IndieHeart.com (“we” or “the Site”) posts this privacy policy to demonstrate our commitment to protecting your personal information and informing you about how we handle it. This privacy policy only applies to transactions and activities in which you engage, and data gathered, on the IndieHeart.com Website and through the IndieHeart RadioBar. Please review this privacy policy periodically as we may modify it from time to time. This privacy policy was last revised on December 31st, 2008. Each time you visit the Site or provide us with information, by doing so you are accepting the practices described in this privacy policy at that time.

When you visit the Site, we automatically collect your IP address and the web page from which you came. In order to administer and optimize the Site for you and to diagnose problems with our Site, we use your IP address to help identify you and to gather broad demographic information about you.

Like most Web sites, the Site uses cookies to keep track of your activities on the Site and enhance your experience on the Site. Third party advertisers on the Site may also place or read cookies on your browser. If you wish to disable these cookies, the “help” portion of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how. However, if you set your browser to disable cookies, you may not be able to access certain areas on the Site.

Additionally, Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our site. Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to site users based on their visit to our sites and other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

In order to operate the Site and to provide you with information about products or services that may be of interest to you, we may collect “personal information” (i.e. information that could be used to contact you directly without using the Site contact forms, such as full name, postal address, phone number or email address), “financial information” (i.e. PayPal addresses or credit card information) or “demographic information” (i.e. information that you submit, or that we collect, that is neither personal information nor financial information; this may include, but is not limited to, zip code, postal code, hometown, gender, username, age/birth date, purchase history information, browsing history information, searching history information, registration history information, and the content of communications between you and other members over the Site), subject to the rest of this paragraph. Demographic information is divided into two categories: 1) “non-public information”, which consists of purchase history information and one-on-one communications between you and other users of the Site; and 2) “public information”, which consists of all other demographic information.

We ask that you do not enter personal information or financial information into your “Profile” (for example, don't use your address or passcode as your username, or include your name or address in your written responses), because if you do then it may be posted publicly on the Site, and the information will then be treated as “demographic information” that is “public information.” Please note that nowhere on the Site do we knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13, as we require that all users represent to us that they are at least 13 years old.

On the Site, we place links to other Websites operated by other parties. Some of these other Websites contain our brand names and trademarks and other intellectual property that we own; others do not. When you click on these links and visit these other Websites, regardless of whether or not they contain our brand names, trademarks and other intellectual property, you need to be aware that we do not control these other Websites or these other Websites' business practices, and that this privacy policy does not apply to these other Websites. Consequently, the operators of these other Websites may collect different kinds of information about you, and may use and disclose that information in different ways than we would if it were collected on the Site. We encourage you to review their privacy policies and remind you that we will not be responsible for their actions.

We use your email address and your other personal information to help us efficiently operate the Site, to contact you in connection with your transactions and other activities on the Site (including, but not limited to, confirmation emails or important news that could affect your relationship with IndieHeart.com, and to forward messages to you from other IndieHeart.com users). These types of communications, are known as “Operational Communications.” In some cases, Operational Communications may also contain commercial messages, such as current contests and special offers.

We also use personal information to send you newsletters, information, offers and other promotional materials for IndieHeart.com. We do not send promotional offers from third parties except as contained within a Site newsletter (for example - a special offer on an artist CD). We attempt to send you information that is of value to you, such as artist newsletters, contest notifications or special event information. The Site provides you with options to decline to receive communications from IndieHeart.com (other than those contained in Operational Communications). Some of these options may only be for a certain category of communications; others may be more general. By posting a profile on the Site, you are opting in to receive the IndieHeart.com newsletter, which is never sent out more than once per month. To stop receiving the IndieHeart.com newsletter, click the “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the newsletter.

To operate the Site, including processing your transactions and supporting your activities on the Site, we may share your personal information with our service providers so they can provide us with support services for promotional fulfillment. We require these entities not to use your information for any other purpose.

By purchasing, or registering or making reservations for, products or services offered or sponsored by third parties on the Site, or electing to receive communications (such as emails or magazine subscriptions) or electing to participate in contests, sweepstakes or other programs (such as discount or rewards programs), offered or sponsored by third parties on the Site, you consent to providing your personal information directly to those third parties. Those third parties may use your personal information in accordance with their own privacy policies. You will need to contact those third parties to instruct them directly regarding your preferences for the use of your personal information by them.

Please read the information below under the heading “Special Cases in which we Share Personal and Financial Information” to learn more ways in which we may share your personal information.

IndieHeart.com does not collect any credit card information but utilizes secure technology from the participating third party to submit this information directly to the third party transaction processor. We do not obtain or keep a record of credit card information in our databases. By making a purchase, or engaging in any other kind of activity or transaction that uses financial information, on the Site, you consent to our providing your financial information to our service providers and to such third parties as we determine are necessary to support and process your activities and transactions, as well as to your credit card issuer for their purposes. These third parties may include the credit card companies and banking institutions used to process and support the transaction or activity.

By purchasing, or registering or making reservations for, products or services of third parties offered on the Site, or by participating in programs offered on the Site that are administered by third parties and that require you to submit financial information in order to use them, you also consent to our providing your financial information to those third parties. Any of these various third parties may be authorized to use your financial information in accordance with our contractual arrangements with such third parties and in accordance with their own privacy policies, over which we have no control, and you agree that we are not responsible or liable for any of their actions or omissions.

Additionally, you agree that we may use and disclose all such information so submitted to such third parties in the same manner in which we are entitled to use and disclose any other information that you submit to us. Please read the information below under the heading “Special Cases in which we Share Personal and Financial Information” to learn more ways in which we may share your financial information.

Your personal information or financial information may be passed on to a third party in the event of a transfer of ownership or assets. We may also disclose personal information or financial information when we determine that such disclosure is necessary to comply with applicable law, to cooperate with law enforcement or to protect the interests or safety of IndieHeart.com or at the request of verified copyright holders whose music has been uploaded without permission to The Site. Whenever personal information or financial information is disclosed under this paragraph, we may also disclose your demographic information along with it, on a non-anonymous basis.

We may review all demographic information. We may use public information to enable other users to find your profile and to communicate with you. We may use demographic information to tailor the Site and communications to your interests. We may also share demographic information with advertisers on an anonymous and aggregated basis (i.e., without telling the advertisers your identity). One of the reasons we may do this is to increase the likelihood that our advertisers' goods and services will appeal to IndieHeart.com users, so that we may target specific ads at specific demographic groups. Our sharing of demographic information with advertisers is anonymous (i.e., we do not tell advertisers which particular IndieHeart.com users are members of which demographic groups), subject to the rest of this privacy policy. When you respond to an advertisement, however, we ask you to remember that if that ad that is targeted to a demographic group and you decide to give the advertiser your personal information, then the advertiser may be able to identify you as being a member of that demographic group.

The Third Party (PayPal) that IndieHeart.com and/or Artists who sell CDs from the Site uses for transaction processing uses secure server software (SSL), which is the industry standard and among the best software available today for secure commerce transactions. It encrypts all of your personal and financial information as it travels over the Internet and stores your financial information on the Third Party servers in encrypted form. Your information may be transferred to and maintained on computer networks which may be located outside of the state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction in which you reside, and the country or jurisdiction in which these computer networks are located may not have privacy laws as protective as the laws in your country or jurisdiction.

If at any point we decide to use particular personally identifiable information in a manner different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify users by way of an email or by providing 30 days notice on the Site. Please note that we will continue to have the right to change our privacy policy and practices, and how we use your personally identifiable information, without notice, as described in the first paragraph of this Privacy Policy, provided that such changes shall only apply to information gathered on or after the date of the change.

We give you the opportunity to opt-out of certain communications and modify personal information or demographic information you have provided to us, and to hide demographic information from, or make demographic information visible to, the public users of the Site, at anytime by going to “Profile” section of “My Control Panel” after logging in to IndieHeart.com. You can opt out of Member Newsletters by clicking on the link provided at the bottom of the Newsletter.

Please be aware that it may take several hours for the changes you make to take effect on the public areas of the Site. We thank you for your patience. Please note that changing or deleting your information through the “Profile” section of “My Admin”, or otherwise opting-out of receipt of email communications from IndieHeart.com, will only change or delete the data in our database for purposes of future activities on the Site and for managing future communications from the Site. These changes and deletions will not change or delete emails or information that we may have already forwarded to other users or any other third parties, all as provided above in this privacy policy.

If you have any questions or concerns about this privacy policy, the practices of the Site, or your dealings with the Site, you can contact us at by sending an e-mail to IndieHeart Support.

Last updated December 30th, 2008 1:37 PM EST