Secret Sound Echo — Privacy Policy

Effective date: September 18, 2026

REVIEW NOTICE. Draft for attorney review, not legal advice. It is written to match what the system actually does as of this date; if the system changes, this document must change with it.

Secret Sound Echo ("we") operates secretsoundecho.com — a live-show platform, artist showcase, and store. This policy explains what we collect and what we do with it.

What we collect

Accounts and profiles. Name, stage name, email, password (stored hashed by our auth provider), phone, Instagram, bio, links, photos, and — for artists — payout handles and payment handles you choose to make public.

At the door. Event sign-in: name, role, whether you're performing, contact details you provide, and your visit history with us.

What you write in response to a prompt. Where it goes depends on where you wrote it, and we tell you which is which at the time:

At an event. Responses to the Secret that drops during a night are private — visible only to you and Secret Sound staff. They are never shown to other attendees. A selected response may be published in a Secret Sound product under the consent you gave, with credit.
In the Writers Block. Work you post to a thought prompt — the recording and the words under it — is public once it goes up, on the prompt page and your profile, and is searchable. Work from someone who has stood in one of our rooms goes up straight away; everyone else's waits for a curator to look at it first.
In a writing session. Entries are hidden from everyone but you and that session's curator while the session runs, then reveal publicly on the session page when it closes, credited. You can take yours off the session page afterwards, and publishing it to your profile is a separate choice that stays yours. Drafts you never submit are never revealed. What is said in a session's chat is visible to the people in that session.

Applications. If you submit through our apply form: your name, stage name, email, Instagram, a link to your work, an optional audio or video clip, and any note you write. Applications are private — they are never published, and submitting one is not a booking.

Uploads. Photos, video, and audio you contribute through the platform: footage you shoot at a night, work you post to the Writers Block, video responses recorded after a session, backing tracks, and the images or video shown on the screen behind your set.

What you say in a room. Messages you post to a night's Echo Feed and to a writing session's chat, and the fact that you were present.

Recordings. Our events are recorded — house cameras, house audio, and photography. Attending and the consent you give at signup cover this; see "Your content" below.

Season pages. For selected features: your portrait, credited role, bio, and the contributions our team has switched to public appear on the public season page, with credit. Each feature also gets a personal share link whose social preview card carries their name and portrait. Nothing appears until a person on our team turns it on, and poems and songs appear as excerpts only.

Consent records. When you accept the Content Use Agreement at signup we record which version you accepted, the date and time, and the IP address it came from — so what you agreed to can always be shown exactly. If the agreement changes we ask you once more, and record that the same way.

Feature agreements. When you sign a Season Feature Agreement electronically we record the name you typed, the date and time, your IP address and browser, the version you agreed to, and an exact copy of the text you were shown. That record exists so the agreement is provable, and is kept for as long as the agreement matters.

Purchases. Orders, amounts, and delivery details, and any entry code issued with a purchase. Card details go to Stripe, our payment processor — we never see or store card numbers.

Email list. Address and subscription status if you sign up for updates.

Sponsors. Business contact details for the people and companies who present nights and seasons.

Technical. Login/session cookies and a mode cookie that routes our site. We use Vercel Web Analytics, which counts page views without cookies and without building a profile of you across sites. No advertising trackers. No third-party advertising cookies at all. We do not sell or share anything for advertising.

How we use it

To run events (check-in, queues, capacity), operate accounts, deliver purchases, pay artists (statements and payout records), send transactional email (receipts, resets, invites), send marketing email only with your opt-in and always with unsubscribe, and publish content that has been explicitly marked public by our team, with credit.

Your content

You own what you write, perform, and upload. What we may do with it is set out in the Content Use Agreement, which you accept once when you make your profile (and, for season features, the separate Feature Agreement).

Whether something you contribute is public depends on where you put it, and we say so at the time — see "What you write in response to a prompt" above. Your profile and your Writers Block work are public. Applications, unsubmitted drafts, door sign-ins, orders, payout records and statements are never public. Everything else appears only if our team publishes it.

We do not train artificial intelligence models on your material, and we do not permit anyone else to do so.

Sharing

Service providers only, to run the service: Supabase (database, auth, storage), Stripe (payments), Resend (email), Vercel (hosting and page-view analytics). Legal compliance if required. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for advertising.

Our providers store data in the United States. If you use the site from elsewhere, your information is processed there.

What other people can see: published season pages and the artist pages linked from them, the Writers Block and everything published on it, closed writing session pages, and public profiles. These are open to anyone with the link, including search engines and social platforms that fetch preview cards. Everything else — applications, responses to a night's Secret, unsubmitted drafts, session entries before the session closes, door sign-ins, orders, payout records, statements — is visible only to you and our staff.

Retention

Accounts and profiles: until you ask us to delete them. Order and payout records: retained as required for tax and accounting even after account deletion. Event history: retained as part of the operational record. Applications: kept while a season is being selected and for our records afterwards; ask us and we'll delete yours. Signed agreements and their signature records: kept for as long as the agreement has effect, including the tail rights that outlive a season. Recordings and published works: per your consent and any agreement. Writers Block work and closed writing sessions: kept as a permanent record of the prompt and the room, unless you take your own piece down. Unsubmitted drafts: kept for you, never published.

Your choices

Unsubscribe from marketing in any email, any time
Export: download a copy of everything we hold about you, from Settings, any time
Leave the directory: take yourself off Voices in Edit profile; your page stays reachable by its own link
Correction: ask us to fix wrong information
Deletion: close your account from Settings. Your profile, your writing, your recordings and their files, what you kept and who you follow are deleted outright. Payment records, signed agreements and the record of which nights you were in a room on are kept — the law requires the first and the others are not only about you — and they no longer carry your name.
Artists control which payment handles are public, per handle
Features can ask us to take any published item off their season block; the roster listing itself is part of the season record
Take down your own published work on the Writers Block, or withdraw a piece from a session page, at any time and without giving a reason
Withdraw your content consent by writing to us — it stops future use, and cannot recall what has already been pressed, printed, or released
Removal from a public page does not undo an agreement — what happens to recordings and products already made is governed by the Feature Agreement you signed

Requests: hello@secretsoundecho.com. We answer within 30 days.

Security

Row-level access controls on every operational table, hashed single-use expiring tokens for password and signing links, passwords hashed by our auth provider, HTTPS throughout, and card data handled entirely by Stripe. No system is perfect; we notify affected users of any breach as the law requires.

Children

You must be 13 or older to hold an account. If you are under 18, do not make a profile or contribute material without a parent or guardian's permission. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13, and we remove material we learn was contributed by someone under 18 without that permission. Events may have their own age policies set by the venue.

Changes

We'll post updates here with a new effective date. Material changes get notice by email to account holders.

Contact: hello@secretsoundecho.com · Clear Ear Corp, d/b/a Secret Sound Echo · Chicago, Illinois