Artists Against

About The Record

What exactly is The Record?: The Record is a collection of first-person experiences submitted by people from across the music industry and reviewed before publication. One voice can look like an exception. Enough voices can reveal a pattern.
Does publication mean Artists Against has proven the story is true?: No. Publication means the submission met the Artists Against publishing guidelines and completed the required human review. Artists Against is not a court, a law-enforcement body or an investigative authority, and publication is not a finding of wrongdoing.
Do Artists Against numbers represent the entire music industry?: No. They represent participation in Artists Against and the stories published on The Record. They should not be read as industry-wide prevalence rates.
Why are some small groups hidden in the statistics?: Small aggregate groups may be suppressed to reduce the risk that a statistic could be used to work out who a contributor is. Where a group is too small to report, the site says so rather than showing a number.
What does “country” mean on Artists Against?: The country where the experience happened. It does not mean nationality, citizenship, ethnicity or where somebody lives.

Submitting a story

Can I name the person or company that did this?: You can write it, but it will almost certainly not be published as written. Submissions that identify a specific person or company are flagged for enhanced review and are typically published with the identifying detail removed. This protects you first: a named accusation exposes the person who made it far more than the person named.
What happens after I submit?: You get two things immediately: a reference in the form AA-000027, and a private recovery code shown once. Keep both. Your story enters the review queue and is not public. A person reads it against the guidelines, and it is then published, published with details removed, held for further review, or not published.
I work at a label. Can I submit?: Yes. Executives, A&R, marketing, distribution and staff can file too. This is not artists against people who work in offices — it is everybody against how the business treats them.
Does every story get published?: No. A submission may be published, published after edits or redactions, held for additional review, or not published. Human review is required before anything enters The Record.
Can I submit more than one story?: Yes. People genuinely have more than one experience worth sharing. Artists Against uses rate limits and abuse controls to reduce spam and automated submissions. A repeated signal from one network does not mean a story is invalid — several people can share one connection, and one person can have several experiences.

Privacy & identity

Is it really anonymous?: You are not required to display your legal name — there is no field for it anywhere in the submission flow, and no account or email is needed to contribute. You choose how a published story credits you: anonymous, anonymous with your role, or a pseudonym you invent. What we cannot promise is that any online platform makes a person technically untraceable; the privacy policy sets out how technical data is handled. The safest approach is to leave out details you would not want made public.
What if a person or company threatens Artists Against?: We expect that not everyone will be happy to see certain experiences on The Record. We review complaints and legal requests carefully. We do not provide contributor information simply because somebody demands it. At the same time, we will not pretend we can ignore valid legal obligations or guarantee that information could never be required by law. Our approach is simple: collect less, protect what we do collect, and disclose no more than necessary.
Are you lawyers?: No. Artists Against is not a law firm, a court, a law-enforcement body or an emergency service. We provide a place for experiences to become part of The Record.

Moderation & publication

How long does review take?: We do not promise a turnaround time. Every story is read by a person, and ones involving named people or companies go through additional review, which takes longer.
Do you verify stories?: We cannot verify individual experiences without asking for exactly the identifying information we promised not to collect. What we do instead is review every submission for safety and guideline compliance, publish nothing automatically, and be honest that this is a record of testimony, not a court record.
What does human review mean?: A person reads the submission before it is published. The reviewer considers whether it is first-person, what identifying details it carries, how it should appear publicly, which category it belongs to, whether anything needs redacting, and whether it meets the publishing guidelines. Human review does not mean Artists Against independently proved every event described.

Reactions & counts

What does “Stand with this” mean?: Another visitor chose to express support for the person sharing that experience. It is not verification that the events occurred.
What does “This happened to me too” mean?: Another visitor indicated that they personally experienced something similar. It does not mean their circumstances were identical, and it is not independent verification of the original story.
Can someone react more than once?: Artists Against uses privacy-conscious anti-abuse controls to reduce duplicate reactions, so that one browser counts once per story however long it has been. The goal is to keep public counts meaningful without asking visitors to create accounts or holding onto their identity.

Corrections, withdrawals & reports

Can I delete my story later?: Yes. Use the request page with your reference and your recovery code to ask for it to be taken down. A person reviews the request; once a story comes off The Record the count goes down with it.
Can I check what happened to my submission?: Yes. Use your AA reference and your private recovery code to open the contributor status page. No account is required.
What if I lose my recovery code?: Your recovery code is intentionally not stored in readable form, so we cannot look it up or send it to you again. Keep it somewhere safe. Without it, we may not be able to verify that you are the original contributor.
Can I correct my story?: Yes. Use your AA reference and recovery code to submit a correction request. A person reviews the request before any public content changes.
What if someone challenges or reports a story?: Published stories can be reported, and reports are reviewed by a person. A report does not prove a story is wrong and does not automatically remove it.

The platform

Why is there no comment section?: Because a comment section on anonymous testimony becomes a place to argue with survivors. There are two reactions instead: I stand with this, and this happened to me too. Both are counted, neither is named.
How is this funded?: Artists Against is an independent project run by its founding team. It carries no advertising and no industry sponsorship, and contributor data is not sold. As the project develops, information about how it is funded will be published on the about page.

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