General Terms and Conditions

Version 2.0 · September 2026 · Morales Violin Education GmbH

1) Scope, and how your contract and these Terms fit together

1.1 These General Terms and Conditions (“Terms”) of Morales Violin Education GmbH (brands: The Violinacademy and Die Geigenakademie), Giselbertstraße 14, 51429 Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, registered with the Local Court of Cologne (Amtsgericht Köln) under HRB 127050, represented by its Managing Director Antoine Morales (“we”, “us”), apply to all contracts that a customer (“you”) concludes with us about any of our programmes, in any language, whether ordered in our online store or concluded as an individual contract after a consultation.

1.2 Your contract and these Terms. Your individual contract, such as your signed membership contract, sets your deal: your programme and its services, the price and the payment dates, the term and the notice periods, and any money-back guarantee. These Terms set the general rules that apply to all our students. Where your contract says something different from these Terms, your contract applies.

1.3 For offers you buy in our online store without an individual contract, the product description shown before you order sets the services, the price and, for memberships, the term and the notice periods.

1.4 A consumer is any natural person who enters into a legal transaction for purposes that are predominantly outside their trade, business or profession. Terms and conditions of your own do not apply.

1.5 These Terms apply in the same way to all our programmes. Where we provide them in more than one language, the version in the language of your contract applies to it. Individual lessons, trial lessons or concert engagements with Antoine Morales personally are not covered by these Terms unless expressly agreed.

2) What we offer and how it works

2.1 We teach the violin online: through our learning platform (app.theviolinacademy.com) with video lessons, scores and exercises, and through personal services of our teachers such as play analyses, calls and live sessions. What your programme includes is set out in your contract or the product description.

2.2 You need a device with internet access and a current web browser; for live sessions and calls also a camera, a microphone and the video-call application we use; and, to send us videos of your playing, a device that records video.

2.3 Some services may be postponed or cancelled a few times per year because of holidays or illness. Where reasonably possible, we offer an alternative.

2.4 There is no entitlement to reschedule or make up sessions that you miss or cancel. We will make reasonable efforts to offer you an alternative time where possible.

2.5 We aim to keep you with the same teacher for the whole duration of your contract, but we cannot guarantee this, as our team may change over time. If a change becomes necessary, you will be taught by another of our qualified teachers.

2.6 Access to higher levels of the programme is granted progressively, in consultation with your teacher, based on your current level, your progress and our release schedule.

2.7 When your membership ends, your access to the platform, its materials and all included services ends. Unused mentoring calls, analyses or other membership benefits expire at that time; they are not transferable, refundable or redeemable later.

3) How a contract is concluded

3.1 The product descriptions in our online store are not binding offers; they invite you to order.

3.2 In our online store you place a binding order by completing the checkout and clicking the button that concludes the order. Until then you can check and correct all your entries with the usual keyboard and mouse functions. We accept your order within five days, by e-mailing an order confirmation, by giving you access or by requesting payment, whichever comes first. If you pay with PayPal, we accept your order when you click the order button, and PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A., Luxembourg, processes the payment under its own terms.

3.3 After a consultation we send you an individual contract. It is concluded when both you and we have signed it, usually electronically. You then pay in our online store.

3.4 We store the text of the contract and you receive a copy by e-mail: the order confirmation, which comes with these Terms, or the signed contract. The current version of these Terms can be read at any time at theviolinacademy.com/en/terms and saved or printed.

3.5 The contract language is the language of your programme.

4) Prices and payment

4.1 Our prices are total prices in the currency shown. They include VAT where it is due; for consumers in the European Union this is the VAT of the country where you live. The price and the payment dates are set in your contract or the product description.

4.2 You can pay by card through Stripe, by PayPal or, where offered, by bank transfer. We never see your full card details. Fees that your own bank or payment provider charges you, for example for currency conversion, are yours.

4.3 Please keep the agreed payment method valid and sufficiently funded for as long as your contract runs, and tell us without undue delay if it changes.

5) Late payment, failed payments and chargebacks

5.1 If a payment has not reached us by its due date, we notify you, usually by e-mail. If the amount is still unpaid seven days after our notice, you are in default and we may charge statutory default interest, for consumers five percentage points above the base rate.

5.2 If payment has still not been received 14 days after our notice and there is no reasonable justification, such as a documented bank error, we may temporarily suspend your access to the platform and pause our services until all overdue amounts are paid.

5.3 Fees that banks or payment providers charge us for a failed payment or a chargeback are reimbursed by you to the extent permitted by law; you may show that lower costs arose. If you initiate a chargeback, the reversed amount counts as unpaid until the dispute is resolved; we will tell you and may suspend access during the dispute.

5.4 If payment remains outstanding, we may pass the claim to a debt-collection agency or a lawyer. You bear the reasonable costs of collection to the extent permitted by law. Your statutory rights as a consumer remain unaffected.

6) Right of withdrawal

6.1 As a consumer you have a statutory right of withdrawal. How it works, and the model withdrawal form, are set out in our Cancellation Policy.

6.2 You can also withdraw online with the link Withdraw from contract here at the bottom of every page. We confirm receipt immediately by e-mail, with the content of your declaration and the date and time we received it.

7) Term and cancellation

7.1 How long your membership runs and how it can be cancelled is set in your contract or the product description.

7.2 Text form is always enough to cancel: an e-mail to info@theviolinacademy.com, a letter, or the link Cancel contracts here at the bottom of every page, which leads straight to the cancellation form. When you use the form, we immediately confirm by e-mail what you declared, when we received it and when you asked the contract to end.

8) Updates and changes of our digital services

8.1 We keep the digital content and services of your programme in line with the contract for its whole term, including the updates needed for this.

8.2 We may change them beyond that for a valid reason, such as the development of our curriculum and teaching method, a change of platform or provider, technical or security requirements, or a change in the law, provided the change costs you nothing extra and we inform you clearly and in good time beforehand.

8.3 Live sessions and events may be moved to another date or time.

9) Recordings and AI analysis

9.1 Videos and other content you submit, such as videos of your playing, are used to teach you and give you feedback, and are shown only within our platform, never published publicly.

9.2 All mentoring calls, one-to-one lessons and live sessions are recorded as a standard part of the programme. We use the recordings to deliver and document the lessons, to give you feedback and replays, and for internal quality assurance and staff training. Recordings are used internally only and are never published publicly.

9.3 As part of the service, recordings and their automatic transcripts are analysed with AI tools to create session summaries and personalised practice recommendations for you. The AI providers we use act only as our processors and do not use your data to train their own models.

9.4 We may use recordings, transcripts, analyses and other learning data in de-identified or anonymised form to improve our services and to develop our own AI-supported teaching tools. You may object to this at any time with effect for the future. Details, including all your rights, are in our Privacy Policy.

10) Your access and your conduct

10.1 Your access is personal. Do not share your login or let anyone else use your account, and tell us straight away if you suspect misuse.

10.2 Treat our teachers and your fellow students with respect. Do not record, screenshot or publish sessions or other participants. What you upload must be your own and must not infringe anyone’s rights. In case of a serious or repeated breach we may exclude you from sessions or the community, or cancel the contract for good cause.

11) Intellectual property and licence

11.1 Definitions. “Materials” means all content, works and services provided by us or on our behalf in connection with a programme, in any format now known or later developed, including lessons (live or recorded), videos and replays, checklists, scores (including interactive scores), exercises, feedback, analyses, practice plans, and any session Recordings and related annotations or metadata. “Recordings” means any fixation we create of sessions, meetings, lessons, concerts or your performance, including edits and overlays.

11.2 Ownership. All right, title and interest in and to the Materials and Recordings are and remain with us or our licensors. No ownership is transferred.

11.3 Licence to you. Subject to payment and compliance with these Terms, you receive a personal, limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence to access and use the Materials solely for your private study. Streaming Materials may be accessed only through our platform; local copies may not be made except where we expressly enable a download (for example certain PDFs). Copyright notices and watermarks must be retained.

11.4 Your performance and our Recordings. You retain the rights in your underlying musical performance; we exclusively own the Recordings and their production and editing. Copies of Recordings we supply to you may be used only for your private study. We do not publish identifiable Recordings of you without your separate consent.

11.5 Prohibited uses (without our prior written consent). You must not:

11.6 Access and end of the licence. When your access ends, streaming rights end immediately. Items we expressly allowed you to download may be kept for your private study only and remain subject to these restrictions.

11.7 Third-party materials. Where Materials include third-party content, that content remains the property of its owners and is licensed only to the extent those owners permit.

11.8 Enforcement. Unauthorised use may cause irreparable harm. We may seek injunctive relief and damages and take reasonable measures, including suspending access, to protect our rights, to the extent permitted by law.

12) Defects and liability

12.1 Your statutory rights apply if our services or our digital content are defective. Please tell us at info@theviolinacademy.com so that we can fix it quickly. We do not guarantee a particular learning result.

12.2 We are liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the German Product Liability Act, and where we have given a guarantee. For slight negligence we are liable only for the breach of an essential contractual duty (a duty whose fulfilment makes the proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on which you may regularly rely), and then only for the foreseeable damage typical of this kind of contract. Otherwise our liability is excluded. This also applies to our staff and agents, and it does not limit your statutory rights for defects of digital products.

12.3 We are not liable for technical issues or interruptions beyond our reasonable control. If a technical problem on our side prevents a session, we make reasonable efforts to arrange a replacement session or another solution.

13) SMS terms (text messages)

13.1 If you expressly opt in to receive SMS from us, we may send you text messages such as appointment reminders, onboarding information and one-to-one follow-up or support messages related to your enquiry, registration or enrolment. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Consent to receive SMS is not a condition of purchase.

13.2 Reply STOP to opt out at any time, or HELP for assistance; you can also e-mail info@theviolinacademy.com. We do not sell your phone number and we do not share it with third parties for their marketing. We use service providers to deliver SMS messages. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.

14) Changes to these Terms

14.1 We may update these Terms. A new version applies to every contract concluded after it is published.

14.2 For a contract that is already running, we may change these Terms only where this is needed because of a change in the law or in court decisions, or to reflect a change of our digital services allowed under section 8. We never change your price, your term, your money-back guarantee or the core of the services in your contract this way.

14.3 We send you such changes by e-mail at least six weeks before they take effect. If you do not object by e-mail before that date, the changes apply to your contract; we point this out in that e-mail. If you object, your contract continues under the previous version.

15) Applicable law, courts and final provisions

15.1 German law applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. As a consumer you keep the protection of the mandatory law of the country where you live.

15.2 If you are a merchant (Kaufmann), a legal entity under public law or a special fund under public law, the courts of Cologne (Köln), Germany, have exclusive jurisdiction.

15.3 We are neither obliged nor willing to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board. If something goes wrong, please write to info@theviolinacademy.com first; we solve almost everything directly.

15.4 If a provision of these Terms is invalid, the rest stays valid and the statutory rules apply instead. “Text form” means a readable declaration on a durable medium; an e-mail is enough.