Privacy policy

TrackClear Studio · last updated 13 October 2026

TrackClear Studio is a desktop application. It runs on your computer, and your music library stays there. This policy describes the few things that do leave your machine, exactly what they contain, and who receives them. It is written to be read rather than to be defensible.

1. The short version

Your audio files never leave your computer. Everything TrackClear works out about your library is stored locally on your own machine. There is no account with us, no analytics, and no telemetry in the application.

Four things do leave, and only when you ask for them:

• An audio fingerprint of a track — a numeric summary of the sound, from which the audio cannot be reconstructed — when you ask the app to identify it.
• The snippet video you choose to upload to your own YouTube channel, for clearance testing.
• Audio fingerprints and clearance outcomes, only if you switch on the shared clearance database.
• Your license key and an installation identifier, once, when you activate a purchase.

2. What stays on your computer

TrackClear stores its working data in your operating system’s application-data folder — on Windows, %APPDATA%\TrackClearStudio. That includes:

• A database of your library: file paths, tags, audio measurements, genres, BPM and key, duplicate groupings, and clearance results.
• Any notes you write against a track.
• Backups the app makes before it changes anything.
• An error log, written when something goes wrong. It is never sent anywhere. If you choose to attach it to a support email, that is you sending it, not the app.
• Your YouTube sign-in, described in the next section.

None of this is transmitted to us. We have no copy of your library and no way to obtain one. Deleting that folder deletes everything TrackClear knows about you.

3. Google and YouTube data

This section describes how TrackClear uses data from your Google Account. It applies only if you choose to use the clearance-testing feature; the rest of the application works without ever connecting to Google.

What we ask for, and why

How the sign-in is stored

When you connect your account, Google returns an authorization token. That token is stored in a file on your own computer and is never transmitted to us or to anyone else. We operate no server that receives, stores, or processes YouTube data. Disconnecting your account in the application’s settings deletes the stored token.

How that data is protected

The Google data TrackClear handles is the authorization token, the name and id of your channel (so Settings can show which account is connected), the id of the private test video it uploaded, and the read-only status of that video. This is how it is protected.

• In transit. Every request to Google travels over HTTPS (TLS), made through Google’s own client libraries. The sign-in itself happens in your web browser on Google’s pages; TrackClear never sees your Google password, only the token Google issues afterwards.
• At rest. The token is stored in a single file inside the application’s data folder on your computer. On Windows, TrackClear removes the inherited permissions from that file and grants access to your Windows user account alone. On macOS and Linux it sets the file to owner-only (mode 0600). The file is not included in the library backups the application makes, and it is not copied anywhere else. The channel name sits in a second small file in the same folder.
• Access. No server operated by TrackClear receives, stores or can read Google user data, so no member of staff, contractor or third party can access it. The token is used by the application on your computer only, and only to make the two kinds of request described above: uploading the test video and reading its status.
• Retention and deletion. The token is kept until you disconnect the account in Settings, revoke access at your Google Account, or delete the application’s data folder. Disconnecting deletes the token file and the cached channel name. When Google issues a fresh token, it replaces the old one in place. The video id is kept with the clearance batch it belongs to, on your computer, so results can be recorded against it; deleting the batch or the data folder removes it.
• Minimum scope. We request only youtube.upload and youtube.readonly, the least access that can create a private test video and read its status. The application makes three kinds of request and no others: upload the test video, read that video’s status, and read your own channel’s name. It has no code path that deletes or edits anything on your channel.
• If something goes wrong. Because Google user data never leaves your computer, a breach of our systems cannot expose it. If we ever learned that a fault in TrackClear itself had exposed Google user data, we would notify affected users by email and post a notice on this page without undue delay, and describe what happened and what to do.

Reading claim results

After an upload, TrackClear needs to know what Content ID claimed. The application never opens or reads YouTube Studio itself. You open the test video’s Claims page in your own browser, copy the page, and paste it into the application. TrackClear reads the claims out of the text you pasted, shows you how it matched them to your tracks, and saves the result only when you confirm.

The pasted text is stored on your own computer alongside the video it belongs to, as the record behind those results. Nothing you paste is sent to us or to anyone else.

Limited use

TrackClear Studio’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Specifically: Google user data is used solely to provide the clearance-testing feature you asked for. It is not sold, not transferred to third parties, not used for advertising, and not used to develop, improve, or train any generalized or non-personalized artificial-intelligence or machine-learning model. No human at TrackClear reads it, because it never reaches us.

YouTube API Services

The clearance-testing feature uses YouTube API Services. By connecting your YouTube account you also agree to the YouTube Terms of Service, and Google’s handling of your data is described in the Google Privacy Policy. TrackClear stores no YouTube data beyond the authorization token and your channel’s name, both deleted when you disconnect, and the id of the video it uploaded, kept with that batch on your computer so results can be recorded against it. None of it leaves your machine.

Revoking access

You can disconnect at any time from within the application, which deletes the stored token. You can also revoke TrackClear’s access directly from your Google Account at myaccount.google.com/permissions (Google’s security settings page, security.google.com/settings/security/permissions, leads to the same place). Videos TrackClear uploaded to your channel remain yours; delete them in YouTube Studio whenever you like.

4. Identifying your tracks

To work out what a badly named file actually is, TrackClear computes an audio fingerprint — a compact numerical summary of the sound, from which the audio cannot be reconstructed. Your audio files are never uploaded. There is no exception and no setting that changes this: every service listed below receives a fingerprint, never a sample of the sound itself.

These lookups are made because you asked the app to identify or classify your music. Each provider handles what it receives under its own privacy policy, linked above. Results are cached on your machine so the same track is never looked up twice.

5. The shared clearance database

TrackClear can pool clearance results between users, so that a track somebody else has already tested does not have to be tested again. This is switched off until you switch it on, in Settings, and you can switch it off again at any time.

While it is on, submitting a result sends:

• The track’s audio fingerprint and, where known, its ISRC and its MusicBrainz recording identifier — the reference number MusicBrainz uses for a recording. All three name the recording, not your copy of it and not you.
• The track title and artist.
• The clearance outcome and the date it was observed.
• Your country, because Content ID results differ by territory.
• A randomly generated installation identifier. It is created by the app, is not derived from your hardware, your name, or your Google account, and identifies nothing about you beyond grouping your own submissions together. Clearing the app’s local storage replaces it.

What is not sent: audio, file names, file paths, your library, your YouTube account, or your email address. The database is used to power shared clearance results and for nothing else. It is not sold and not shared with third parties.

6. Buying a license

Purchases are handled by our payment partner, a merchant of record named on the checkout page. They collect your payment details and billing information under their own privacy policy — we never see your card details. They pass us your email address and the fact that a purchase was made, so that a license key can be issued and sent to you.

When you activate that key, the application sends the key and an installation identifier to our license server, which returns a signed license token. That token is then verified on your own machine, offline, every time the app starts. We keep the email address and the license record for as long as the license exists, so that we can re-send a key you have lost and support you if something goes wrong.

7. This website

This site sets no advertising cookies and runs no third-party trackers. Visitor numbers are measured with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is privacy-preserving, does not use cookies, and does not build a profile of you across sites. Fonts are served by Google Fonts, which receives your IP address as part of that request.

8. What we never collect

• Your audio files. Not in whole and not in part beyond the identification sample described above.
• Usage analytics or telemetry from inside the application. There is none. The app does not report what you scan, what you play, or which features you use.
• Your YouTube data. It stays on your machine.
• Your payment details. They go to the storefront, not to us.
• Anything used to train an AI model. Nothing you give this application is used for that, by us or on our behalf.

9. Your rights and choices

Because almost everything lives on your own computer, most control is direct: delete the application’s data folder and the data is gone. For the little we do hold — your license record, your email address, and any clearance results you chose to contribute — you may ask us to show you what we have, correct it, or delete it. Write to [email protected] and we will respond within 3 business days.

If you are in the UK, the EU, or another region with equivalent law, you have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection, and the right to complain to your local data-protection authority. We rely on your consent for the optional shared database, and on the performance of our contract with you for licensing and support.

Deleting your contributed clearance results is possible on request. Note that a result already merged into the shared consensus cannot always be individually unwound — but it carries no information about you, only about a recording.

10. Changes and contact

If this policy changes in a way that affects what we do with your data, we will change the date at the top and say so in the application’s release notes. We will not quietly broaden what we collect.

The data controller is TRACKCLEAR STUDIO LLC, a New Jersey limited liability company, 180 Talmadge Road, IGO Bldg Suite #634, Edison, NJ 08817, United States. Questions about this policy go to [email protected].