Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

This Privacy Policy explains what information Outloud collects, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. It applies to outlouddistro.com and the Outloud service.

2. Information we collect

Account information. When you sign up, we collect your name and email address, and store a profile that may include an artist name, a short bio, and a profile image. Sign-in and your basic profile are handled through our authentication provider (see Section 4); your email and name originate there and are mirrored into our records.

Content and release information you provide. When you create artist profiles and releases, we collect and store the information you enter, including: release and track titles, genres, release dates, record-label name, copyright information, language, contributor and songwriter names and their roles, featured-artist names, and any streaming-service identifiers (such as Spotify or Apple artist IDs) you supply.

Files you upload. We store the audio recordings and artwork you upload, in order to distribute them.

Payout information. If you request a withdrawal of royalties, we collect the payout destination you provide — for example, the PayPal email address you want to be paid at — along with a record of amounts earned and withdrawals requested and made.

Tax information. Before we can send you a payout, we collect tax information from the account holder: legal name, address, the type of taxpayer identification number (Social Security number or employer identification number), the number itself, and a record of when you certified that it is correct. Your taxpayer identification number is encrypted in our database and is never displayed anywhere in the Service — you and our staff only ever see its last four digits. We collect this because royalties are reportable income and we are required to know who we are paying; we use it only to meet our tax-reporting and record-keeping duties, and we do not use it for any other purpose.

Support communications. If you contact support, we keep your messages and our replies.

Information about other people. Some of what you enter is about other people: the names of the writers, producers, featured artists, and other contributors you credit on a release, and the email address of anyone you add to a royalty split. Only enter someone's details if you are authorized to share them. We use this information solely to credit those people on your releases and to operate royalty splits — including sending split participants an invitation email that links to this policy — and we do not use it for marketing.

Advertising and campaign information. If you arrive at our site from one of our ads, we collect the ad's campaign parameters — the "UTM" tags in the link that identify which campaign and ad brought you here — and store them so we can understand which campaigns lead to signups. We use the Meta Pixel and Meta's Conversions API to measure the performance of our advertising. See the Cookies section and Section 4 for details.

What we do not do. Outloud does not track your listening or browsing behavior on the Service, does not build advertising profiles about you, and does not use third-party analytics products. We do not sell your personal information.

3. How we use your information

We use your information to:

• Create and manage your account;
• Distribute your releases to Stores through our distribution partners;
• Review and moderate releases;
• Calculate royalties and process withdrawal requests;
• Send you service-related email — for example, release-status updates, edit-request and takedown notifications, payout and withdrawal notifications, and account notices (you can turn off non-essential notifications in your settings; some essential account emails are always sent);
• Provide support;
• Measure the performance of our advertising; and
• Operate, secure, and improve the Service, and comply with our legal obligations.

Our legal bases (for users in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland). Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, we rely on the following legal bases for the uses above:

• Performing our contract with you — creating and managing your account, distributing your releases, calculating royalties, processing withdrawal requests, and providing support;
• Legal obligation — keeping accurate financial and tax records of royalties earned and withdrawals made;
• Legitimate interests — securing the Service, preventing abuse and fraud, reviewing and moderating releases, and monitoring errors so we can fix them, always in ways that do not override your rights and interests;
• Consent — optional marketing emails, which are off by default and which you can turn off at any time in your settings.

4. How your information is shared

We share information only as needed to run the Service. We do not sell personal information. Our service providers ("sub-processors") and other recipients are:

Authentication provider (Clerk). Handles account sign-up and sign-in. Stores your email, name, and profile image.

Cloud storage (Amazon Web Services / S3). Stores your uploaded audio and artwork files.

Database hosting (Neon). Hosts the database holding your account, release, and payout records.

Email delivery (Resend). Sends the service emails described above; receives the recipient address and message content.

Application hosting (Vercel). Hosts the website and processes requests in transit, including standard server logs.

Error monitoring (Sentry). When something in the Service breaks, a technical error report is sent to Sentry so we can find and fix the problem. We configure these reports to exclude personal details — they do not include your name, email address, or IP address — though they can include internal identifiers such as the ID we assign your account.

Abuse prevention (Upstash). To protect the Service from abuse, we count how often certain sensitive actions are performed. These short-lived counters are keyed by your account's internal ID or, if you are not signed in, by your IP address, and expire automatically.

Advertising measurement (Meta Platforms). When you visit from one of our ads or sign up, we share event data (such as page views and sign-ups), cookie identifiers, and a hashed (not human-readable) version of your email with Meta to measure and improve our ad campaigns.

Distribution partners and the Stores. To distribute your music, we send your release information, audio, and artwork to third-party distribution partners and to the digital Stores. This is the core purpose of the Service.

What our distribution partner receives. Delivering a release means giving our distribution partner the information a Store needs to publish it: your name, the release information you entered (titles, credits, contributor and songwriter names, identifiers, and release dates), and the account details that identify the release as yours. If a third party makes an intellectual-property claim against one of your releases — a copyright or trademark claim, for example — that information may be provided to the person making the claim, and to intellectual property offices, customs authorities, or law enforcement, so that the claim can be investigated and resolved.

Legal and safety. We may disclose information if required by law, to respond to legal process, to enforce our Terms, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Outloud, our users, or others.

5. International users and data location

Outloud is operated from Washington, United States, and our service providers store and process data in the United States and potentially other countries, where data-protection laws may differ from those in your country.

Where we transfer personal information of users in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland to the United States, we rely on safeguards recognized under the GDPR and UK GDPR: for service providers certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (including its UK and Swiss extensions), that certification; and for providers that are not certified, standard contractual clauses in our agreements with them. You can email contact@outlouddistro.com to ask which safeguard applies to a given provider or to request more information about these safeguards.

6. Cookies

Outloud uses a small number of cookies:

• Strictly necessary sign-in cookies. Set by our authentication provider to keep you securely signed in.
• A first-party attribution cookie ("ol_attr", stored for 90 days). If you arrive from one of our ads, it remembers which campaign brought you so we can attribute a later signup to it.
• Meta advertising cookies ("_fbp" and "_fbc"). Set in connection with the Meta Pixel and used to measure the performance of our advertising.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser; blocking the sign-in cookies may prevent you from staying signed in. California residents can opt out of the sharing of personal information for advertising measurement — see Section 8.

7. Data retention

We keep your information for as long as your account is active and as needed to provide the Service.

Financial records are kept longer, on purpose. Records of royalties earned and withdrawals requested or paid — including the payout destination you provided, and the tax information described in Section 2 — are retained even after a release or your account is removed, because we are required to keep accurate financial and tax records. These records are preserved in a form that survives deletion of the underlying release. Your taxpayer identification number stays encrypted for as long as we keep it.

What deleting your account does and does not remove. If you delete your account, we delete your login and strip your name, email address, and profile image from our records. Some records are kept beyond that: the financial records described above; the tax information you provided for payouts, which we are required to retain as part of those financial records; support conversations; the credits attached to releases (writer, producer, featured-artist, and other contributor names — these describe other people's contributions to a release); the email addresses of royalty- split participants, which are needed to keep the split ledger accurate; and per-release streaming statistics. We keep these because they are records of distribution and payments that have already happened.

8. Your choices and rights

• Profile. You can view and update your profile information in your account settings.
• Email preferences. You can turn off non-essential notification emails in your settings. Essential account emails (such as account-status notices) are always sent.
• Access, correction, and deletion. You may contact us at contact@outlouddistro.com to request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information, subject to the financial-record retention described above and to our legal obligations. You can also delete your account yourself at any time from your account settings.
• California — Do Not Sell or Share. California residents may opt out of the sharing of personal information for advertising measurement ("Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information") by emailing contact@outlouddistro.com.
• Additional rights where you live. Depending on your location (including the EEA, UK, and Switzerland), you may also have the right to receive a copy of the information you gave us in a portable format, to restrict or object to certain processing, and to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent. Email contact@outlouddistro.com and we will handle your request within the time the law requires; we may need to verify your identity first. You also have the right to complain to your local data-protection authority.

9. Children

The Service is not directed to children under 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact us at contact@outlouddistro.com and we will take appropriate steps.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will take reasonable steps to notify you. The "Last updated" date at the top shows when it last changed.

11. Contact

Questions or privacy requests: contact@outlouddistro.com
Outloud Distribution LLC
522 W Riverside Ave Ste N
Spokane, WA 99201
(360) 625-9600