SoundCloud Privacy Policy

Welcome to SoundCloud®, a service provided by SoundCloud Limited (“SoundCloud”, “we” “our”, “us”).

Your privacy is important to us. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, store, use and disclose your information when you use soundcloud.com and m.soundcloud.com (together, the “Website”), our mobile and desktop apps (the "Apps") and all related sites, players, widgets, tools, apps, data, software, APIs and other services provided by SoundCloud (the “Services”).

This Privacy Policy explains the following, amongst other things:

By using the Website, the Apps or any of the Services, and in particular by registering a SoundCloud® account, you are consenting to the use of your information in the manner set out in this Privacy Policy.

For your convenience, information relating to our use of cookies and similar technologies is set out in a separate Cookies Policy. The Cookies Policy forms part of the Privacy Policy, and whenever we refer to the Privacy Policy, we are referring to the Privacy Policy incorporating the Cookies Policy.

Please take some time to read this Privacy Policy (including the Cookies Policy), and make sure you are happy with our use and disclosure of your information.

If you do not agree to any of the provisions of this Privacy Policy, you should not use the Website, the Apps or any of the Services. If you have any questions or concerns, you can contact us via our Help Center.

Please note that this Privacy Policy only applies to the Website, the Apps and the Services (together, the “Platform”). When using the Platform, you may find links to other websites, apps and services, or tools that enable you to share information with other websites, apps and services. SoundCloud is not responsible for the privacy practices of these other websites, apps and services and we recommend that you review the privacy policies of each of these websites, apps or services before connecting your SoundCloud® account or sharing any personal data.

Our principles

We have a pretty simple approach to data protection and privacy, which can be summarized as follows:

You should know exactly what we do with your information

This Privacy Policy is designed to give you full transparency regarding our data protection practices. If there’s anything that’s not clear from this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us via our Help Center.

You should have full control over your information

We’ve designed the Website to give you control over the information you publish and share using SoundCloud® and other sites and services to which you connect your SoundCloud® account. Please take full advantage of these tools and make sure you only share what you want to share.

Information we collect about you

We collect information about you from various sources:

Information provided by you

You don’t need to provide us with any personal data in order to visit the Website. However, certain Services do require that you register for a SoundCloud® account and, by doing so, you will provide us with certain information:

Information we collect automatically

There is certain information that we collect automatically as the result of your use of the Platform, or through the use of web analytics services as described in our Cookies Policy. This information includes but is not limited to:

Information from other sources

Facebook Connect

SoundCloud allows you to sign up and log in using your Facebook account. If you sign up using Facebook, Facebook will ask your permission to share certain information from your Facebook account with SoundCloud. This includes your first name, last name, email address in order for us to verify your identity and gender, general location, a link to your Facebook profile, your timezone, birthday, profile picture, your "likes" and your list of friends.

This information is collected by Facebook and is provided to us under the terms of Facebook’s privacy policy. You can control the information that we receive from Facebook using the privacy settings in your Facebook account.

If you sign up to SoundCloud® using Facebook, your SoundCloud® account will be connected automatically to your Facebook account, and information regarding your activity on SoundCloud®, specifically any new public sounds that you post on SoundCloud® and any new favourites, will be shared with Facebook and will be published in your timeline and your Facebook friends’ newsfeeds. If you do not wish to share your SoundCloud® activity with your Facebook friends, you can control this from the Settings page on the Website – for more information, see the Choice and Control section below. If you signed up using Facebook by mistake, you can delete your account from the Account page within your Settings at any time, or you can contact us via our Help Center

Google+

You can sign up and log in to SoundCloud using your Google+ account. When you sign up using Google+, Google will ask your permission to share certain information from your Google+ account with SoundCloud. This includes your first name, last name, email address in order for us to verify your identity and gender, a link to your Google+ profile, your profile picture, and your list of friends. This information is collected by Google and is provided to us under the terms of Google's privacy policy.

If you sign up to SoundCloud® using Google+, by default information regarding your activity on SoundCloud® will be visible on Google to everyone in your Google+ circles and shared with Google according to Google's terms of service and Google's privacy policy. For more information on how to manage the activities you share back to your Google+ account, see Google's support page. You can manage who from your Google+ circles sees your SoundCloud® activity from within your Google+ App settings page. If you want to control the type of SoundCloud® activity that is shared with your Google+ circles, you can do this from the settings page of your SoundCloud account under the “Connections” tab.

If you signed up to SoundCloud® using Google+ by mistake, you can delete your account from the account page within your settings at any time, or you can contact us via our Help Center.

How we use your information

We use the information that we collect about you for the following purposes:

Use of and interaction with the Platform:

Improving and customizing the Platform and advertising:

For other purposes, provided we disclose this to you at the relevant time, and provided that you agree to the proposed use of your personal data.

Sharing of your information

We will not share your information with any third party, except as described in this Privacy Policy (including our Cookies Policy). There are circumstances where we may need to share some of the information we collect about you or which you provide to us for the purposes set out above - these circumstances are as follows:

Cookies and similar technology

In common with most websites, we use cookies and other standard Internet technologies to help us improve the Website and the Apps and Services we provide. We have included information about our use of cookies and similar technology in a separate Cookies Policy that forms part of this Privacy Policy. The Cookies Policy also includes information about how you can block or disable third party cookies (which we only use for the purposes of analyzing the use of our Platform and optimizing the content on our Platform), and how to opt out of other technologies such as bug reporting within our mobile apps.

Ads displayed to you are in some cases provided by third parties. These may and as far as allowed by your settings or your device, use information about your visit and interaction with the Platform in order to show you personalized ads of products and services that may be of interest to you. Personal information such as your name or email address will not be shared with these.

We have done our best to provide you with as much information as possible about our use of cookies and similar technology. If you choose to use the Platform without blocking or disabling these cookies or opting out of other technologies as described in our Cookies Policy, you will indicate your consent to our use of these technologies and to our use (in accordance with this Privacy Policy and our Cookies Policy) of any personal data that we collect using these technologies.

Choice and control

We do our best to give you as much choice as possible regarding the amount of information you provide to us, and the control you have over that information.

It is not necessary for you to provide us with any personal data in order to visit the Website, although certain information will be collected automatically by virtue of your visit (as described above). However, if you do decide to register a SoundCloud® account, you can control your information in the following ways.

Email and notification preferences

When you are signed into your account, you can access your Settings by clicking on the three-dots-tab at the top right of the screen, and selecting Settings from the drop down menu.

From the Notifications tab you can tell us:

You can also turn off email notifications from the Notifications tab within your Settings. This will immediately disable all email notifications, other than essential account notifications such as important service updates, reports of copyright infringement and other essential information relating to your account and your use of the Platform.

It is also possible to unsubscribe from email newsletters and notifications (other than essential account notifications) at any time by clicking on the link at the end of each email.

You can add additional or alternative email addresses that you may wish us to use to communicate with you in your Account Settings tab.

Sharing with other apps and networks

The Connections tab within your Settings on the Website enables you to control the information you share with other networks and applications. As well as selecting those of your social networks you wish to share to, you can also control access to other services and applications to which you have connected your SoundCloud® account.

If you sign up for SoundCloud® using your Facebook or Google+ account, your SoundCloud® account and your Facebook or Google+ account respectively will be connected automatically. Information regarding the public sounds that you post, listen or favourite on SoundCloud®, will be shared with the connected Facebook or Google+ account. Content that you share with Facebook will appear on your timeline and in your Facebook friends’ newsfeeds. Content you share with Google will be seen by the people from your Google+ circles when they visit your Google+ profile, make relevant Google searches, on Google-served ads, and the services selected in your Google account settings. If you do not want this information shared with Facebook or Google, please change your Settings.

Please note that this Privacy Policy does not apply to any third party sites or applications, and we cannot control the activities of those sites or applications. You are advised to read the privacy policies of those sites or applications before sharing your information with, or connecting your SoundCloud® account to, any of these third party sites or applications.

Sharing with other users

If any of your sounds contain any personal data or any other information which you would not like to share, you can control who has access to these sounds using the settings in the sound page (click on the pencil icon in the waveform player for the relevant sounds). By setting your sounds to “private”, rather than “public”, you can limit who has access to your sounds.

Sharing with app developers

SoundCloud® has an open API, which allows third party developers to build some really cool apps as an extension of the Platform. If you would prefer that your sounds are not made available to third party app developers, you can disable API access within the sound page for each of the sounds that you upload. Click on the pencil icon in the waveform player, and uncheck the “Apps enabled” box at the bottom of the page. Please note that your public profile information will still be accessible, but this does not include anything that is not publicly available on the Website.

Customizing the Platform and personalized ads

You can opt out of the collection of your information when interacting with the Platform for purposes of customizing the Platform or personalized advertisement at any time for the future by checking the Anonymous Browsing box in the Account tab within your Settings on the Website. Please keep in mind that this may also have a substantial impact on your listening experience on the Platform (e.g. with regard to personalized recommendations for sounds to listen to or creator discovery). We may also use third party services using cookies or similar technologies showing you personalized ads on our behalf. Please see our Cookies Policy for how to opt-out of those.

Please be aware that even if you opt out of interest-based ads, you may still see ads, which likely are not as appealing to you.

Cookies

Information on how to block or disable cookies is included in our Cookies Policy. Further information is available at http://aboutcookies.org.

App preferences

You can use the settings within your iOS device or within the Android app to opt-out of analytics tracking and bug reporting. For the opt-out, if you are using our iOS app, go to the settings of your iOS device and open the SoundCloud® tab. With an Android device you need to open the SoundCloud® app and open the basic settings tab within. From there you can simply disable analytics and/or bug reporting to stop any analytics data or bug reporting information being sent from the app. Further information is available in our Cookies Policy.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account from the Account page within your Settings on the Website at any time. Please bear in mind that, if you delete your account, all data associated with your account, including the sounds that you have uploaded and the usage data associated with those sounds, will be deleted and may not be recoverable. You are therefore advised to copy or back up all content uploaded to your account before you delete your account.

Even if you delete your SoundCloud® account, it is possible that your information may still show up in some internet search results for a short while afterwards, if the search engine maintains a temporary cache of web pages. Search engines' caching processes are outside of SoundCloud’s control and therefore we cannot be responsible for any information that remains cached by search engines after that information has been removed from the Platform.

Please note that deleting any SoundCloud® Apps, or any third party apps to which your SoundCloud® account is connected, will not delete your SoundCloud® account. If you wish to delete your account, you will need to do so from the Account tab in your Settings on the Website. Similarly, if you delete a third party app that is connected to your SoundCloud® account over our API, this will not necessarily delete all data from within that third party app. You will need to refer to the app provider’s terms of use and privacy policy to find out how to delete your data from that third party app.

Access to your data

As described above, most of the personal data and other information you provide to us can be accessed and updated in the Settings page of your SoundCloud® account. If you wish to access, amend or delete any other personal data we hold about you, or if you have any objection to the processing of any personal data that we hold about you, please contact us via our Help Center, or the address provided below.

If you ask us to delete your account (either via the Settings page or by email), we will do so within a reasonable period of time, but we may need to retain some of your personal data in order to satisfy our legal obligations, or where we have a legitimate reason for doing so.

Data controller

If you are a US user, your data is controlled by our United States entity SoundCloud Inc. If you are a user from outside the United States, your data is controlled by our European entity SoundCloud Limited. In order to determine whether you are a United States user or a user from outside the United States, we use your device’s IP address at time of registration. We may share your data with other companies within the SoundCloud Group. A sharing of data will only take place in accordance with the specific purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy. You can withdraw your consent at any time.

United States users’ data may be processed by SoundCloud Limited on SoundCloud Inc.’s behalf.

International data transfers

SoundCloud Limited is based in Europe, and your personal information is collected, stored, used and shared in accordance with European laws. However, from time to time, it may be necessary for us to transfer your personal data to the United States. You should be aware that privacy laws in the United States may not be equivalent to the laws in your country, and by using the Platform, you consent to the transfer, storage and processing of your personal data in the United States in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable law.

Children

SoundCloud® is not intended for use by children. Anyone under the age of 13 is not permitted to use the Platform and must not attempt to register an account or submit any personal information to us. We do not knowingly collect any personal information from any person who is under the age of 13 or allow them to register an account. If it comes to our attention that we have collected personal data from a person under the age of 13, we will delete this information as quickly as possible. If you have reason to believe that we may have collected any such personal data, please notify us immediately at legal@soundcloud.com.

Changes and updates to this Privacy Policy

We may occasionally update this Privacy Policy, and when we do so, we will also revise the Effective Date set out below. Any changes to our Privacy Policy will always be available here so that SoundCloud® users are always aware of what information we gather, and how we might use and share that information. Please be sure to check back here from time to time to ensure that you are aware of any changes to this Privacy Policy. Any material changes to this Privacy Policy will be communicated to registered users by a notification to their account and/or by posting a notice of the change on the Website.

Questions?

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, want to suggest changes to this Privacy Policy or want to know, what information we store about you, please contact us via our Help Center, or write to us at:

SoundCloud Limited Rheinsberger Str. 76/77 10115 Berlin Germany Attention: Legal Department

Don’t want to give us your information?

If you decide that you do not want us to use your information in the manner described in the Privacy Policy (including our Cookies Policy), please do not use the Platform. If you have already registered an account, you can find out how to terminate or cancel your account here.

Last amended: 30 May 2017

You will find a link to prior versions of our Privacy Policy and a summary of the change(s) below.