Privacy policy

This policy covers everything called Ritmik: the website at ritmik.net, the Ritmik web app that runs in your browser, Ritmik for iPhone and iPad, Ritmik Handpan, and Ritmik for Android. They share one account and one set of rules, so they share one policy.

Ritmik is made by Studio Scale, the studio of Sevginur Ak Parlak, in Istanbul, Türkiye. That is who decides what happens to your information, and who you write to about it: sevgi@studioscale.co.

Every part of Ritmik works signed out. Write a rhythm, hear it back, print it, use the metronome, read the library: none of it asks who you are, and none of it asks for your name or your email address.

Signing in is optional, and it exists for one reason: so that the same scores and the same Ritmik Pro follow you between your phone, your tablet and your browser. What that adds is the next two sections. If you never sign in, those two sections never apply to you.

Signed out, the scores you write, your folders, your favourites and your settings stay on the device you wrote them on. In the apps that is the device's own storage, and if you use iCloud, iOS also keeps a copy in your personal iCloud account so your library follows your devices. That copy sits inside your Apple account: we cannot see it, reach it or recover it. In the browser, the score you are working on stays in that browser.

Signed in, your scores are also stored under your account in our database, which is Google Cloud Firestore in the European Union, so every Ritmik you sign in to shows the same library. A score is stored as the notation itself: the strokes, the note values, the time signature, the tempo, the title you gave it and any text you typed between the staff rows. We do not read it to build a picture of you, we never sell it, and it is never used for advertising.

Deleting a score deletes it everywhere you are signed in. Deleting your account deletes all of them, as described under your rights.

You sign in with Apple or with Google. The sign in itself happens at Apple or Google, not here, so we never see your Apple or Google password.

When you sign in, we store through Google Firebase Authentication: an account identifier, which is a random string that stands for you; your email address; which method you signed in with; and when the account was created and last used. If you use Sign in with Apple and choose Hide My Email, the relay address Apple gives us is the only one we ever see, and the only one we will write to.

We use it to recognise you across the apps, to keep your scores and your Ritmik Pro attached to the right account, and to answer you if you write to us for help. That is all. We do not send marketing email, because we do not send email at all. Your account identifier is never sent to analytics.

Delete account sits in the app, under Profile and then Account. It deletes your scores along with the account.

We never see or store your card details, wherever you buy.

In the apps, Ritmik Pro is sold by Apple on the App Store and by Google on Google Play. They take the payment and they hold the payment details. You can manage or cancel the subscription in your Apple or Google account settings.

On this website, Ritmik Pro is sold through Paddle (Paddle.com Market Ltd), which is the merchant of record. Paddle is the seller, takes the payment, works out VAT and sales tax, and is who your receipt comes from. Paddle receives what a purchase needs: your email address, your country for tax, and your payment details, which go to Paddle and its payment providers and never to us. What reaches us is that a purchase happened, for which plan, and the email address it used.

To know whether a subscription is active, and so to unlock Pro in every app, we use RevenueCat (RevenueCat, Inc., United States). RevenueCat receives your purchase history for Ritmik, meaning which plan, when it started, and its trial and renewal status, tied to your Ritmik account identifier, or to a random anonymous identifier while you are signed out. It is not used for advertising or for tracking.

To understand which parts of Ritmik are actually used, and so to decide what to improve next, the apps send anonymous usage statistics. They contain nothing that identifies you.

What is sent: that an event happened, plus a few details about it that cannot identify anyone. For example: the app was opened; a document was opened, and whether it came from the library or from your own files; playback started, and for how many seconds; which instrument was involved; which library rhythm was opened; a PDF was exported; the app's language; whether the device is an iPhone or an iPad; and whether the subscription is free or Pro. Counts of documents or measures are sent as ranges, for example "3 to 5" or "11 to 25", never as exact numbers.

What is never sent: your name, your email address or any contact details; your account identifier; the titles of your documents; the content of your rhythms; your files, PDFs or folder names; your location; your device's advertising identifier; or any Apple or Google identifier. Your IP address is not used to build a profile of you.

How you are counted: so that a returning player can be told apart from a new one, the app creates a random identifier the first time it runs, stores it on your device, and sends it scrambled, as a hash. It is not derived from you, your device or your account, and it cannot be turned back into any of them. Deleting the app erases it.

Who processes it: TelemetryDeck (TelemetryDeck GmbH, Germany), a privacy focused analytics service, on our behalf. The data is stored on servers in the European Union. TelemetryDeck does not sell data and does not use it for advertising.

No tracking, no ads: Ritmik carries no advertising and does not follow you across other apps or websites. We build no profiles, and we do not sell or share your information. In Apple's terms, what we collect is "not linked to you" and is "not used for tracking".

Hosting and server logs. ritmik.net is hosted by Vercel (Vercel, Inc.). Like every web server it records requests: which page, when, your browser's user agent and your IP address. These are ordinary server logs, kept to keep the site running and to see what is broken.

Visit statistics. The site uses Google Analytics to count visits and to see which pages are read. It sets cookies in your browser and sends Google your IP address, which Google uses to work out an approximate location and does not store. We read it as numbers by page, country and language. It tells us nothing about who you are, and the site carries no advertising.

Kept in your browser. Ritmik stores a few small values in your browser's own storage, which are not cookies and are not sent anywhere: the language you chose and your metronome settings. Clearing the site's data clears them.

Files your browser fetches elsewhere. The typefaces come from Google Fonts, and a few code libraries from Cloudflare's public code services, unpkg and cdnjs. Asking for a file tells them your IP address and your user agent, as it must for the file to arrive. They are given nothing else, and we set no cookies through them.

A shared Ritmik link carries the whole score inside the link itself, in the part after the #. A link fragment is never sent to a web server. So ritmik.net can see that someone opened a share page, but never which rhythm: there is no upload, no database and no copy on our side.

This is deliberate, and we have turned down the two things that would have broken it: putting a summary of the rhythm in the address, which would send it to our logs and to whichever messenger drew the preview, and keeping scores on a server to make links shorter, which would mean holding a copy of everyone's music.

When you export a score as a PDF, the file is made on your own device. Where it goes next is entirely up to you.

Ritmik lets you send a worksheet you have written, for possible publication in the app's library. This only ever happens when you choose it, fill in the form and tick the consent box.

What is sent: the worksheet itself as a PDF; the name you type to be credited with it; the instrument, your app language and the app version; and the wording of the consent you agreed to. If you leave your email address, it is optional: we use it only to reply to you and to send your free week of Pro, and we delete it once that is done. Leave it out and we simply cannot reply or send the free week.

Where it goes: to storage we run at Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc.), and a notification email to us. It is used to review the submission and, if we publish it, to credit you in the library. It is never sold, never used for advertising and never added to any profile of you.

Changing your mind: write to us and we will take your worksheet out of the library and delete the copy we hold.

These are every company that touches any of it, and the only thing each one is given:

Each of them receives only what its row describes, and only to do that job for us. None of them may use it for their own purposes. We do not sell your information, and none of it goes into advertising.

Accounts, scores and the usage statistics are stored in the European Union. RevenueCat is in the United States, and Paddle, Vercel and Cloudflare operate worldwide. Where data does reach a country outside the European Union or Türkiye, it travels under the standard contractual clauses in our agreement with that company.

• Your account and your scores: until you delete them, or until you delete your account, which deletes both at once.
• Purchase records: as long as tax law requires us and Paddle to keep them.
• Server logs: a short period, then they roll off.
• A worksheet you sent us: until we have reviewed it, and, if we publish it, for as long as it is in the library, so that we can keep crediting you.
• Usage statistics: they cannot be linked to a person, so they are kept as counts.

If you have an account, you have the usual rights over what we hold: to see it, to correct it, to have it deleted, to receive a copy of it, to have us hold less of it, and to object to what we do with it. Delete account, in the app, does the deletion immediately and takes your scores with it. For anything else, write to sevgi@studioscale.co and we will answer within a month.

If you have never signed in, we hold nothing personal about you at all, so there is nothing for us to look up, correct or delete, with one exception: a worksheet you chose to send us. The usage statistics cannot be traced back to a person, so there is nothing in them we could find or remove for you either.

If you are in Türkiye, KVKK (Law 6698) gives you these rights and the address above is where to use them. If you are in the European Union, the EEA or the United Kingdom, the GDPR applies, and you can also complain to your national data protection authority.

Ritmik is suitable for all ages. It carries no advertising, does not track anyone, and has no way for one player to reach another. Signed out it collects nothing personal from anybody, children included. We do not knowingly hold personal information about a child under 13; if you are a parent or guardian and believe we do, write to us and we will delete it.

If Ritmik changes in a way that affects your privacy, we will update this page and change the date at the top. For anything significant we will say so in the app and on this site rather than quietly editing the page. Ask us and we will tell you what an earlier version said.

Write to sevgi@studioscale.co, or use the contact page. Studio Scale, Istanbul, Türkiye.