Legal

• Authenticate and personalize your experience
• Improve app performance through analytics
• Serve relevant ads (AdMob)
• Process your audio inputs for music/sound feature extraction
• Review feedback and suggestions to improve app features and support

We use the following trusted third parties:

• Firebase by Google (Authentication, Analytics, and Cloud Firestore, where your feedback and support messages are stored together with your email address)
• Sign in with Google and Sign in with Apple (optional ways to create your account and sign in, handled through Firebase Authentication)
• Google AdMob (Advertisements)
• Google User Messaging Platform (ad consent management for users in the European Union and the United Kingdom)
• Apple AdServices (Apple Search Ads attribution token, used to attribute installs to ad campaigns)
• Amazon Web Services (audio analysis via AWS Lambda in the EU, Stockholm region)
• OpenAI GPT models (for analysis insights, anonymized metadata only)
• AudD (song recognition, premium only)
• Sentry (crash reporting and stability monitoring, EU region)
• RevenueCat (in-app subscription management)

These services may store and process your data under their own privacy policies.

The requests to OpenAI, AudD and AWS Lambda are made directly from your device rather than through our servers, so each of these services also sees your device IP address, which they may use for security and abuse prevention under their own policies.

We use encryption, secure storage, and access controls to protect your data. However, no system is 100% secure, and you use the app at your own risk.

Depending on your location, you may have rights to:

• Access or delete your data
• Withdraw consent
• Object to analytics processing
• Opt out of personalized ads

Deleting your account also deletes the feedback and support messages linked to your email address. If a message cannot be deleted, we strip the email address from the record, so it can no longer be traced back to you.

You can manage ad personalization in the app’s Settings menu or in your device settings. Reinstalling the app resets the random install identifier that pseudonymous analytics data is linked to. For anything else, including access, deletion and objection requests, write to us at: info@alpaconaudio.com

You also have the right to complain to a data protection authority. In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom you can lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority of the country where you live, where you work, or where you believe the problem occurred (GDPR Article 77). In Turkey you can apply to us first and then, if our answer does not satisfy you, complain to the Personal Data Protection Board (Kişisel Verileri Koruma Kurulu) under Article 14 of the KVKK. You are welcome to raise the issue with us at the address above first, and we will do our best to resolve it.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Turkey, we have to tell you which legal ground we rely on for each kind of processing. The article references below are to the GDPR; the matching grounds under Turkish law are in Article 5 of the KVKK.

• Account data (your email address and account identifier): Article 6(1)(b), performance of a contract. We cannot create your account, sign you in, or keep your library available across sessions without it.
• Audio you record or upload, and the musical features we extract from it (key, BPM, chords, genre, instruments): Article 6(1)(b), performance of a contract. Analysing that audio is the service you asked for. The audio is processed and then deleted; no copy is retained.
• AI insights and song recognition (OpenAI, AudD): Article 6(1)(b), performance of a contract. Each request is sent only when you tap the control that starts it.
• Analytics (Firebase Analytics): Article 6(1)(f), legitimate interests, namely understanding which features are used and where the app fails so that we can improve it. You can object to this processing at any time by writing to us, and where local law requires consent for analytics we rely instead on Article 6(1)(a) and on the choice you make in the consent dialog.
• Advertising (Google AdMob, Google User Messaging Platform, Apple AdServices attribution): Article 6(1)(a), consent, collected through the Google consent dialog in the EEA and the UK and through the Apple App Tracking Transparency prompt on iOS. If you decline, we still show non-personalised ads, which rest on Article 6(1)(f), our legitimate interest in funding the free tier. You can withdraw consent at any time, and withdrawing it does not affect processing that already took place.
• Crash reporting (Sentry): Article 6(1)(f), legitimate interests, namely keeping the app stable, diagnosing crashes, and preventing abuse.
• Subscriptions (RevenueCat, Apple): Article 6(1)(b), performance of a contract. We have to validate your purchase and entitlement before Premium features unlock. Apple, not us, is the seller of record and keeps the payment and tax records that the law requires it to keep.
• Feedback and support messages: Article 6(1)(b), performance of a contract, when you write to us for help with the app, and Article 6(1)(f), our legitimate interest in improving SoundBud, when you send us a suggestion.

We keep each kind of data only as long as it is needed for the purpose it was collected for, and no longer.

• Audio you record or upload: deleted when the analysis finishes. It is held only in the temporary working space of the analysis function and never written to a database or object storage, so no copy is left behind.
• Account data (email address, account identifier, library entries): kept until you delete your account. Deleting your account removes it from our systems.
• Feedback and support messages: kept until you delete your account. Deleting your account also deletes the messages linked to your email address; if a record cannot be removed, your email address is stripped from it.
• Analytics data (Firebase Analytics): kept for 14 months from your last activity, and then deleted automatically.
• Crash reports (Sentry): kept for 90 days and then deleted automatically.
• Subscription records: held by Apple and RevenueCat for as long as their own policies and the accounting rules that apply to Apple require. On our side we keep only your current entitlement status, which goes when your account goes.

SoundBud is developed in Turkey and the services it relies on are not all in the same place. Audio analysis runs on AWS Lambda in the EU (Stockholm, eu-north-1), and crash reports are stored by Sentry in the EU (Frankfurt), so neither of those leaves the European Economic Area. The other services we use (OpenAI, AudD, Google for Firebase and AdMob, and RevenueCat) are operated by companies based in the United States, so data sent to them may be processed there or in other countries outside the EEA and Turkey. Those transfers are made under the European Commission Standard Contractual Clauses, which each of these providers includes in its data processing terms, together with the additional safeguards set out in those terms. Under Turkish law the same transfers rely on Article 9 of the KVKK, using the standard contract published by the Personal Data Protection Board where one applies, and otherwise your explicit consent. If you want more detail about a specific transfer, write to us at: info@alpaconaudio.com

SoundBud is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect data from children.

We may update this policy. We will notify you of any material changes in the app or through other means.

If you have questions about your privacy, contact us at: info@alpaconaudio.com

By downloading, accessing, or using SoundBud, you agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the app.

To use certain features, you may be required to create an account via Firebase Authentication. You agree to provide accurate information and are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your login credentials.

We use Firebase Analytics to collect pseudonymous usage data that helps us improve the app. That data is linked to an identifier which is your account ID when you are signed in, and a random install ID when you are not. We also collect and store your email address if you sign in, for authentication and app personalization purposes. Your data is handled according to our Privacy Policy, in compliance with relevant data protection laws (GDPR, CCPA, KVKK).

Our app displays advertisements using Google AdMob. These ads may be personalized based on your device activity. You may opt out of ad personalization in your device settings or via our Privacy Settings menu.

If you upload or record any audio in the app, you retain ownership of your content. By using the app, you grant us a limited license to process that content for feature extraction and analysis purposes only.

You agree not to use the app to:

• Violate any local, national, or international law
• Upload harmful, offensive, or copyrighted material
• Interfere with app security or functionality

All intellectual property related to the app (excluding user content) belongs to SoundBud and its creator. You may not reproduce, distribute, or modify any part of the app without permission.

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate your access if you violate these terms or misuse the app.

The app is provided “as is” without warranties. We are not liable for any damages arising from your use or inability to use the app.

We may update these Terms from time to time. Continued use after changes means you accept the new terms.

These Terms are between you and Alpino Tech (Alp Kurbetci), not between you and Apple. Apple is not responsible for SoundBud or for its content. Apple has no obligation to provide any maintenance or support for the app; if you need help, write to us and not to Apple. If the app fails to conform to any warranty that applies to it, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price of the app, if any; to the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation with respect to the app. We, not Apple, are responsible for addressing any claim that the app or your use of it infringes intellectual property rights, fails to meet a legal requirement, or gives rise to a product liability or consumer protection claim. You confirm that you are not located in a country subject to a United States government embargo or designated by the United States government as a terrorist supporting country, and that you are not listed on any United States government list of prohibited or restricted parties. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms, and once you accept these Terms Apple has the right to enforce them against you as a third-party beneficiary.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Turkey, without regard to conflict of law rules. Any dispute arising out of these Terms or out of your use of the app falls under the jurisdiction of the courts and enforcement offices of Istanbul, Turkey. If you use SoundBud as a consumer, nothing in this section removes the protection of the mandatory consumer law of the country where you live: you keep every right that law gives you, including the right to bring a claim before the consumer arbitration committee or the consumer court of your own place of residence.

For questions about these Terms, contact us at: info@alpaconaudio.com

The SoundBud iOS app links unmodified FFmpeg libraries (libavcodec, libavformat, libavfilter, libavutil, libavdevice, libswresample, libswscale) dynamically. They are embedded as frameworks inside the app bundle and built from the LGPL-licensed FFmpeg configuration. No GPL-only components (libx264, libx265, libvidstab, libxvid) are linked.

Copyright © FFmpeg contributors, https://ffmpeg.org

Copyright © 2018–2023 Taner Sener, https://github.com/arthenica/ffmpeg-kit

• BeatNet (CC-BY-4.0), Heydari et al.
• PANNs CNN14 (code MIT, pretrained weights CC BY 4.0), Kong et al.
• ISMIR 2019 Large-Vocabulary Chord Recognition (MIT), music-x-lab
• Basic Pitch (Apache-2.0, code and model weights), Copyright 2022 Spotify AB
• RNNoise (BSD-3-Clause), Xiph.Org Foundation; arnndn model files by Gregor Richards
• librosa (ISC), madmom (BSD-2), PyTorch (BSD-3), NumPy/SciPy (BSD)

• React Native (MIT), Expo (MIT), Expo Router (MIT)
• i18next + react-i18next (MIT), Zustand (MIT)
• Ionicons via @expo/vector-icons (MIT)
• Outfit font (SIL OFL 1.1), JetBrains Mono (SIL OFL 1.1)
• Firebase JS SDK (Apache-2.0)
• OpenAI Node SDK (Apache-2.0)
• react-native-google-mobile-ads (Apache-2.0)
• React Native Skia (MIT), Shopify; bundles Google Skia (BSD-3-Clause)
• react-native-fast-tflite (MIT), bundling TensorFlow Lite (Apache-2.0)
• react-native-reanimated (MIT), react-native-gesture-handler (MIT)
• RevenueCat SDK / react-native-purchases (MIT), Sentry React Native (MIT), react-native-svg (MIT)

This website self-hosts the two typefaces it uses. Next.js downloads Outfit and JetBrains Mono at build time and serves them from soundbud.alpaconaudio.com, which makes this site a distributor of both fonts, so their notices travel with it. Copyright 2020 The Outfit Project Authors (https://github.com/Outfitio/Outfit-Fonts). Copyright 2020 The JetBrains Mono Project Authors (https://github.com/JetBrains/JetBrainsMono). Both are licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1. The full license text is published at:

• SIL Open Font License 1.1: openfontlicense.org

Per LGPL-3.0 Section 4, users may obtain, modify, and relink the LGPL-licensed libraries used in the SoundBud app from the following upstream sources:

• FFmpeg: ffmpeg.org/download.html
• FFmpegKit: github.com/arthenica/ffmpeg-kit
• BeatNet: github.com/mjhydri/BeatNet
• PANNs: github.com/qiuqiangkong/audioset_tagging_cnn
• ISMIR 2019 Chord: github.com/music-x-lab/ISMIR2019-Large-Vocabulary-Chord-Recognition
• Basic Pitch: github.com/spotify/basic-pitch
• RNNoise: gitlab.xiph.org/xiph/rnnoise

The full canonical texts of the licenses referenced on this page are published by the Free Software Foundation:

• LGPL-3.0: gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.txt
• LGPL-2.1: gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.txt
• GPL-3.0: gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt

The same texts are bundled verbatim inside the SoundBud iOS app under Settings → Open Source Licenses, accessible offline.