Privacy Policy

The Australian Music Database (australianmusicdatabase.com) is a research archive of Australian music history, run by Mark Gibson. This policy explains what personal information the site collects, why it is collected, and what you can do about it.

The site is operated from Australia and handles personal information in line with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles.

What we collect

Most of the site can be browsed without an account and without giving us anything. We collect:

• Account details — if you create an account, your name and email address. Passwords are stored only as a salted hash, never in a form we or anyone else can read.
• Contributions — records you add or edit are attributed to your account, so we know who contributed what and can credit it.
• Donations — if you donate, we store the amount, a payment reference, which ad-free tier it granted, when that expires, and whether you chose to appear publicly on the Wall of Fame. We never see or store your card details — payment is handled entirely by Stripe.
• Quiz scores — if you play the trivia quiz while signed in, your score is saved to your account. Appearing on the public leaderboard is opt-in.
• Technical data — standard web server logs, which include IP address, browser type and the pages requested. These are used to keep the site running and secure.

Cookies

A single essential cookie keeps you signed in between visits. It is required for accounts to work at all and cannot be turned off while you are signed in.

When advertising is enabled, Google AdSense may also set its own cookies to measure and personalise ads. These are Google's cookies, governed by Google's own privacy policy, not ours. Donors on an ad-free tier are served no ads and therefore no advertising cookies.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing. We rely on a small number of service providers to run the site:

• Heroku — hosting and the database.
• Stripe — donation payment processing.
• Cloudinary — image hosting and delivery.
• Google AdSense — advertising, when enabled.
• Email delivery — for account emails such as verification and password resets.

Some of these providers operate servers outside Australia, which means your information may be stored or processed overseas.

Public information

Be aware that some things are public by design. Contributions are publicly attributed, and if you opt in, your name appears on the Wall of Fame or the trivia leaderboard. Everything else about your account stays private.

The historical records in the database — musicians, bands, recordings, gigs and venues — are research material about public figures and public events, not personal information collected from site visitors. If you are featured in the database and believe something is wrong or should not be there, please get in touch and we will look into it.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you;
• correct anything inaccurate;
• delete your account and personal information — see Data Deletion;
• remove your name from the Wall of Fame or the leaderboard.

Email australianmusichistory@gmail.com and we will respond within a reasonable time. If you are unhappy with how we have handled a privacy matter, you can escalate it to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Retention and security

Account information is kept while your account is open, and removed when you ask us to delete it. Donation records are kept longer where we need them for financial and tax purposes. Access to the database is restricted to the site's administrators.

Children

The site is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will remove it.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, the "last updated" date above will change with it. Please check back occasionally.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your information: australianmusichistory@gmail.com.