SmartGroove respects your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains what personal data we collect, why we collect it, how it is stored, who it is shared with, and your rights over it. SmartGroove is operated by Yahav Avraham as a sole proprietorship in Israel and acts as the data controller for purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and analogous laws.
1. Data We Collect
1.1 Account data
When you create an account we collect your email address, display name, plan tier (Free / Pro / Studio / Beta), subscription status, and AI Credit balance. We do not collect payment-card data — that is handled entirely by our payment processor (see §3 below).
1.2 Project files (audio, MIDI, plugin state)
Your audio recordings, MIDI clips, plugin states, and SmartGroove project files stay on your local disk. SmartGroove does not upload, mirror, or back up your project content. One exception is under your control: AI features that generate audio to fit your existing music — contextual generation and repainting a selection — send the specific audio those features operate on (a short mixdown of the relevant section, or the clip you selected) to our AI audio-generation provider (§3 below) so the result matches your project. It is used only to produce your result, is not retained by us, and is not used to train any model. EULA §4 (No Model Training; Operational Logging) expands on this commitment.
1.3 AI prompts and interaction logs
Text prompts you send to the in-app AI assistant, the corresponding model responses, tool calls invoked, and minimal request metadata (timestamp, plan tier, user identifier) are logged on our hosted infrastructure for up to ninety (90) days, after which they are automatically deleted. We use these logs to tune our AI agent's behavior, debug the chat, generation, and tool-dispatch pipelines, detect abuse, and analyze aggregate usage patterns — not to train AI models. EULA §4 expands on this commitment.
To exercise your right to deletion of AI prompt logs before the 90-day automatic purge, email smartGrooveDev@gmail.com. Deletion requests are processed within thirty (30) days.
Prompts are also transmitted to our upstream AI model provider under commercial API terms that prohibit that provider from using API inputs to train models. We do not keep AI-generated audio output. Where a generated take is too large to return to you directly, it is written to temporary storage solely so your device can download it: it is reachable only through a short-lived link issued to you, and is deleted automatically within forty-eight (48) hours.
1.4 Microphone audio (speech-to-MIDI feature)
SmartGroove includes an optional speech-to-MIDI feature that uses a locally-installed model (whisper.cpp) to transcribe microphone input on your device. Microphone audio is processed entirely locally and is never transmitted to SmartGroove servers or any third party. You may grant or revoke microphone permission through your operating system's privacy settings.
1.5 Diagnostics & crash reports
If you are signed in, SmartGroove sends us diagnostic information about how the application is running. If you are not signed in, nothing is sent at all. Diagnostics are batched and sent roughly every twenty minutes and when you quit.
What we collect:
- Sessions — when a session starts and ends, your operating system, processor architecture, and app version.
- Audio performance — audio-callback counts, dropout and overrun counts, CPU load, audio device and buffer size, and how many tracks a project has.
- Feature and view usage — which controls you click, which view you are in, which plugins you load, and that a feature was used (for example that you exported, not what you exported).
- Errors and crashes — failures in the main application process, in the user interface, in the audio engine, in a plugin, and when a helper process or the interface itself stops unexpectedly. A crash report contains an error message truncated to 500 characters and a stack trace truncated to 15 frames, and nothing else. At most 20 are recorded per run.
What we never collect: your audio, your MIDI, your project files, the names of files you choose, or anything you type to the AI assistant. Before a crash report is stored we replace your home-directory path — which on Windows contains your account name — with a placeholder.
Diagnostics are processed on our behalf by our hosting provider (listed in §3) and are retained for up to thirty (30) days. We do not use a third-party analytics or crash-reporting service, and we do not sell or share diagnostics with anyone.
You can turn this off at any time in the app under Settings → General → Privacy → “Usage & crash reporting”. It is on by default. When it is off nothing is sent, and anything already held on your device is discarded rather than kept to send later.
Correction (September 2026): an earlier version of this section stated that SmartGroove did not collect telemetry or crash reports, and said that crash reporting would use Sentry. Both were inaccurate. Usage diagnostics have in fact been collected from signed-in users since early 2026, crash reporting shipped in version 0.6.0, and neither has ever used Sentry or any other third-party analytics or crash-reporting service — the data has always gone to our own infrastructure as described above. We have corrected this section rather than leave it standing, and the opt-out described above has been available throughout.
1.6 Server logs
Our hosted backend functions log technical metadata for each request (timestamp, request size, response status, anonymized IP, plan tier) for rate-limiting, abuse detection, and debugging. Logs are retained for up to thirty (30) days and are not used for advertising or profiling.
2. How We Use Your Data
We use your data only to:
- Provide the Service and Software (authenticate you, gate paid features, debit AI Credits).
- Improve the SmartGroove AI agent and underlying system — via the prompt logs described in §1.3 above — without training AI models.
- Process subscription payments and tax compliance (via our payment processor, acting as Merchant of Record).
- Communicate with you about your account, billing, security incidents, and material changes to these policies.
- Respond to abuse reports and enforce our Acceptable Use Policy.
- Find and fix crashes, audio dropouts, and performance problems, and understand which features are used — via the diagnostics described in §1.5 above, which you can turn off.
- Comply with legal obligations.
We do not use your data to train AI models, sell to advertisers, build behavioral profiles, or serve targeted advertising.
3. Third-Party Processors
SmartGroove relies on a small set of third-party processors. Each processor handles only the data necessary for its function:
- Our payment processor, acting as Merchant of Record — processes payments, collects and remits sales tax / VAT, sends billing notifications. Receives your email, billing address, payment-card data (which SmartGroove never sees), and subscription metadata. It is identified to you by name on its hosted checkout page and in your receipts.
- Our hosting provider — hosts our account database and authentication. Stores your email, display name, hashed password (if using email/password sign-in), plan tier, AI Credit balance, and subscription identifiers, together with the AI prompt logs (§1.3), the diagnostics and crash reports (§1.5), and the server logs (§1.6). It processes data in the EU (Frankfurt) region.
- Our AI model provider — receives AI text prompts via our proxy to generate model responses. Bound by commercial API terms that prohibit using API inputs to train models. Receives only the conversation prompt and minimal user-tier metadata.
- AI audio-generation provider — the compute service that runs our audio-generation models. Receives the generation parameters and, for features that fit new audio to your existing music (contextual generation, repainting a selection), the specific audio those features operate on. Processes it to produce your result and does not retain it; it is not used to train any model. Bound by the same contractual limits as the processors named above.
- Cloudflare — provides DNS, CDN, and hosting for smartgroove.app, and the temporary storage a generated take too large to return directly passes through on its way to your device. Receives standard web-request metadata (IP address, user-agent, request URL).
Each processor is contractually bound to use your data only for the purposes described above.
4. International Data Transfers
Our processors operate in several jurisdictions (United States, European Union, and others). Transfers from the EU/EEA are governed by Standard Contractual Clauses or equivalent safeguards adopted by each processor. SmartGroove itself, as an Israeli sole proprietorship, operates under Israel's GDPR-adequacy status as recognized by the European Commission.
5. Data Retention
- Account data: retained while your account is active; deleted within thirty (30) days after account closure, subject to any legal-hold obligation.
- AI prompt logs: up to ninety (90) days, then automatically deleted. See EULA §4 for the full retention & deletion regime.
- Generated audio in temporary storage: only takes too large to return to you directly pass through it, and they are deleted automatically within forty-eight (48) hours.
- Server logs: up to thirty (30) days.
- Billing records: retained by our payment processor per its own policy, and by SmartGroove for as long as tax law requires (up to seven years in Israel).
6. Your Rights (GDPR / CCPA)
You have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you.
- Correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
- Delete your data (the "right to be forgotten"), subject to legal-retention exceptions.
- Port your data to another service in a structured, commonly-used format.
- Object to or restrict processing in certain circumstances.
- Withdraw consent at any time where processing is consent-based.
- Lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority.
To exercise any of these rights, write to smartGrooveDev@gmail.com. We will respond within thirty (30) days. There is no charge for routine requests.
7. Children
SmartGroove is not intended for children under the age of sixteen (16) and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under that age. If you believe a child under sixteen has provided us with personal data, please contact us and we will delete it.
8. Security
We use industry-standard safeguards to protect your data: TLS encryption in transit, encrypted storage at rest with our processors, scoped API keys, and principle-of-least-privilege access. No system is perfectly secure; in the event of a data breach affecting your personal data, we will notify you and the relevant data-protection authority within seventy-two (72) hours as required by GDPR.
9. Cookies
See our Cookie Policy for details on the cookies used by the marketing site and account portal.
10. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. For material changes, we will provide at least thirty (30) days' notice via email or in-app notification before the changes take effect. The "Effective" date at the top of this document indicates the current version.
11. Contact
SmartGroove is operated by Yahav Avraham (Israel). For privacy questions or to exercise your data-subject rights, write to smartGrooveDev@gmail.com.