Privacy policy
TrackClear Studio · operated by {{LEGAL_ENTITY}} · last updated {{LAST_UPDATED}}
TrackClear Studio is a desktop application. It runs on your computer, and your music library stays there. This policy describes the few things that do leave your machine, exactly what they contain, and who receives them. It is written to be read rather than to be defensible.
1. The short version
Your audio files never leave your computer. Everything TrackClear works out about your library is stored locally on your own machine. There is no account with us, no analytics, and no telemetry in the application.
Four things do leave, and only when you ask for them:
- A roughly ten-second audio sample of a track, when you ask the app to identify it.
- The snippet video you choose to upload to your own YouTube channel, for clearance testing.
- Audio fingerprints and clearance outcomes, only if you switch on the shared clearance database.
- Your licence key and an installation identifier, once, when you activate a purchase.
2. What stays on your computer
TrackClear stores its working data in your operating system’s application-data folder
— on Windows, %APPDATA%\TrackClearStudio. That includes:
- A database of your library: file paths, tags, audio measurements, genres, BPM and key, duplicate groupings, and clearance results.
- Any notes you write against a track.
- Backups the app makes before it changes anything.
- An error log, written when something goes wrong. It is never sent anywhere. If you choose to attach it to a support email, that is you sending it, not the app.
- Your YouTube sign-in, described in the next section.
None of this is transmitted to us. We have no copy of your library and no way to obtain one. Deleting that folder deletes everything TrackClear knows about you.
3. Google and YouTube data
This section describes how TrackClear uses data from your Google Account. It applies only if you choose to use the clearance-testing feature; the rest of the application works without ever connecting to Google.
What we ask for, and why
| Permission | What it allows | Why it is needed |
|---|---|---|
youtube.upload |
Uploading a video to your own YouTube channel. | Clearance testing works by putting a short, unlisted snippet video on your channel so that YouTube’s Content ID system examines it. There is no narrower permission that allows an upload, and there is no other way to obtain a Content ID result in advance. |
youtube.readonly |
Reading your own channel’s video list and status. | To confirm the upload finished processing, and to find the video the app just created. We use the read-only permission rather than full access because no further write access is required. |
How the sign-in is stored
When you connect your account, Google returns an authorization token. That token is stored in a file on your own computer and is never transmitted to us or to anyone else. We operate no server that receives, stores, or processes YouTube data. Disconnecting your account in the application’s settings deletes the stored token.
Reading claim results
After an upload, TrackClear needs to know what Content ID claimed. To do that it opens a YouTube Studio window signed in as you, using a browser session stored on your own computer, and reads the copyright information for the video it just uploaded. The first time, that window is shown so you can sign in; afterwards it runs in the background. It looks only at the videos TrackClear itself created, and the results are stored locally alongside the rest of your library data.
This session, like the token above, exists only on your machine.
Limited use
TrackClear Studio’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Specifically: Google user data is used solely to provide the clearance-testing feature you asked for. It is not sold, not transferred to third parties, not used for advertising, and not used to develop, improve, or train any generalized or non-personalized artificial-intelligence or machine-learning model. No human at {{LEGAL_ENTITY}} reads it, because it never reaches us.
Revoking access
You can disconnect at any time from within the application, which deletes the stored token. You can also revoke TrackClear’s access directly from your Google Account at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Videos TrackClear uploaded to your channel remain yours; delete them in YouTube Studio whenever you like.
4. Identifying your tracks
To work out what a badly named file actually is, TrackClear computes an audio fingerprint — a compact numerical summary of the sound, from which the audio cannot be reconstructed — and, for some lookups, sends a short audio sample.
| Service | What is sent | Why |
|---|---|---|
| AcoustID | An audio fingerprint and the track’s duration. No audio, no filename. | To identify which recording the file is. |
| MusicBrainz | The recording identifier returned by AcoustID. | To look up the genre and release details for that recording. |
| ACRCloud | A sample of roughly ten seconds of audio. | A faster, commercial identification used as a pre-check. The sample is used to make the match and is not retained by us. |
These lookups are made because you asked the app to identify or classify your music. Each provider handles what it receives under its own privacy policy, linked above. Results are cached on your machine so the same track is never looked up twice.
5. The shared clearance database
TrackClear can pool clearance results between users, so that a track somebody else has already tested does not have to be tested again. This is switched off until you switch it on, in Settings, and you can switch it off again at any time.
While it is on, submitting a result sends:
- The track’s audio fingerprint and, where known, its ISRC and its ACRCloud identifier — the reference number ACRCloud returns when it recognizes a recording. All three name the recording, not your copy of it and not you.
- The track title and artist.
- The clearance outcome and the date it was observed.
- Your country, because Content ID results differ by territory.
- A randomly generated installation identifier. It is created by the app, is not derived from your hardware, your name, or your Google account, and identifies nothing about you beyond grouping your own submissions together. Clearing the app’s local storage replaces it.
What is not sent: audio, file names, file paths, your library, your YouTube account, or your email address. The database is used to power shared clearance results and for nothing else. It is not sold and not shared with third parties.
6. Buying a licence
Purchases are handled by {{STOREFRONT_NAME}}, which acts as the merchant of record. They collect your payment details and billing information under their own privacy policy — we never see your card details. They pass us your email address and the fact that a purchase was made, so that a licence key can be issued and sent to you.
When you activate that key, the application sends the key and an installation identifier to our licence server, which returns a signed licence token. That token is then verified on your own machine, offline, every time the app starts. We keep the email address and the licence record for as long as the licence exists, so that we can re-send a key you have lost and support you if something goes wrong.
7. This website
This site sets no advertising cookies and runs no third-party trackers. Visitor numbers are measured with {{ANALYTICS_NAME}}, which is privacy-preserving, does not use cookies, and does not build a profile of you across sites. Fonts are served by Google Fonts, which receives your IP address as part of that request.
8. What we never collect
- Your audio files. Not in whole and not in part beyond the identification sample described above.
- Usage analytics or telemetry from inside the application. There is none. The app does not report what you scan, what you play, or which features you use.
- Your YouTube data. It stays on your machine.
- Your payment details. They go to the storefront, not to us.
- Anything used to train an AI model. Nothing you give this application is used for that, by us or on our behalf.
9. Your rights and choices
Because almost everything lives on your own computer, most control is direct: delete the application’s data folder and the data is gone. For the little we do hold — your licence record, your email address, and any clearance results you chose to contribute — you may ask us to show you what we have, correct it, or delete it. Write to {{PRIVACY_EMAIL}} and we will respond within {{RESPONSE_DAYS}} days.
If you are in the UK, the EU, or another region with equivalent law, you have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection, and the right to complain to your local data-protection authority. We rely on your consent for the optional shared database, and on the performance of our contract with you for licensing and support.
Deleting your contributed clearance results is possible on request. Note that a result already merged into the shared consensus cannot always be individually unwound — but it carries no information about you, only about a recording.
10. Changes and contact
If this policy changes in a way that affects what we do with your data, we will change the date at the top and say so in the application’s release notes. We will not quietly broaden what we collect.
The data controller is {{LEGAL_ENTITY}}, {{LEGAL_ADDRESS}}. Questions about this policy go to {{PRIVACY_EMAIL}}.