Privacy & Cancellation Policy

Cancellations and refunds

Can’t make it? Request a cancellation from your Membership page (sign in with the email you used to buy) at least 48 hours before the first session.

• Members get what they paid back as credits toward any future course. 1 credit is $10, amounts round up to the next whole credit, and credits never expire.
• Guests (you bought a course without a membership) get a refund to your card, minus the processing fee our payment provider keeps (about 3%).

Any credits used on a course always come back as credits.

Cancellations can’t be made from your account after that, or once a course has started. If something has come up, email commons@foundsoundnation.org and we’ll see what we can do. Because recordings are shared with everyone registered, we usually can’t offer a refund or credit once a course is underway.

If we cancel a course, members get its full value back as credits and Guests get a full refund to their card. Members who’d prefer a card refund can email commons@foundsoundnation.org. If we reschedule and the new dates don’t work for you, you can request a cancellation any time before the new first session.

Credits can’t be exchanged for cash.

What we collect

Account and profile. Your email address, your name, a username (made from your name unless you choose one), and whatever you add to your profile: photo, city and country (which also places you on the community map), timezone, discipline, interests, bio, links, and featured works, including any audio you upload. The profile fields are optional; the email address is required because it is how you sign in.

What you make and do here. Posts, replies, messages, listings, shared resources, featured works, song submissions, class enrollments, the class materials you open, attendance at sessions, connections, the people you block, and whether you are shown as online (a setting you control). Direct messages are stored so they can be delivered and shown to you and your recipient; we do not read them except where required to investigate abuse.

Purchases. A record of what you bought, when, and for how much, along with any credits and cancellation requests (including a note, if you add one). Payments are processed by Stripe; your card number never touches our servers and we cannot see it.

Sign-in and activity records. When you sign in, which days you visit, and whether the emails we send you were delivered, so we can understand whether the Commons is alive and being used. System logs (such as IP addresses in hosting logs) exist for operation and security, as with any website.

Without an account. If you join the waiting list, propose a course, or book an onboarding session, we keep the name, email address and details you give us (for a session, your timezone, the times you can make, and any note).

Found Sound Nation alumni and applicants

If you have taken part in or applied to a Found Sound Nation program, our staff keep records from those programs here, so we can recognize alumni when they join and understand how the alumni network is doing. These can include your name, email addresses, location, photo and links; the program, role and year you took part in; your applications and their outcomes, including the gender and date of birth you gave when applying; your answers to alumni surveys; whether you have donated (not how much); the Found Sound Nation email groups you belong to; and, for WhatsApp groups we run, your display name, phone number, and how often you post, never what you write. Only our staff can see these records.

Analytics, without cookies

We use PostHog, hosted in the European Union, to understand how the site is used: which pages get visited, what gets clicked, how long people actively spend on them, and where the signup and checkout flows lose people. It runs without storing analytics cookies or identifiers on your device. When you are signed in, this usage is linked to your account, because “does this member actually use what they paid for” is a question we need to answer honestly. PostHog sees your email address, and your name and username if you have added them, so we can tell whose visit a recording is. Admin accounts are excluded so our own clicking does not distort the numbers.

Session replay. Across the site, we may record a replay of how a page was used: scrolling, clicking, where people pause. Anything you type is masked. Private messages are kept out of recordings entirely: your conversations, message previews and requests, and who you are messaging never reach PostHog. Card entry happens on Stripe’s pages, which we cannot record. We use these replays to find what is confusing or broken and make the site easier to use, nothing else.

We may also measure how fast pages load with Vercel Speed Insights (which page, what kind of device, how long it took), and class videos report playback quality to Mux. Neither uses cookies or identifies you. The only cookies and browser storage the site itself sets are functional: the one that keeps you signed in, and small remembered choices such as a folded section of the menu.

Email

We send sign-in links, purchase confirmations, and access notices through Resend. These are transactional: they exist so the product works. Optional notification emails are off until you turn them on in your settings, and anything resembling marketing is opt-in and can be objected to at any time, no justification needed.

Where your data lives

We use a small set of service providers as data processors: Vercel (hosting, file storage such as photos and uploaded audio, and page speed), Neon (database), Upstash (caching and rate limiting, which briefly uses your IP address), Stripe (payments), Resend (email), Mux (video), Pusher (realtime delivery, including of messages), PostHog EU (analytics), and Mapbox (the place search when you type a city). Each processes data only to provide its service to us. Some of these providers operate in the United States, so using the Commons involves transferring data there; where European data protection law applies, these transfers rest on the providers’ standard contractual safeguards.

A few things load from other services directly in your browser, which then sees your IP address: the picture on a link preview in chat comes from the linked site itself, and videos and music that members embed come from YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud or Bandcamp, which may set cookies of their own under their own policies.

How long we keep things

Analytics and replay data is kept only as long as it remains useful for understanding how the Commons is used. Your account, content, and purchase records are kept for as long as your account exists, and purchase records as long as tax and accounting law requires.

There is no delete button yet: to close your account, email privacy@foundsoundnation.org. We remove your profile and personal details and take down what you posted, keeping only the purchase records the law requires. If you are a Found Sound Nation alum, your alumni record is separate from your account; ask and we will delete that too.

Your rights

You can ask us at any time to: access a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to its processing, receive it in a portable format, or withdraw a consent you previously gave. Where processing rests on our legitimate interests you may object on grounds relating to your situation; for anything resembling direct marketing you may object unconditionally. You can also lodge a complaint with your data protection authority.

Requests are free, go to privacy@foundsoundnation.org, and we answer as quickly as a small team can, within whatever timelines the law requires.

Legal bases

Where European data protection law applies, we process personal data because: it is necessary to provide the service you signed up for (account, content, purchases, transactional email); we have a legitimate interest in understanding and improving the Commons (analytics, the alumni records above, security, logs); the law requires it (payment records); or you have consented (anything optional, which you may withdraw).

Personal data may also be used to establish or defend legal claims or where public authorities lawfully require disclosure.

Changes and small print

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will note it here, and ask for consent again where the law requires it. The date at the top is the date of the last change. This site does not respond to browser “Do Not Track” signals; our answer to tracking is the cookieless setup described above. This policy covers Found Sound Commons only, including the program records our staff keep here, not other Found Sound Nation sites or programs.