WHERE THE LINES ARE.
The Signal is independent and makes its money from affiliate links — not from selling a sound tool. Here's exactly how we keep the reviews honest anyway.
How we make money
City of Punk doesn't sell an AI music or sound generator. The Signal earns through affiliate links: when you sign up for a tool through one of our links, we may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. That's the conflict of interest worth naming up front — pretending it didn't exist would be the actual problem. So instead, we publish the rules we hold ourselves to.
The rules
- No paid placement. Nobody can buy coverage, a score, or a softer verdict on The Signal. Pitches for sponsored posts are declined.
- Affiliate status never buys a better score. We link to tools we'd recommend regardless, and several of our highest-rated tools pay us nothing. The ranking is decided before any link is.
- Every review names the downsides. If a tool is weak at something — stems, licensing, output, price — the review says so plainly. An all-upside review is a brochure, not a review.
- Structured data is data, not copy. The scores and capability tables on our /compare/ review pages are maintained as editorial data, checked against each tool's current public product, and corrected when they ship changes. Tell us when we're out of date.
- Articles must stand alone. Every guide and tutorial has to be useful to a reader who never clicks an affiliate link. Tool mentions appear where they're genuinely relevant.
- Corrections are public. When we get a fact wrong, we fix the page and note the change. Corrections go to signal@cityofpunk.com.
How affiliate links are marked
Where a link is an affiliate link, the page discloses it — outbound affiliate links carry a sponsored tag, and review and comparison pages note it near the top. If you'd rather not use them, you can always search for the tool directly; it costs you nothing either way, and it changes nothing about what we wrote.
AI-assisted writing
The Signal uses AI tooling in its editorial pipeline — fitting, given the subject. Pieces are generated from editorial briefs and source analysis, then held to the same standards as anything else here: claims must be verifiable, prices and license terms must trace to the vendor's published terms, and the voice rules ban hype the same way for the tools we earn from as for any others.