Privacy Policy

The short version

• We collect what you need to play: an account, your profile, the tracks you upload, your chat messages and your ratings.
• Your profile, stats and Top tracks are public. Your tracks and chat are shared with the people in your rooms.
• Uploaded audio is deleted 30 days after its room closes, except the latest version of each track on your profile.
• We don't run analytics or ad trackers, and we don't sell your data.
• Email beathovensupport@gmail.com to see, fix or delete your data.

What we collect

• Google sign-in. When you continue with Google, Google shares your email address, name and profile picture with our sign-in provider. We use your email to identify your account and show it to you in your account menu, and your name to suggest a display name when you set up your profile. Other players never see your email.
• Guest play. Playing as a guest creates an anonymous account with no email, tied to the sign-in session in your browser. If you sign out or clear your browser data, you lose access to it. Signing in with Google later creates a new, separate account.
• Your profile. Display name, username, bio, up to three DAWs, one profile link and an avatar, if you add them. Avatars are re-encoded on our servers into a small square image, which removes embedded metadata such as camera details and location.
• Game activity. Rooms you create or join and their settings, when you ready up, the ratings you give, votes to skip a track or kick a player, results, wins and games played.
• Uploaded tracks. The audio file plus details we work out from it: length, file type, file size, a file hash, a simplified waveform, the clip you choose to play and an audio fingerprint (see below). Each track gets a title from the file's embedded title or its file name, which you can rename. We remove ID3 and APE tags from MP3s and rebuild WAV files without their extra metadata. Other formats, such as FLAC, OGG and M4A, may keep metadata embedded by your software, so check your export settings if that matters to you.
• Chat messages you send in rooms, including emoji reactions.
• Profile link checks. When you save a profile link, we check it against our own list of blocked domains and may send the URL to Google Safe Browsing to check for malware and phishing. We record each attempt for an hour to limit you to 10 per hour, and the time each URL was last checked. Visitors who click your link pass through a beathoven.io/out page that re-checks it.
• Presence. While Beathoven is open, your browser tells our realtime service that you're online. This drives the online count and the online indicator on your profile card, and it isn't stored. While you're in a room, your browser also checks in every 10 seconds, and we store when it last did so that idle players can be removed from lobbies.
• Technical data. Our hosting and database providers process your IP address, browser details and request logs to deliver the site, keep it secure and limit abuse, for example by limiting how many guest accounts one IP address can create. When someone who isn't signed in plays a Top track, we keep a one-way hash of their IP address for about a minute to limit streaming requests.

Audio fingerprints and file checks

After a track uploads, our servers compute an audio fingerprint of it with the open-source Chromaprint tool. A fingerprint is a compact summary of how the audio sounds, not a copy of it. We compare it only with your own earlier uploads, so the same song uploaded twice counts as one track on your Top tracks, with its plays, games, wins and ratings combined. You can merge or split tracks yourself.

Separately, we compare each upload's exact file hash against a list of files we've blocked, for example after a copyright complaint, so a removed file can't simply be uploaded again.

Who can see what

• Anyone, signed in or not: your profile (display name, username, avatar, bio, DAWs and profile link), when you joined, your stats and leaderboard position, and your Top tracks with their titles and stats. The latest version of each Top track can be played from your profile once the game it was played in reached results.
• Anyone browsing lobbies: public rooms, with the room name, host, mode, genre and player count.
• People in your room: your chat messages and your tracks. While tracks play, the producer stays hidden unless the host turns on producer names. Everyone sees who made what at results. People who were in a room can still open its tracks and chat after they leave.
• Only you: your email address and your individual ratings. Other players see totals, never who gave which rating.

Why we use it

Where privacy laws like the GDPR ask for a legal basis, these are ours:

• To provide Beathoven (performing our agreement with you): accounts, profiles, rooms, playback, rating, results, leaderboards and Top tracks.
• To keep it safe and fair (our legitimate interests): rate limits, file and link checks, kicks and room bans, removing infringing content and investigating abuse.
• To meet legal obligations, such as responding to valid legal requests and copyright notices.

We don't use your data for advertising, and we don't sell or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.

Services we use

We rely on a few providers who process data for us under their own security and privacy terms:

• Supabase for the database, sign-in, file storage and realtime updates.
• Vercel for hosting the site, running our server code and scheduled cleanup jobs.
• Google for Google sign-in and, when enabled, Safe Browsing link checks.

We don't use analytics, advertising or social media trackers.

Cookies and local storage

• Sign-in cookies keep you signed in, as a guest or with Google. Beathoven doesn't work without them.
• Local storage in your browser remembers your volume and mute setting, your visualizer preferences and your flame effect style. This stays on your device and isn't sent to us.

We don't use tracking or advertising cookies, so there's nothing to opt out of.

How long we keep it

• Audio files are deleted 30 days after their room closes, which happens when the last player leaves. Our cleanup runs once a day, so it can take up to a day longer. The exception is the latest version of each track on your Top tracks, which we keep so it stays playable until you delete your account.
• Uploads that fail our checks are deleted within about a day.
• Track details (title, stats, waveform, file hash and fingerprint) stay after the audio file is deleted, so your stats keep working.
• Your account, profile, chat messages, ratings and results are kept until you delete your account. We don't currently delete chat messages automatically.
• Rate-limit records are kept for a minute to an hour.

Our providers may keep backups for a limited time after data is deleted.

Your rights

You can edit or remove your display name, username, bio, DAWs, profile link and avatar at any time from your profile. You can also ask us to:

• give you a copy of your data,
• correct anything that's wrong,
• delete your account and everything tied to it, including your profile, tracks, chat messages, ratings and stats,
• stop or limit a use of your data you object to.

There's no delete button yet, so email beathovensupport@gmail.com from the address you sign in with, or include your username. We may ask you to confirm the account is yours, and we'll reply within 30 days. Guest accounts have no email, so tell us your username. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

Children

Beathoven isn't directed at children under 13, and you must be at least 13 to use it. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal data, email beathovensupport@gmail.com and we'll delete it.

Security

Uploads land in a private holding area and are checked on our servers before anyone can play them. Track files are stored privately and played through short-lived links. Database access is restricted per user, and all traffic uses HTTPS. No service is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your data and will tell you if a breach affects you where the law requires.

International transfers

Our providers are based in the United States and may process data there and in other countries. If you use Beathoven from outside the United States, your data will be transferred there. Where the law requires, we rely on safeguards such as the Standard Contractual Clauses offered by our providers.

Changes

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top. If a change is significant, we'll also let you know in the app before it takes effect.

Contact

Beathoven is responsible for your data. Questions or requests: beathovensupport@gmail.com.