Privacy & Data
Scottish Hip Hop Charts (SHHC) is an independent chart, discovery and historical documentation project for Scottish hip-hop. SHHC determines why and how information is used for this service. We use a limited amount of public, submitted and professional information to measure chart movement, catalogue releases and events, review eligibility, operate the website, manage professional relationships and improve coverage of the scene.
Privacy contact: use the Report an issue page and choose Privacy / data protection request. That route creates a private, deadline-tracked request record.
Public music and artist information
SHHC can record factual information that artists, labels, venues, promoters and music platforms make publicly available. This can include artist or stage names, public profile and release URLs, release dates, platform identifiers and counters, public credits, event details, public professional/location context, and evidence relevant to Scottish eligibility.
Artists do not need to submit a public release before SHHC can discover or catalogue it. Inclusion means that a release or artist meets the relevant SHHC measurement or catalogue criteria; it is not an endorsement.
Where information comes from
Information can come directly from a submission or enquiry, from SHHC's own historical records, or indirectly from public music platforms, public artist/label/venue/promoter pages, public event listings, public professional sources and limited web research used to verify music-scene facts. SHHC keeps source/provenance records where they are useful for accuracy and audit.
Why we use this information
Where public or professional information is personal data, SHHC may rely on legitimate interests to use the minimum information reasonably necessary to operate an independent music chart, provide music and event discovery, maintain accurate records, manage proportionate professional relationships and document the Scottish hip-hop scene. SHHC maintains internal legitimate-interests assessments and a data register for these uses.
SHHC does not use private listener histories to calculate its charts and does not receive an individual listener's identity from a public YouTube or SoundCloud play/view counter.
Artist Intelligence and discovery research
SHHC uses an internal research system to find possible artists, resolve identity and identify gaps in scene coverage. It can combine public release, collaboration, event, platform-profile and other source evidence with confidence or review-status fields.
These fields are research triage, not public ratings of a person. A candidate is not automatically accepted into the canonical artist register because a scanner or confidence field says so. Human review is required, and SHHC does not use Artist Intelligence to make a solely automated decision with legal or similarly significant effects.
Large-scale new social-content monitoring is subject to a separate privacy-impact review before it is enabled.
Platform data and connected SHHC accounts
SHHC uses platform information only through access methods that SHHC considers permitted for the relevant service. Platform-specific data is subject to the applicable platform's own rules, including refresh, retention and deletion requirements. Historical SHHC chart results may be retained separately from temporary source measurements where those rules require it.
OAuth refresh credentials used to operate authorised SHHC platform accounts are server-only secrets. They are not community-member data and are removed when the relevant integration is disconnected or no longer required.
Track, Bandcamp and event submissions
A submission can include artist and release/event information, public platform URLs, a claimed Scottish connection, supporting evidence, the submitter's relationship to the release/event and an optional contact email. Submissions are stored in private SHHC review systems so decisions, duplicates, evidence and baseline/listing status can be checked and audited.
Optional contact email is used only where clarification or follow-up on that submission is needed. SHHC's working retention rule is to remove unnecessary submitter contact information around 12 months after final resolution unless a continuing reason is documented.
Correction and privacy reports
A correction report can include the issue being reported, relevant public URLs or evidence, a factual explanation and an optional contact email. Reports are kept privately while investigated and may be retained where necessary to preserve an accurate correction record.
Privacy/data-protection requests are also tracked in a private Privacy Desk with the date received, response deadline, affected systems and outcome.
Professional, media and collaboration information
A Get Involved or media-access enquiry can include your name, organisation, role, email address, organisation website/public profile, type of enquiry and message. SHHC uses this information to understand, manage and reply to the enquiry or professional relationship.
SHHC can also retain proportionate public professional information such as a person's name, role, work contact route and evidence of what their organisation does where this is useful to an SHHC project. Network Intelligence is a professional contacts book, not a private-life profile and not automatically a marketing mailing list.
Named professional contacts are reviewed periodically. SHHC's working rule is to remove or archive stale identifiable contact information after roughly two years with no continuing relevance unless another justified relationship remains.
Social engagement
Where SHHC connects a social account to its internal Social Studio, SHHC may copy limited public interaction information such as a public handle/name, comment/reply/mention text, platform identifier and permalink so SHHC can see and respond to activity on its own accounts. Copied social-inbox content is not intended to become a permanent profile and is subject to periodic retention review.
Website usage history
SHHC records a small amount of first-party usage history to understand which public sections are being used and whether visitors follow links to music, events and other catalogued material. This can include a page path, an outbound platform click, submission start/completion, an external referrer hostname and limited campaign/source labels where present.
SHHC does not use this first-party system to create visitor profiles. It does not assign an SHHC visitor ID or session ID, does not set an SHHC analytics cookie, and does not deliberately store IP addresses or browser user-agent strings in the first-party event table. Outbound destination URLs are stored without query strings or fragments, and referrers are reduced to the hostname rather than the full referring URL.
Website usage history never affects chart eligibility, scoring or ranking.
Data minimisation and retention
SHHC keeps different records for different periods because the purposes are different. Published chart results and necessary factual provenance may form part of the long-term historical archive. Temporary contact, intake, social-inbox and operational information is reviewed and removed when it is no longer necessary.
SHHC maintains an internal retention schedule. Current working rules include: submission/event contact details around 12 months after resolution where no continuing reason remains; annual review of professional contacts; copied social interactions ordinarily around 12 months unless still needed; and immediate deletion of disconnected OAuth credentials. These are operating rules rather than universal statutory periods and can be adjusted where a specific documented reason requires it.
Commercial use
SHHC does not currently sell identifiable personal information. Aggregate or genuinely anonymised scene/chart intelligence can be used for future research, reporting or commercial products. Any future sharing or sale of identifiable Artist Intelligence or named professional-contact data is treated as a separate launch gate requiring a fresh lawful-basis, transparency and privacy-impact assessment before it can happen.
Your data-protection rights
Depending on the circumstances, your rights can include access, correction, erasure, restriction, objection and data portability. Where SHHC relies on legitimate interests, you can object to that processing. Rights are not absolute in every case, including where information is required to preserve an accurate and justified historical record or another legal exception applies.
Use Report an issue and choose Privacy / data protection request. Give enough information for SHHC to locate the relevant artist, release, event, submission, professional contact or other record, but do not send passwords or identity documents through the public form. SHHC may ask for proportionate identity verification if necessary before disclosing or changing personal information.
You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office if you are unhappy with how your personal data has been handled. See ICO complaints information.
Technical providers and international processing
SHHC uses specialist providers for hosting, database/security, private source/review workflows, transactional email and platform integrations. The current provider register includes Vercel, Supabase, GitHub, Resend and connected music/social platforms where relevant.
Those providers may process ordinary technical or service data in locations outside the UK. Where an international transfer of personal data requires a legal safeguard, SHHC records and reviews the applicable provider arrangements/transfer mechanism as part of its processor register.
Security and access
Internal personal-data systems are not intended to be directly readable by public browser users. SHHC uses server-side access, database row-level security, explicit restrictions on sensitive tables and protected admin deployments. Access is intended to expand through role-based controls if volunteers/staff are introduced.
Changes to this notice
This notice will be updated when SHHC materially changes the information it collects, monitoring methods, recipients, commercial uses or the way information is used. The version/date above identifies the current notice.