Last Updated: September 2026

Welcome to Hits Culture. This Privacy Policy applies to hitsculture.com and any pages, newsletters, submission tools, and services we operate under the Hits Culture name (together, the "Site").

Our mission is to help you Discover, Learn, and Grow through curated music information, expert guides, and artist submissions. We can only do that if you trust us with your information, so this policy explains plainly what we collect, why we collect it, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the choices you have. If anything here is unclear, we would rather you ask than guess. You can reach us any time through the contact page.

By using the Site, you agree to the practices described in this policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Site.

1. Information We Collect

We collect information in three ways: information you give us directly, information collected automatically when you use the Site, and information we receive from third parties.

A. Information You Provide to Us

Visitor Accounts: You may create a free account to follow and save the music, artists, and labels you like. When you register, we collect your name or display name, email address, and password (stored in hashed form, never in plain text). As you use your account, we also collect your saved items, follows, likes, ratings, playlists, and other interactions so we can personalize your experience.
Artist, Producer, and Label Accounts: Music professionals may create accounts to submit releases for editorial consideration. For these accounts we collect your name, stage or company name, email address, phone number (optional), location, links to streaming profiles and social media, press materials, cover art, audio files, biographies, and any other information you choose to include in a submission.
Newsletter Sign-Ups: If you subscribe to a Hits Culture newsletter, we collect your email address and, optionally, your name and genre interests.
Comments, Messages, and Correspondence: When you leave a comment, respond to a poll, participate in a contest or giveaway, submit a tip, or contact us, we collect the content of that communication along with your contact details.
Purchases and Paid Services: If we offer paid submissions, memberships, or merchandise, payment is handled by a third-party payment processor. We receive confirmation of the transaction and limited details (such as the last four digits of a card) but we do not store full payment card numbers on our servers.

B. Information Collected Automatically

When you visit the Site, our servers and analytics tools automatically log standard technical information sent by your browser or device, including:

Your IP address and approximate location (city or region level) derived from it.
Browser type and version, device type, screen size, operating system, and language settings.
The pages you visit, the links you click, the search terms you use on the Site, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on each page, and the site or ad that referred you to us.
Interactions with embedded media, such as whether you played a track or video.

If you are logged in, this technical data may be associated with your account so we can remember your preferences and improve your recommendations.

C. Information from Third Parties

Social Sign-In: If we offer login through a third-party service (such as Google or Apple), that service sends us basic profile information you have authorized it to share, typically your name, email address, and profile image.
Public Music Data: To build artist and release pages, we collect publicly available information from streaming platforms, label websites, press releases, and music databases. This may include an artist's public name, discography, biography, and images.
Advertising and Analytics Partners: As described in Section 4, our advertising partners may share aggregated or pseudonymous information with us about how ads perform on the Site.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

To run the Site: creating and managing your account, saving your preferences, displaying your saved music, and processing artist submissions.
To personalize your experience: recommending artists, releases, and guides based on what you follow and read.
To publish and promote music: reviewing submissions, contacting artists and labels about coverage, and, where you have submitted material for that purpose, publishing your name, artwork, biography, and links on the Site and our social channels.
To communicate with you: sending account notices, responses to your inquiries, submission status updates, and, if you have opted in, newsletters and editorial updates. Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link.
To keep the Site free: serving advertisements, measuring their performance, and limiting how often you see the same ad.
To understand and improve the Site: analyzing traffic, testing new features, and fixing problems.
To protect Hits Culture and our users: detecting spam, fraud, abuse, unauthorized access, and violations of our terms; enforcing our policies; and complying with legal obligations.

We do not use your personal information to make automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.

3. How We Share Your Information

We do not sell your name, email address, or account details to data brokers or marketing lists. We share information only in the following circumstances:

Service Providers: We work with vendors who host our servers, deliver email, process payments, provide analytics, protect against spam, and help us operate the Site. These providers may access personal information only to perform services for us and are bound by confidentiality obligations.
Advertising Partners: Third-party ad networks collect information through cookies and similar technologies as described in Section 4. Under some state privacy laws, allowing advertising partners to collect data for targeted advertising is considered a "sale" or "sharing" of personal information, and you have the right to opt out (see Section 9).
Public Content: Anything you choose to make public, including a public profile, a comment, or a music submission intended for publication, is visible to other users and may appear in search engines. Please do not include information in these areas that you would not want made public.
Our Network Sites: Hits Culture is part of a family of related publications. We may share aggregated, non-identifying audience data across those sites. We do not share your account credentials with other sites without your consent.
Legal Requirements: We may disclose information when we believe in good faith that doing so is required by law, subpoena, or court order, or is necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of Hits Culture, our users, or the public.
Business Transfers: If Hits Culture is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you by email or a prominent notice on the Site before your information becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
With Your Consent: We may share information for any other purpose you have specifically approved.

4. Advertising and Third-Party Data Collection

To keep our content free, we serve advertisements on hitsculture.com. Here is how that works and what it means for you:

Third-Party Ad Networks: We partner with advertising networks and exchanges, including Google AdSense and Google Ad Manager, that may place cookies or use similar identifiers to collect information about your visits to this and other websites. They use this information to show you ads they believe are relevant to your interests and to measure ad performance. These partners operate under their own privacy policies, and we do not control the data they collect.
Google Services: We use Google products to analyze traffic and curate and syndicate content. Google may collect certain user data as part of these services, governed by Google's Privacy Policy. You can learn how Google uses information from sites that use its services at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites, and adjust your ad settings at adssettings.google.com.
Embedded Media: Artist pages and articles often include embedded players from services such as YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, and Bandcamp, and embedded posts from social platforms. When you load a page with an embed, that third party may set cookies and collect data as if you had visited its site directly.
Your Advertising Choices: You can opt out of interest-based advertising from many participating networks through the Digital Advertising Alliance at optout.aboutads.info, the Network Advertising Initiative at optout.networkadvertising.org, and, for users in Europe, youronlinechoices.eu. On mobile devices, you can limit ad tracking in your device settings. Opting out does not mean you will stop seeing ads; it means the ads you see will be less tailored to you.

5. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We use cookies, pixels, local storage, and similar technologies. A cookie is a small file placed on your device that lets a website recognize your browser. We use the following types:

Strictly Necessary Cookies: Required to keep you logged in, remember your session, secure the Site, and enable core features. These cannot be turned off without breaking the Site.
Functional Cookies: Remember your preferences, such as saved music, display settings, and whether you have dismissed a notice.
Analytics Cookies: Help us understand how visitors use the Site, which pages are popular, and where the Site can be improved. This data is aggregated and does not identify you by name.
Advertising Cookies: Set by our advertising partners to deliver relevant ads and measure their effectiveness across sites.

Most browsers let you refuse or delete cookies through your settings. If you disable cookies, you may not be able to log in to your account or use certain features. Where required by law, we will ask for your consent before setting non-essential cookies. We honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC) browser signal as a valid request to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information in jurisdictions that recognize it.

6. Artist Submissions and Published Content

When you submit music, artwork, or promotional material to Hits Culture, you are asking us to consider it for editorial coverage. Please understand that:

Information you include in a submission that is intended for publication (such as your artist name, biography, cover art, and streaming links) may be published on the Site, in our newsletters, and on our social media accounts, and may remain publicly available after publication.
Private contact information you provide in a submission (such as a personal email address or phone number) is used only to communicate with you about your submission and is not published.
You are responsible for ensuring you have the rights to submit any material and that any personal information about other people (such as collaborators) is shared with their permission.
Submitting music does not guarantee coverage. We retain submission records so we can track what we have reviewed and avoid duplicate consideration.

7. Third-Party Links

The Site contains links to external websites, streaming platforms, ticketing services, artist stores, and other resources. Hits Culture is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of these external sites. A link from Hits Culture is not an endorsement of a third party's privacy practices. We encourage you to read the privacy policy of any website you visit that collects personal information.

8. Data Retention

We keep your personal information only as long as needed for the purposes described in this policy, unless a longer period is required by law. In general:

Account information is kept while your account is active. If you delete your account, we remove or anonymize your profile and saved items within 30 days, except for information we must keep for legal, security, or accounting reasons.
Artist submissions are kept for as long as the material is under consideration or published, plus a reasonable period afterward for our editorial records.
Newsletter subscriptions are kept until you unsubscribe. We keep a record of your unsubscribe request so we do not email you again.
Server logs and analytics data are typically kept in identifiable form for no more than 26 months and in aggregated form thereafter.
Correspondence is kept as long as necessary to resolve your inquiry and for a reasonable period afterward.

9. Your Privacy Rights and Choices

Regardless of where you live, we offer everyone the following choices:

Access and Update: You can review and update your account information at any time by logging in to your account or contacting us.
Delete: You can request that we delete your account and associated personal information.
Marketing Opt-Out: You can unsubscribe from newsletters and marketing emails using the link at the bottom of any message or by contacting us. We will still send you essential account notices.
Cookies and Ads: See Sections 4 and 5 for how to manage cookies and opt out of interest-based advertising.

New York Residents. Hits Culture is based in New York. We maintain reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards for private information as required by the New York SHIELD Act, and we will notify affected New York residents and the appropriate authorities in the event of a data breach involving their private information, as the law requires.

California and Other U.S. State Residents. If you live in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana, New Jersey, or another state with a comprehensive privacy law, you may have additional rights, including the right to know what personal information we collect and how we use and share it, the right to correct inaccurate information, the right to delete your information, the right to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information and of targeted advertising, the right to limit the use of sensitive personal information, and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights. Because our advertising partners collect data through cookies, you can exercise your opt-out right through the Global Privacy Control signal, the industry opt-out tools listed in Section 4, or by contacting us. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16. You may appoint an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf; we will verify the agent's authority and your identity before acting. If we deny your request, you may appeal by contacting us and stating that you are appealing our decision.

Residents of the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, and Switzerland. If you are located in these regions, we process your personal data on the following legal bases: performance of a contract (to provide your account and respond to submissions), your consent (for newsletters and non-essential cookies, which you may withdraw at any time), our legitimate interests (to operate, secure, and improve the Site and support it through advertising), and compliance with legal obligations. You have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict, or object to the processing of your personal data, the right to data portability, and the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority. Because Hits Culture operates from the United States, your data will be transferred to and processed in the United States, which may not offer the same level of data protection as your home jurisdiction. We rely on appropriate safeguards, such as standard contractual clauses with our service providers, where required.

How to Exercise Your Rights. Submit a request through our contact page, or by email to the address listed there, with the subject line "Privacy Request." We will confirm receipt, verify your identity by matching the information you provide with what we have on file (for example, by confirming the email address associated with your account), and respond within 45 days, or sooner where the law requires. We will not charge a fee for a reasonable request.

10. Data Security

We use industry-standard safeguards to protect your information, including encryption of data in transit (HTTPS/TLS), hashed password storage, secure server hosting with access controls, regular software updates, and limiting employee and contractor access to personal information on a need-to-know basis. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

You play a part in keeping your account safe. Please choose a strong, unique password, do not share your login credentials, and log out when using a shared device. If you believe your account has been accessed without authorization, contact us immediately. If we learn of a security incident that affects your personal information, we will notify you and any applicable regulators as required by law.

11. Children's Privacy

Hits Culture is intended for a general audience and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, and we do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it promptly. If you are under 18, please do not include personal information beyond what is necessary in comments or submissions, and consider asking a parent or guardian before submitting music for coverage.

12. Do Not Track

Some browsers offer a "Do Not Track" (DNT) setting. Because there is no common industry standard for responding to DNT signals, the Site does not currently respond to them. As noted in Section 5, we do honor the Global Privacy Control signal where the law recognizes it.

13. Changes to This Policy

Hits Culture reserves the right to update this policy at any time to reflect changes in our practices, technology, or legal requirements. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated "Last Updated" date. If we make a material change to how we use your personal information, we will provide more prominent notice, such as an email to registered users or a banner on the Site, before the change takes effect. We encourage you to review this policy periodically. Your continued use of the Site after changes are posted means you accept the updated policy.

14. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, your user account, a submission, or how your data is handled, or if you wish to exercise any of the rights described above, please contact us HERE. We take every privacy inquiry seriously and aim to respond within a few business days.