SOUND: Privacy Policy
DRAFT. Not yet legally reviewed and not yet in effect. Reviewed by qualified privacy counsel before publication. Article XIII of the Mission Articles requires this policy to be public, plain-language, and changed only with 30 days' notice.
SOUND collects only the data needed to run the platform. Your data is not a product. We do not sell it, license it, or share it for anyone's advertising, ever. This policy explains, in plain language, what we collect, why, and the control you have.
What we collect
- Account details. Your email and login credentials, to authenticate your account.
- Payment information. Handled by our payment processor (Stripe); SOUND does not store your full card details.
- Listening data. Which tracks you play and for how long. We need this to calculate and pay royalties accurately and to deliver the music to you.
- Mailing list. If you email us to join the pre-launch list, we keep your email address and whether you told us you are an artist or a listener, so we can let you know when SOUND opens. That is the only thing we use it for.
That is the whole list. We do not collect data for behavioral profiling, advertising, or any purpose beyond operating the platform.
How we use it
- Authenticate your account and keep it secure.
- Process your subscription payment.
- Calculate and distribute royalties to the artists you listened to (the user-centric model), and publish the monthly accounting.
- Deliver music and operate and improve the service.
- Let you know when SOUND opens, if you asked to be on the pre-launch mailing list.
What we will never do
- Sell, license, share, or transfer your personal data to any third party for commercial purposes.
- Use your data (or share it) for advertising or ad targeting. SOUND carries no ads (Article X).
- Build behavioral profiles of you for any purpose beyond operating the platform.
Your rights and controls
- Export. Request a complete copy of your personal data at any time.
- Delete. Request permanent deletion of your data; we complete it within 30 days, except for records the law requires us to keep.
- Access and correct. See and fix the account information we hold.
- Unsubscribe. Leave the mailing list whenever you want. Tell us and we delete your address; every message we send carries a way out.
Service providers
We use a small number of providers to operate (for example, a payment processor and cloud/CDN infrastructure). They receive only the data operationally required, are bound by data-processing agreements that prohibit any secondary use, and may not sell or repurpose it. Our analytics are privacy-respecting and self-hosted; we do not use Google Analytics or third-party advertising trackers.
Cookies and tracking
We use only the cookies essential to sign you in and run the service. No advertising cookies, no cross-site trackers, no data brokers.
Legal compliance
We honor the GDPR for subscribers in the European Union and the CCPA for California residents, including their rights of access, portability, and deletion. Where you live, the stronger protection applies.
Changes to this policy
We will give at least 30 days' notice before any material change takes effect, and we will ask for fresh consent where a change introduces a new category of data collection or use. The current policy is always posted publicly.
Contact
Questions or requests: privacy@itsthesound.com. You can also use the confidential reporting channel described in Article XIII of the Mission Articles.