Privacy notice

Hot Soap Studios Ltd runs this website and is responsible for your personal data here. In this notice, “we” and “the studio” mean Hot Soap Studios Ltd.

Write to that address with any question about your details.

The website has three forms. Nothing reaches us until you press send, and sending a form sends us one email. It doesn’t create an account or add you to a list. Fields marked with a star are the ones we need in order to answer you. You can always call or email us instead.

Contact

The subject, your name, email, phone and your message. We use them to answer you.

Booking

The services you want, the engineer if you choose one, your project and what you need from it, session length and dates, your name, email and phone, and your artist or band name, company and role. We use them to reply to you, confirm dates and give you a quote.

Artist Residency

Your name, artist or band name, email, telephone and role, your bio, your vision for the EP or album, links to your website and music pages, and links to your demo tracks. We use them for the panel’s review and to contact you about your application.

When you press send, the website passes your details on as one email to welcome@hotsoapstudios.com. There is no database behind the forms, so the website itself keeps no copy. You don’t get a copy by email: the confirmation on the screen is your receipt.

• To answer you and to deal with your booking or application: you asked us to, and it can lead to an agreement between us.
• To run the website, keep it secure and keep spam out: we have a legitimate interest in a website that works and is safe.
• To keep an email trail, because people sometimes ask us about old projects: we have a legitimate interest in being able to answer them.
• To add you to a mailing list or copy your details anywhere else: only if you agree. You can withdraw your agreement at any time by writing to us.

Cloudflare: hosting

Cloudflare hosts this website, so like any web host it sees your IP address and the pages you ask for. It also limits how many times a form can be sent from one connection.

Cloudflare: the spam check

When you start using a form, your browser loads Cloudflare’s Turnstile. When you press send, it looks at technical details such as your IP address and your browser, to tell people from bots, and shows a box only if it is unsure. Cloudflare also uses these details to improve its bot detection, and for that use it is responsible itself. If the check fails, you can still call or email us.

Cloudflare: delivering the email

For each form sent, Cloudflare keeps a record of the sender, the recipient and the subject line for up to 31 days. The subject line holds your name and what the form is about: the services you chose, the subject you picked, or your artist or band name. People who look after the website for us, such as our web developer, may see these records.

Google: the studio’s email

Google runs the studio’s mailbox, so it holds your form email for us.

Google Fonts and jsDelivr: every page

The website’s typefaces come from Google Fonts and some of its code comes from jsDelivr, a public code library. Your browser fetches them on each page, so both see your IP address.

YouTube: preview pictures

The preview pictures of some videos, on pages such as Music Videos and Artist Residency, come from YouTube. Your browser fetches them when they come near the screen, before you press play, so YouTube sees your IP address.

The residency panel

Applications are reviewed by a small panel, mainly from inside the studio.

Some of these companies are based in the United States or use servers outside the EU, so your details can leave the EU. Each one explains how it handles data in its own notice: Cloudflare (opens in a new tab), Turnstile (opens in a new tab), Google and YouTube (opens in a new tab), jsDelivr (opens in a new tab).

These stay off until you press them. Pressing one loads the other company’s player or map, which then sees your IP address and can set cookies or store data in your browser, under that company’s own notice: YouTube and Google Maps (opens in a new tab), Vimeo (opens in a new tab), Kuula, the 360° tour (opens in a new tab).

The website sets no cookies of its own, and it uses no analytics, advertising or tracking tools.

It keeps a few small notes in your browser for the length of your visit, such as that you have already seen the opening animation. They hold nothing about you, they don’t leave your browser, and they go when you close the tab.

Cloudflare’s spam check stores a small technical item in your browser when it runs. If Cloudflare needs to check a connection, it may also set a security cookie. These are for security, not for advertising.

We usually keep form emails in the studio’s mailbox with no fixed end date, because people sometimes ask us about old projects and we need the email trail. We delete old enquiries that never became a project. You can ask us to delete yours at any time. Cloudflare keeps its delivery records for up to 31 days.

Under the GDPR, you can ask us:

• for a copy of the details we hold about you
• to correct them
• to delete them
• to limit how we use them
• to give them to you in a form you can pass to someone else

You can object at any time to any use based on our legitimate interest, including the email trail.

Write to welcome@hotsoapstudios.com. It’s free, and the law gives us one month to answer.

You can complain to the data protection authority in Cyprus. You don’t have to contact us first.

The Commissioner’s website explains how to lodge a complaint (opens in a new tab). If you live or work in another EU country, you can also complain to the authority there.

This notice covers this website only. Links to Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, Instagram, Facebook and other websites take you to pages with their own privacy notices.

If the website changes what it does with your details, we will change this page and the date at the top.