This English version is provided for convenience. If the German and the English versions differ, the German version prevails.

Terms of Use for Shows & Stories

Version 7 of 7 November 2026

1. Provider, scope, contact

1.1 Shows & Stories is a service of Estellantica GmbH, Koberstr. 28, 88048 Friedrichshafen, Germany, represented by its managing director Nikolai Bader, registered in the commercial register of the Local Court (Amtsgericht) of Ulm under HRB 747642, VAT ID DE367710801 ("we").

1.2 These Terms of Use apply to every Shows & Stories account: to trial accounts and to accounts with a monthly subscription or an annual pass. Our General Terms and Conditions (https://api.showsandstories.com/agb) additionally apply to purchases; if the two conflict, the General Terms and Conditions prevail.

1.3 You can reach us by email at konto@showsandstories.com. This email address is also our single point of contact for authorities and for users under Articles 11 and 12 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (Digital Services Act). You can write to us in German or English.

2. Account and service

2.1 Shows & Stories is an app for listening to and reading podcasts and feeds. We provide it to you with all its features, including the synchronisation of your data between your devices (section 5).

2.2 You use Shows & Stories with an account that you create with your email address and a password.

2.3 You have valid access during the trial and during a paid period under the General Terms and Conditions. Without valid access, the app falls back to the guest tier (section 3.2); export, account deletion and logging out always remain possible.

2.4 Shows & Stories runs as a web app in the current version of common browsers, as an installable web app and as a desktop app for Windows. You need an internet connection to log in, to synchronise and to retrieve feeds and episodes.

3. Free use: trial and guest use

3.1 Trial. You can use every account free of charge and with all features for 7 days. The 7 days start when the account is created; for an account created before 1 November 2026, they start on 1 November 2026. You do not provide any payment details for this. The trial ends by itself; it does not turn into a subscription or annual pass and costs nothing. The app shows you when it ends. After the trial, the account falls back to the guest tier without an active subscription or annual pass (section 3.2): synchronisation pauses, the existing library remains usable on this device, and up to 10 subscriptions continue to be updated. We do not delete your data because of this; we may delete an account you do not use for a long time under section 14.3.

3.2 Guest use. You can also use the web app permanently without an account as a guest tier (guest use). Your browser stores data locally (IndexedDB and web storage) on this device; no data is stored on our servers and no synchronisation between devices takes place. You can subscribe to up to 10 feeds, which are updated via our server. Higher features (such as cross-device synchronisation, downloads, playlists, collections and voice commands) require an account with trial or subscription. We do not store guest IP addresses for user profiles. Technical limits under section 7.4 (in particular maximum numbers of requests and data volumes) apply per internet address. These terms apply mutatis mutandis to guest use; a user agreement is only formed upon creating an account.

4. Limits of the service

4.1 Technical limits apply to synchronisation:
a) maximum numbers per account and type of data, for example no more than 10,000 subscribed feeds;
b) the playback history is synchronised as a rolling window: once the maximum is reached, the oldest entries drop out;
c) size limits per record: a record that exceeds a limit is not synchronised;
d) if our server runs low on storage, synchronisation temporarily accepts no new data; whatever is stored on your devices stays there and is transferred at the next successful synchronisation.

4.2 The exact values are listed on the "Limits of the service" page (https://api.showsandstories.com/grenzen). For a paid contract they are agreed under section 2.4 of the General Terms and Conditions.

5. Your data in synchronisation

5.1 Synchronisation stores on our server the following data you create in the app and transfers it between your devices: your subscriptions (feed addresses with your details such as folders, tags, notes, rating, notifications and language correction), folders, tags, smart folders, collections, saved searches, feed rules, read states, your details on individual episodes (note, rating, hiding, language), notes (including those with a time stamp), playback positions, the playback history, playlists with their entries, saved episodes, the watchlist and selected settings (such as playback speed, skip intervals and rating scale). Other data and settings stay only on the respective device.

5.2 Your data is private. Other users do not see it, and we do not publish it. We only take note of your content to the extent necessary for operating the service, for help you have asked for, for handling a notice (section 8) or because of a legal obligation.

5.3 You grant us the simple (non-exclusive) right to store, reproduce and transfer your content to your devices to the extent necessary for synchronisation, backups and export. The right is limited to the term of the user agreement and, for backups, to their retention period thereafter (privacy policy). We acquire no other rights in your content.

5.4 Podcasts, episodes and feeds come from third parties. Synchronisation only stores descriptive details such as addresses (including those of images), titles, descriptions, publisher and genre together with your own details, not the episodes or images themselves. We do not adopt third-party content as our own.

6. Your obligations

6.1 You use Shows & Stories only within the law. In particular, you do not store any illegal content in synchronisation.

6.2 Keep your password secret. If you notice that someone else is using your account, change your password and let us know.

6.3 Do not access other people's accounts, do not disrupt the service, for example through attacks or automated mass requests outside the app, and do not circumvent the limits of the service.

7. Content, restrictions and moderation

7.1 We do not review your content on our own initiative. We only restrict content or accounts if content is illegal or if a law, a court or an authority requires it. We have no other content rules. This does not affect the technical limits (section 4) and measures against attacks on the service (section 6.3).

7.2 We usually learn of possibly illegal content through a notice (section 8) or through an order from an authority or a court.

7.3 If content is illegal, we choose the mildest measure that is effective:
a) we block or remove the individual item of content;
b) in the case of serious or repeated infringements, we temporarily restrict synchronisation for the account or temporarily suspend the account;
c) as a last resort, we terminate for good cause (section 14.3).
In doing so, we take into account the legitimate interests of everyone involved and fundamental rights, in particular freedom of expression and information. Export, account deletion and logging out remain possible during a restriction, except for blocked content where a law or an order prevents its release.

7.4 All decisions on notices and restrictions are taken by a human. We do not use automated tools to assess content. Only technical limits that depend on the number and size of data and requests, never on their content, apply automatically: the limits of the service (section 4), maximum numbers of requests per account or internet address and of data volumes our server retrieves for you, and the rule that our server does not retrieve addresses from private or internal networks.

7.5 If we become aware of information giving rise to a suspicion that a criminal offence involving a threat to the life or safety of one or more persons has taken place, is taking place or is likely to take place, we promptly inform the competent law enforcement or judicial authorities.

8. Reporting illegal content

8.1 Anyone can report content they consider illegal: without logging in via https://api.showsandstories.com/melden or by email to konto@showsandstories.com.

8.2 So that we can review the notice, it should contain:
a) an explanation of why the content is illegal;
b) the most precise indication possible of where the content is located, for example the email address of the account and the feed address, playlist or note concerned;
c) your name and email address; this does not apply if the notice concerns content relating to an offence under Articles 3 to 7 of Directive 2011/93/EU (sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children, child pornography);
d) your statement confirming your good-faith belief that the information and allegations in the notice are accurate and complete.

8.3 If you give us an email address, we confirm receipt of the notice without undue delay. We review every notice in a timely, diligent, non-arbitrary and objective manner. We inform you of our decision without undue delay, together with the remedies available to you against it. We do not use automated means for this (section 7.4).

9. Statement of reasons and objections

9.1 If we restrict content or your account, we inform you by email at the latest when the restriction begins, with a clear and specific statement of reasons. It states:
a) the measure, its scope and its duration;
b) the facts and circumstances we rely on, including whether a notice or our own investigation was the basis; we only name the person who submitted the notice where strictly necessary;
c) that we did not use automated means;
d) the legal provision the content infringes and why we consider it illegal, or the legal obligation or order requiring us to restrict it;
e) the ways in which you can challenge it (section 9.2).
This does not apply where a law or an order of an authority prohibits the notification.

9.2 You can object to any decision within six months of our notice by email to konto@showsandstories.com, free of charge. A human will then review the decision again and reply to you. If it was wrong, we lift the restriction without undue delay. You may also go to court. We do not take part in proceedings before a consumer arbitration board (section 15.1).

10. Export and account deletion

10.1 You can export your data in the app at any time: free of charge, without hindrance and in a commonly used, machine-readable format (JSON). This also applies without valid access.

10.2 You can delete your account in the app at any time; this ends this user agreement. What deletion means for a paid contract is set out in section 14 of the General Terms and Conditions. Our privacy policy states which data we must keep, restricted, for legal reasons after deletion.

11. Changes to the app

We only change Shows & Stories for any account for the reasons in section 11.2 of the General Terms and Conditions and inform you as described in section 11.3 of the General Terms and Conditions. For accounts with a paid contract, section 11 of the General Terms and Conditions applies in full, including the right to end the contract because of an impairing change.

12. Changes to these Terms of Use

12.1 A new version of these Terms of Use only applies to your account if you expressly agree to it, using the button in the app or on the page linked in our notice. Silence or continued use do not count as consent. If you do not agree, the previous version continues to apply to you; we may then terminate the user agreement by ordinary notice under section 14.3.

12.2 We inform all users of substantial changes.

12.3 For an account whose registration did not yet include any Terms of Use, these Terms of Use only apply once you agree to them.

13. Liability

13.1 We are liable without limitation (a) for damage resulting from injury to life, body or health caused by a negligent breach of duty by us or by an intentional or negligent breach of duty by our legal representatives or vicarious agents; (b) for other damage caused by an intentional or grossly negligent breach of duty by us or by our legal representatives or vicarious agents; (c) under the German Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz); (d) for fraudulently concealed defects and to the extent that we have given a guarantee.

13.2 In all other respects we are liable for damage caused by slight negligence only if we breach an essential obligation. Essential obligations are those whose fulfilment makes the proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose observance you may regularly rely. In that case our liability is limited to the damage that is typical for the contract and foreseeable when the contract was concluded. Any further liability is excluded.

13.3 This section applies to claims for damages, including the personal liability of our employees, legal representatives and vicarious agents. Your rights in respect of defects under a paid contract (section 10 of the General Terms and Conditions) remain unaffected.

14. Term and termination

14.1 The user agreement begins when you create your account and runs for an indefinite period.

14.2 You can end it at any time by deleting your account (section 10.2) or by telling us in text form; we will then delete your account. The term and cancellation of a monthly subscription or annual pass are governed by the General Terms and Conditions.

14.3 We may terminate the user agreement of an account that has no running paid contract by ordinary notice of one month in text form; we then delete the account at the end of the notice period, and export remains available until then. We may also delete an account without a running paid contract that you have neither signed in to nor used the app with for six months; we announce this by email at least 30 days in advance, and until then you can sign in or export your data. We terminate a running paid contract only in accordance with the General Terms and Conditions. The right of both parties to terminate for good cause without notice (section 314 of the German Civil Code) remains unaffected. Good cause for us may in particular be a serious or repeated breach of section 6 that makes continuing the agreement unreasonable for us. Beforehand, we set you a deadline to remedy the breach or issue a warning, unless this is unnecessary under section 314 (2) of the German Civil Code, for example because you seriously and definitively refuse to remedy it.

15. Dispute resolution and applicable law

15.1 We are neither willing nor obliged to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board. If we cannot settle a dispute with you, we will tell you in text form which consumer arbitration board is competent for you, with its address and website, and whether we will take part in proceedings there.

15.2 German law applies. If your habitual residence is in another country, you retain the protection of the mandatory provisions of that country that cannot be derogated from by agreement.

15.3 We do not agree on a place of jurisdiction; the statutory provisions apply.

16. Version

Version 7 of 7 November 2026. Your account is governed by the version you agreed to when registering or later (section 12).