Privacy Policy

Willie is a private professional network for the music industry. This policy explains what information Willie collects, why, and the choices you have. Willie is intended for people who are at least 18 years old. Questions: legal@usewillie.com.

• Application. Your name, email address, city, state or region, country, primary role or profession, industry (and your written industry if you choose “Other”), optional company, optional website, optional Instagram handle, a description of your work, the kinds of professionals you would like to connect with, your confirmation of age, and the privacy policy version you acknowledged with the date of that acknowledgement.
• Account. Your email address and a password, which is stored only as a salted hash by our authentication provider, never in readable form. If you create an account from an invitation, we record which invitation was redeemed, and the terms, community guidelines, and privacy policy versions you accepted with the date of acceptance.
• Profile. Display name, username, biography, location, roles, what you are open to, availability for remote work or travel, links you add (website, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify), a profile photo if you upload one, experience entries, and artist details such as artist type, career stage, genres, and representation, label, or publishing status if you provide them.
• Work & media. Links you add to your work, with any caption, credit, and thumbnail derived from the link you provided.
• Activity between members. Connection requests and connections, conversations and the messages within them, asks you post, responses you send (including a private referral note when you say you know someone), members you save, and notifications generated for you.
• Reports and requests. If you report another member or ask us to delete your account, we keep what you submit so we can act on it.

Our hosting, database, authentication, and email providers process ordinary technical information needed to run and protect the service, which can include request and error logs, IP address, and basic browser or device information. We use this to operate Willie, debug problems, and prevent abuse. Willie does not run advertising, session replay, or cross-site tracking, and does not build advertising profiles. The limited measurement we do run — including an invisible image in invitation emails — is described in the next section.

We measure two narrow things, for our own operational reporting only. We do not sell this information, use it for advertising, or share it with advertising networks.

• Application form reporting (aggregate). On our application page we record that a page was viewed, that the form was first interacted with, which named fields were completed, the last named field touched when a session ends without a successful submission, that a submission was attempted, whether the application was saved, and — if it was not — a general failure category such as “answers needed correcting”, “an application already exists for that address”, or “server error”. Each record carries a random identifier for that one form session, the stage reached, and, for field events, a fixed label such as “Email” or “Primary role”, a count, and timestamps. We do not record your answers, name, email address, keystrokes, screen recordings, IP address, browser or device strings, or the full web address you came from. The session identifier is held in the memory of that browser tab only: it is not saved to your device, not a cookie, and it disappears when you close or reload the tab, so it cannot follow you between visits. It is not linked to your application, your account, or any email address. We use this only to see where people stop on the form — it does not tell us, and is not used to infer, why anyone stopped. These records are deleted automatically 90 days after they are created.
• Invitation reporting (identifiable). For people we invite, we keep a record tied to that invitation and its recipient: name and email address as invited, invitation type and status, each attempt we made to send the invitation email and its outcome, and the milestones in our own records — account created, email address confirmed, profile setup started, invitation redeemed, and profile completed. Our email service reports whether a message was accepted for sending, and whether it bounced, was rejected, was reported as spam, or was unsubscribed. Delivery confirmation is not available to us. Invitation emails can include a small invisible image hosted by us, so that we can see whether an invitation appears to have been opened: if your email program loads that image, we record the first and most recent time it was requested, a count, and which send attempt it belonged to. That image address contains only a random identifier for that one send — never your email address, an invitation code, or a sign-in link. We do not store your IP address, browser, or device details from it. These signals are approximate: many email programs block images, so a real open can go unrecorded, and mail scanners or preview panes can produce one when nobody has read the message — so they do not prove that anyone personally read an email. We do not track clicks on links in invitation emails and we do not rewrite invitation links. We use this to run invitations and follow up where needed, and we keep it with your account and application records rather than on the 90-day schedule above.

These two are kept separate. Application-form reporting is aggregate and is not connected to invitation records, to any email address, or to an account.

Willie stores only what the service needs to work: your sign-in session, and an invitation code you entered so it survives the account-creation step. There are no advertising cookies, and no cookies are used for the measurement described above. Because we use no cross-site tracking technology, we do not respond differently to Do Not Track signals, and we do not permit third parties to collect personal information about you across other websites or services through Willie.

• To review applications and decide who is invited.
• To create and secure accounts, and to sign you in.
• To operate your profile, Discover, asks and responses, messaging, connections, and saved people.
• To send service email such as confirmation, password reset, invitation, magic link, email change, and verification messages.
• To respond to reports, enforce our Terms and Community Guidelines, and protect members and the service.
• To see where people stop on our application form, and to follow the progress of invitations we sent, as described under Measurement we run.
• To comply with legal obligations.

Your profile, including your name, username, location, roles, what you are open to, and the work and links you add, is visible to accepted members. Willie is not a public directory and member profiles are not intended for search engines. Messages are visible to the people in the conversation. Introductions are consent-based: a connection or conversation requires the other member to accept. A private referral note you write when responding to an ask is shown to the member who posted that ask.

We use a small number of providers to run Willie: an application hosting platform, a managed database with authentication and file storage, and an email delivery service used for the service messages listed above. These providers process information on our behalf and are not permitted to use it for their own purposes. We may also disclose information when required by law, to respond to valid legal process, or to protect the rights, safety, and security of members, the public, or Willie.

We do not sell personal information, we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we do not use it for targeted advertising.

If Willie is acquired, merged, reorganized, or transfers assets, information described in this policy may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will require the recipient to honor this policy or notify you of a material change.

We keep information for as long as it is needed to operate Willie and for the purposes described above, then remove it or keep only what a legal obligation requires. Deleting an account removes its member-facing content, including profile details, roles, instruments, work links, uploaded photos, asks, responses, saved items, and connections.

Conversations are shared with another member, so we do not delete them. When an account is deleted, we remove that person from the conversation — their name, profile link, and profile details go — and the thread stays readable only to the remaining participant, who sees the other side as “Deleted member”. The messages themselves are kept as they were written, because they are also the other member’s own history. We do not rewrite or scrub the text, so it may still contain information the author originally chose to share in that conversation; this is not full anonymisation. No further messages can be sent in a conversation once one side has been deleted.

Records of applications, invitations, and legal acceptances are kept as an integrity and compliance record. Invitation codes shared with more than one person are kept, with the deleted account’s name removed; uses already spent on that code stay spent. Application-form measurement records are deleted automatically 90 days after they are created, by a scheduled daily cleanup.

We use access controls enforced at the database level, encrypted connections, hashed passwords, and server-side checks so that member data is only reachable by people permitted to see it. No service can promise perfect security, and we do not make that promise here.

You can view and edit your profile at any time, and you can choose what to add or leave out. You can ask us to access, correct, or delete your information, or request deletion of your account, from your profile screen or by writing to legal@usewillie.com. We will verify that the request comes from the account holder before acting on it.

Categories of personal information we collect: identifiers (name, email, username), professional or employment-related information (role, industry, company, experience, work links), internet or network activity limited to the technical and security information described above, geolocation limited to the city, state, and country you type, and the content you choose to write or upload. We collect these from you directly, and technical information from our hosting, authentication, and email providers. We disclose personal information only to those service providers and where legally required. We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Willie is intended only for people 18 or older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has created an account, write to legal@usewillie.com and we will remove it.

If we make a material change we will update the version and effective date shown at the top of this page and, where appropriate, notify members. Continued use after an update means you accept the revised policy.

Write to legal@usewillie.com. See also our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines.