Community Guidelines

Last updated: October 7, 2024

Welcome to Note Block World! We strive to be the best online community for everyone to create, share, and listen to note block music from around the world, no matter your level of experience!

In this page, you’ll find a few guidelines that we’ve put in place to help keep Note Block World a healthy, safe, and positive space for all of our members. We kindly ask that you read these Guidelines carefully and follow them closely when contributing to the community!

As Note Block World evolves, we’ll update these guidelines to make sure they cover all the different aspects of the community. Check back from time to time to stay up to date!

Scope

Any time we refer to “content” below, we’re talking about any form of public, personally identifiable contribution you make while browsing the website. This includes:

• uploaded songs and their internal content (including the file name and typable fields inside the song file itself, such as the description, instrument and layer names);
• any metadata you attach to uploaded songs, e.g. the song’s title, description and tags;
• public profile information, such as your profile picture, profile description and username;
• any other form of public contribution, such as comments, playlist names, and descriptions.

These Guidelines extend beyond the space of this website. If you contact someone you’ve found in Note Block World on another platform, your communication and interactions through that platform should also respect these rules.

Guidelines

Please pay close attention to the following Guidelines and do your best to abide by these principles when using the website:

Your behavior

Below are some general rules to keep in mind when using Note Block World:

Minimum age

You must be at least 13 years old to sign up for Note Block World. If you’re under this age, do not sign up for the website! Your use of the website must be supervised by an adult, parent or legal guardian if you’re underage.

Watch your content

Do not submit illegal, sexually suggestive, explicit, or otherwise NSFW (not safe for work) content. Avoid content that’s gory, violent, which glorifies violence, promotes drugs, gambling, or any form of illegal activity.

Discussions

Be mindful when engaging in discussions that aren’t related to the content of the songs, particularly when they’re about sensitive topics, such as tragic world events. Our focus in this community is on the richness and diversity of note block music from creators worldwide. Discussions about real world topics can evoke divisive opinions and detract from that atmosphere, so try to keep discussions light-hearted and friendly!

Treating other users

You may not promote or engage in harassment, bigotry, discrimination, or any form of offensive behavior through the content you contribute. Treat everyone with respect, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, origin, sexual orientation, or any other trait of their identity. We take the safety of our members seriously and want this to be a welcoming space for everyone involved.

Criticism

Avoid mocking, sarcasm, or irony when engaging with other members. It’s okay to not like a song, but any criticism must always be constructive. If you wish to provide feedback, kindly point out what details or aspects you think could be improved upon, but do not bash, disrespect or disparage the author. Toxic behavior won’t be tolerated!

Automation

Do not use automated methods to interact with the website, such as bots or scripts that simulate human behavior (e.g., artificially inflating view counts). Each account must be operated by a real human!

Advertisement & self-promotion

If you are an individual note block creator, feel free to include links to your social platforms where people could find more of your work. However, your content should not primarily promote or advertise a commercial product or service. Don’t use the platform to sell goods or advertise your business, even if it’s related to Minecraft (e.g., a multiplayer server). Self-promotion is okay, as long as it’s not the primary goal of your content!

Copyright & usage rights

Do not upload content that you don’t have permission to use, including images, songs, and text. Cover songs are generally allowed by fair use exceptions, but these are exceptions and not the rule. Other websites aimed at sharing music have dealt with requests from some authors to have their songs removed. If the original creator of a song requests that we remove it, we have no option but to comply — this means your song may be taken down!

Misleading or false information

Do not spread false or misleading content meant to confuse, harm, or prejudice others. Do not promote fraud or abuse. Do not impersonate others, or pretend to be someone you’re not.

Usage permissions

Respect the usage permissions of uploaded songs. Not all content of the website is free to use. Make sure to check the license under which the author of a song has distributed the content before using it in your own creations!

Personal information

Do not include sensitive or personally identifiable information, such as your address or phone number, in your submissions. Be careful when sharing public but sensitive information, like your real name or age. Once something is on the internet, it’s out there permanently!

Note Block World will never ask for your password or other sensitive information!

Your content

While these aren’t strict rules, we encourage you to watch the following suggestions to ensure a better experience for everyone on Note Block World:

License

Make sure to pay close attention to the license you’re choosing when you upload a song! There are two licenses available:

• Standard License: This license allows Note Block World to host and distribute your song on the website, and for other users to listen to it, but not to download it or use it in their own creations. Read our Terms of Service for more information.

• Creative Commons Share-Alike License: This license allows other users to download your song and use it in their own creations, as long as they give you credit and share their work under the same license. Check out the Creative Commons website for more information.

We believe choosing an open license is a great way to foster creativity and collaboration in the community. However, keep in mind that once you’ve chosen a Creative Commons license, you cannot retroactively revoke the permissions you granted by changing the license to a more restrictive one!

Make sure to review our licensing guide for more information on the licenses available.

Low-effort content

We want Note Block World to be a high-quality collection of note block songs! While we accept submissions from musicians of all experience levels, you should strive to make your creations as good as you can.

• Avoid importing MIDI files into Note Block Studio and uploading them without making any modification.
• Titles, author names, and metadata should accurately describe your song.
• Try not to post unfinished works — you can share work-in-progress tracks in our Discord community!

Content that doesn’t meet a minimum effort threshold may be removed.

Language

When submitting songs or comments, please use the English language! As much as we’d love to support other languages, our team is unable to moderate content that’s not written in English. We’d also like to make the website accessible to everyone, and staying limited to one language helps with that.

If your song title isn’t in a Latin script, include a translation or transliteration (e.g., romanized Japanese) along with the original title. If an official English title exists for your track, prefer using that instead!

Spam

Avoid clickbait titles or thumbnails (e.g., using buzzwords or flashy icons deliberately meant to attract attention). Let your song’s content speak for itself! For instance, try to frame an interesting part of your song’s arrangement in the thumbnail.

Titles should be descriptive, and free of unnecessary qualifiers like “10,000 NOTES!”, unless relevant to the work you’re submitting.

Avoid spam submissions, troll content, or adding “garbage” characters (e.g. zalgo script) to your metadata. Content should have meaning, even if it’s personal!

Art-oriented submissions

It’s fine to use note blocks to make pixel art for your thumbnails, or even upload songs primarily meant to showcase art done within the program. However, since this is a music platform, your songs should sound good, too! It wouldn’t be fun to stumble upon a loud, chaotic arrangement just because it looks cool — it must sound good as well!

Enforcement

If your content is found to infringe these Guidelines, our moderation team will take appropriate action. Depending on the severity of the violation, one or more of the following may be applied to your account:

• Warning: You may receive a warning on the website and via the email you used to sign up. You’ll be given the opportunity to fix the issue (or issues) with your content before we take further action.

• Content removal: Your songs, comments, or other contributions may be removed at our discretion, with or without prior notice.

• Timeout: You may be temporarily restricted from performing certain actions on the website, such as commenting, rating or uploading new songs.

• Ban: Your account may be permanently banned, preventing you from signing in. Your IP address may also be restricted from reaching the website. All your content, including songs, ratings and comments, will be deleted. You may not create an account using another email address to circumvent the ban.

Attempting to circumvent the restrictive measure(s) applied to your account is also considered a violation of these Guidelines, and may lead to stricter measures being applied.

We always aim to take the lightest action necessary to address the issue. Of course, we won’t ban your account straight away if you commit a minor infringement! Our team will work with you in good faith to get it fixed, unless the violation is severe.

Appeals

If you feel you’ve been treated unfairly, you may contact us at [email protected]. We’ll review your case as soon as possible. Please provide as much information as you can about the situation, including any relevant context or evidence!

Reporting violations

Everyone plays a role in making the website safe! If you see any content or activity that violates these Guidelines, our Terms of Service or our other policies, please report it to us by sending an email to [email protected], or by using the Report button next to the infringing content.

Please don’t report content in bad faith! Reports intended to deceive or harm innocent users will be subject to the same restrictive measures.

Updates

These Guidelines will continue to evolve over time. This means we may take action against behavior that violates the spirit of these Guidelines, even if it’s not explicitly covered in the current version.

While we’ll do our best to let you know when an updated version of these Guidelines are available, it’s up to you to comply with its message: keep Note Block World safe, and help us keep making it the best place to share, discover and listen to note block music.

Thank you for doing your part to make our community great. Have fun exploring Note Block World!

Change log

• October 7, 2024: Initial version.