that deletes your take. While First Takes is open, deleting removes the recording and its record straight away, and you give up your spot. After First Takes closes, deleting removes the recording straight away and keeps only your number and address, so you still get the gift. If you'd rather we delete those too, write to [email protected] from the address you used; that gives up the gift. Once the gift has been sent, deleting doesn't affect it.
  15. The emails. We email you only about your take. The emails are: the confirmation link; your number once you confirm; a note if a new take is sent from an address that already holds a spot; a note if we remove your take or cancel your spot, saying why; one email after First Takes closes to arrange the gift; and a note if we cancel. None of them carries an offer or any other news. We send no marketing email, to anyone.
  16. General. One person with two addresses still holds one spot. Our decisions on running First Takes are final, apart from your right under rule 7 to ask a person to look again. If we need to change these rules, we put the date and the change at the top of this page, and no change takes anything away from someone who already holds a spot. Taking part is free and creates no obligation to buy or use anything. First Takes is not sponsored, endorsed or administered by X, YouTube or any other platform. For anything else, write to [email protected].
  17. Law. These rules are governed by the laws of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply there, without taking away any protection you have under the consumer law of the place you live.

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