Legal
Privacy Policy
Last updated: the day SOUNDAR goes live
SOUNDAR ("SOUNDAR", "we", "us") is an A&R scouting service for record labels. It finds artists who are growing in a label's genres, sends them demo requests from the label's own email address, and lets them send demos to the label through a private link.
This policy explains what personal data we handle, why, for how long, and what your rights are. It covers three groups of people:
- Labels and their team members who use SOUNDAR ("Customers").
- Artists who are found by SOUNDAR, contacted by a label, or who send a demo.
- Visitors to soundar.app, including people who book a call with us.
1. Who is responsible for your data
SOUNDAR is operated by Grégoire Michelin, entrepreneur individuel (micro-entreprise), SIRET 820 141 430 00034, 1 Rue du Bec Castel, 76790 Étretat, France.
Contact for anything related to personal data: privacy@soundar.app
Depending on the situation, we act in one of two roles:
- As controller for our own Customers' account data, website visitors and call bookings, and for the artist data we collect to run the scouting radar (section 3).
- As processor on behalf of a label when that label uses SOUNDAR to contact an artist, receive demos, review them and reply. In that case the label decides who to contact and what to do with the demos, and the label is the controller. Our Data Processing Agreement with each label sets out these terms.
2. Data about labels and their team members
| What | Why | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Name, work email, password (stored only as a secure hash), label name, label Instagram or website | Create and run your account | Performance of our contract |
| Your scouting preferences (genres, markets, growth criteria), artist roster, email template and signature | Find relevant artists and send your invites | Performance of our contract |
| Permission to send email from your Gmail address | Send demo requests and replies in your name | Performance of our contract |
| Notes, comments and votes on demos, including those from teammates invited by link | Review and shortlist demos | Performance of our contract |
| Login and security records (IP address, time) | Protect accounts, prevent abuse, rate-limit logins and sign-ups | Legitimate interest (security) |
| Billing details, once paid plans exist | Invoicing and accounting | Contract and legal obligation |
About Gmail access. SOUNDAR only asks Google for permission to send email from your address (the gmail.send scope). It cannot open, read, search or delete anything in your mailbox. The access key Google gives us is stored encrypted, and you can revoke it at any time from SOUNDAR or from your Google account settings.
SOUNDAR's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs to any other app will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We do not use Google user data for advertising, we do not sell it, and no human at SOUNDAR reads it except where you ask us to for support, where it is needed for security, or where the law requires it.
3. Data about artists
What we collect and where it comes from
To find artists who are growing, SOUNDAR uses licensed music market data from Soundcharts (Soundcharts SAS, France). This covers public information such as artist name, genres, country or city, streaming and social audience figures, playlist placements and releases.
To contact an artist, SOUNDAR looks for a professional contact email that the artist or their team has made public for business enquiries, such as the booking or contact address listed in their official profiles. We do not buy contact lists, and we do not scrape platforms in breach of their terms.
If an artist sends a demo, we also store the audio files, track titles, any message they write, the email address they use, and the label's notes and decisions about the demo.
Why, and on what legal basis
- Finding and listing growing artists for labels. Legal basis: our legitimate interest, and that of labels, in discovering new music, using public, professional information. The impact on artists is limited: the information is already public, and the purpose (being offered a chance to send music to a label) is one artists generally expect and benefit from.
- Sending a demo request on behalf of a label. Each label sends at most a limited number of short, personal invites per day from its own address, and every invite contains a way to say no. We process this on the label's behalf.
- Receiving and reviewing demos. Done on behalf of the label the artist chose to send music to.
Saying no
Every invite contains a link where the artist can say they are not interested. Choosing that option means:
- That label will never contact the artist again through SOUNDAR.
- If the artist also ticks "Don't let any label contact me through SOUNDAR", no label will contact them through SOUNDAR again.
To make the opt-out stick, we keep a minimal record of the artist's name and contact email marked as "do not contact". An artist who sent a demo can also withdraw it at any time from their upload page.
To object, or to ask us to delete your data, write to privacy@soundar.app at any time. These requests are handled by email: there is no button for them in SOUNDAR. When we delete an artist's data, we keep the minimal "do not contact" record so that no label contacts them again.
Minors
SOUNDAR is meant for adult professionals. If you are under 18 and were contacted, or someone sent us data about you, write to privacy@soundar.app and we will delete it.
4. Data about website visitors and call bookings
- Booking a call: your name, label, email, genres and message (both optional), and the time you picked. We use these to hold the call, send the invite and reminder, and follow up about SOUNDAR. Legal basis: steps taken at your request before a contract, and our legitimate interest in answering business enquiries.
- Visiting the site: Our hosting provider may keep standard technical logs (such as IP addresses and times of access) for security. SOUNDAR itself does not track the pages you visit. We do not use advertising or analytics trackers.
5. Cookies
SOUNDAR only uses the cookies listed below, all strictly necessary for the service: keeping you logged in, and, on a team listening link, remembering the name you typed. These do not require consent under French and EU rules, so there is no cookie banner. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies. Our fonts are served from our own servers, so loading the site sends no data to font providers.
| Name | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
soundar_session | Keeps you logged in to SOUNDAR. Holds a random key; only a one-way hash of it is stored on our side. | Until you close your browser (and at most 12 hours without use), or 30 days if you tick "Remember me" |
soundar_admin_account | SOUNDAR's own administrators only: remembers which label's account they are looking at. | Until the browser is closed |
soundar_listener | On a team listening link: remembers the name a team member typed, for that link only. | Until the listening link expires (14 days by default) |
The team listening page also remembers, in your browser's local storage (skout.commentPopups), whether you turned comment pop-ups off. It never leaves your device.
6. Who we share data with
We never sell personal data. We only share it with service providers who help us run SOUNDAR, under contracts that require them to protect it:
| Provider | Role | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Scaleway SAS, 8 rue de la Ville l'Évêque, 75008 Paris, France | Hosting: servers, database, backups, demo audio storage | France (EU), Paris |
| Soundcharts SAS | Music market data about artists | France |
| Google (Gmail API) | Sending emails from a label's own Gmail address | Google's infrastructure, which may include the USA (see section 7) |
| Google (Gmail) | Sending SOUNDAR's own emails (sign-up codes, password resets, booking confirmations and reminders) | Google's infrastructure, which may include the USA (see section 7) |
The label an artist is contacted by, or sends a demo to, of course sees that artist's data and demos. Team members a label invites by private link see the shortlist they are given.
We may also disclose data if the law requires it, or to protect our rights or the safety of others.
7. Transfers outside the European Union
Our hosting and our main data are in the EU (France). Some providers, notably Google, may process data outside the EU. When that happens, the transfer is covered by the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, or by the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
8. How long we keep data
| Data | How long |
|---|---|
| Customer account data | While the account is active, then deleted within 30 days of closure (unless the law requires us to keep it longer) |
| Gmail access key | Until the label disconnects Gmail or closes its account; deleted immediately after |
| Artists found but never contacted | Removed from the radar after 6 months without being contacted |
| Artists contacted who never replied | 12 months after the last contact, then deleted |
| Demos, notes and decisions | Until the artist withdraws them, and at most until 30 days after the label's account closes |
| "Do not contact" records | As long as needed to honour the opt-out (minimal data only) |
| Call bookings | 12 months after the call |
| Security and server logs | 6 months |
| Invoices and accounting records | 10 years (French legal requirement) |
Backups are made by our hosting provider and overwritten within 30 days.
9. Security
Passwords are stored as one-way hashes. Gmail access keys are encrypted. All traffic uses HTTPS. Access to production data is limited to the people who run SOUNDAR. Our hosting provider keeps regular backups, and we limit how often anyone can try to log in or sign up.
10. Your rights
Under the GDPR you can:
- access your data;
- correct it;
- delete it;
- restrict how it is used;
- object to its use, including at any time to being contacted;
- receive a copy in a portable format;
- give instructions about what happens to your data after your death.
To use any of these rights, write to privacy@soundar.app. These requests are handled by email: there is no button for them in SOUNDAR. We answer within one month. (Labels can also download a copy of their data and close their account themselves, in SOUNDAR's Preferences.) If the request concerns a label's use of your demo, we will pass it on to that label and help them answer.
If you think we have not respected your rights, you can complain to the French data protection authority, the CNIL (www.cnil.fr), or to the authority in your own EU country.
11. Changes
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will update the date at the top. If the change is significant, we will tell Customers by email before it takes effect.
12. Contact
Grégoire Michelin — SOUNDAR
1 Rue du Bec Castel, 76790 Étretat, France
privacy@soundar.app