Apple Music & Privacy

Apple Music is designed to protect your information and enable you to choose what you share.

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  • Apple collects information about your Apple Music activity, such as the songs you play and how long you play them, to personalise the service when you are subscribed or enrolled in a preview of our services, send you notifications and compensate our partners.
  • Your cloud library sends information from your music library to Apple, such as song and artist names, to identify and unlock copies of any of your songs that are also available in Apple Music.
  • We associate your cloud library information with you for as long as you remain subscribed and for a short time after. We retain records of the songs you play for the periods specified by applicable laws relating to financial reporting.
  • To help identify and prevent fraud, information about how you use your device, including the approximate number of phone calls or emails you send and receive, will be used to compute a device trust score when you attempt a purchase. The submissions are designed so Apple cannot learn the real values on your device. The scores are stored for a fixed time on our servers.

Protecting the privacy and security of your information is a priority for everyone at Apple. We work hard to collect only the data we need to make your experience better, and when we do collect data, we believe it’s important for you to know what we’re collecting and why we need it, so you can make informed choices. Apple Music, like every Apple product and service, is designed with these principles in mind.

We use your personal information to provide the services and features in Apple Music. This information includes your account and payment information, which you can access and change in Settings or System Preferences.

When you subscribe, Apple collects information about how you use Apple Music in order to tailor features to your musical tastes. These features include Listen Now, where you see albums and playlists picked for you, and Radio, which plays selections from your favourite artists and genres. We also use this information so we can contact you by email and push notification about upcoming releases, new artists and other happenings on Apple Music that you may like.

When you participate in a preview of our services, Apple collects information about how you use Apple Music and may use this information in order to tailor your experience.

If you want to connect or share with other people using Apple Music, you can create a personal profile by providing a user handle (for example, @johnappleseed), display name, and if desired, a profile photo and other information. Apple stores this information with your account so you can access it from any of your devices. Your user handle, display name and profile photo can appear alongside any content you post and activity you share on Apple Music. Sharing and posting content are not currently intended for or available to Apple IDs for children.

Other people may also be able to find your Apple Music profile using the information you’ve provided.

You can make the contents of your profile, like listening activity and playlists, available only to those you choose. However, your profile information, such as handle, display name, photo, your followers and who you are following, are always visible to everyone.

When you create a profile on Apple Music, we will recommend other Apple Music subscribers with whom you may want to connect as friends. Apple does not learn or store information from your contacts when checking for friends to recommend. Only shortened and encrypted hashes of the phone numbers and email addresses in your contacts are sent to Apple, and then matching Apple Music subscribers to be recommended are determined locally on your device. Apple Music can periodically check your contacts to recommend new friends in the future; you can control this in Account Settings by disabling Contacts on Apple Music. If you do not want to be found by others based on the Apple ID contact information they may have about you in their contacts, you can change this in Account Settings by disabling Allow Finding by Apple ID.

Information you provide in your profile may be updated or removed by you at any time. Whenever you share online, you should think carefully about what you are making public. When you share from Apple Music to other websites or social networks, anything you share is governed by the privacy policies of those other services.

If your network provider offers Apple Music memberships and free trials, Apple may check your phone number to determine if you are eligible through a network partner. If you signed up through your network provider, your phone number is used to identify your account and to let the provider know you have activated your membership. We will use the phone number associated with your membership to verify your account at sign-in and to connect your Apple Music activity with your account. We also use your phone number to request cancellation of your membership with your network provider at your request.

Your cloud library, which is a benefit of your Apple Music membership, allows you to have access to the songs and playlists in your library from any of your devices. This feature sends information from your music library to Apple, such as song and artist names, in order to identify and unlock copies of any of your songs that are also available in Apple Music. Any songs that can’t be found in Apple Music are uploaded to your personal cloud library, so you can have access to your complete collection from any of your devices. To stop syncing your cloud library on iOS and iPadOS, go to Settings > Music and tap to turn off Sync Library. On Mac, open Apple Music and go to Preferences > General, then deselect Sync Library.

When you use your Apple Music membership, we collect information about the songs and videos you play or add to your music library or playlists, and the content you love, comment or share. Information such as the account, IP address, and device, app or car interface you used to play, where in Apple Music you were when you played it, the time you played it and for how long is noted and sent to Apple. We use this information to customise your Apple Music experience, to send you emails and notifications, and to help us understand how Apple Music is being used so we may improve it. For example, this information can help us pick the music, videos and artist content we show you in Listen Now and Radio. It also allows us to make other recommendations to you that reflect your tastes, create city charts to show you trending music by city, pay royalties, and prevent or take action against activities that are, or may be, in breach of the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions or applicable law.

We retain this information for the duration of your Apple Music membership and thereafter where it is necessary for financial reporting for the periods specified by applicable laws relating to such reporting, which vary by region. For most customers, that requires at least a 10-year retention period, but in regions such as China that period can be 30 years.

If you use SharePlay to listen to content with other users, the Apple Music app will record that you listened to that content during a SharePlay session and the approximate number of participants in the session, but will not collect any information to identify the participants of the SharePlay session.

Apple may use information about your account, such as the Apple products you own and your subscriptions to Apple services, to send you communications about Apple Music and other Apple products, services and offers that may be of interest to you, including Apple One. Your device serial number and other hardware identifiers may be used to check eligibility for service offers. If you are in a Family Sharing group, Apple may send you communications about products, services and offers available to you through Family Sharing. If you purchase an Apple One subscription, we may send you emails and push notifications about the features of each of the services for which you have subscribed. Apple may also use information about your activity within Apple Music to send you emails and push notifications about new features, content and offers available in Apple Music. You can change your email preferences and opt out of receiving these emails by going to appleid.apple.com. To update your notification preferences on iOS and iPadOS, go to Settings > Notifications > Music. On Mac, open Apple Music and go to Preferences > General > Notifications. Apple uses information about your interactions with our communications, including notifications, to improve our services.

Some Apple Music features, such as certain broadcast radio stations, may not be available in your region. Apple may use the IP address of your internet connection to approximate your location and determine availability. We also compute a device trust score on your device when you attempt a purchase using information about how you use your device, including the approximate number of phone calls or emails you send and receive. The submission is designed so Apple cannot learn the underlying values on your device. The score is stored for a fixed time on our servers.

We may collect, use, transfer and disclose non-personal information for any purpose. For example, we may aggregate your non-personal information with that of other Apple Music users in order to improve the service. We may also collect certain performance metrics from your device when you use Apple Music, including radio frequency strength, country code, network code and mobile data radio access technology.

At all times, information collected by Apple will be treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, which can be found at www.apple.com/uk/privacy

Disclosure to Third Parties

When you use Apple Music to listen to broadcast radio, your device connects directly to the broadcast radio station to provide you with the requested content. When it connects, your device’s IP address will be visible to the broadcast radio station. The handling of your IP address by the broadcast radio station is governed by the privacy policies of the broadcast radio station or its provider.

We are obligated to provide some aggregated non-personal information about the use of Apple Music, as well as aggregated user demographics such as age group and gender (which may be inferred from information such as your name and salutation in your Apple ID account), to record labels, publishers and artists so they can measure the performance of their creative work and meet royalty and accounting requirements. In addition, we share aggregated listening activity with chart compilers for music charts around the world and with music marketing platforms that help labels and artists reach listeners. In order to determine your subscription eligibility if you subscribe through a third-party partner like a mobile network provider, or to complete your purchase, we share limited personally identifiable information with that partner.

iOS and iPadOS apps may request access to Apple Music and your cloud library. If you give such permission to an app, it can access information like your cloud library on device, whether you are an Apple Music subscriber, your music and video play activity, and your Listen Now recommendations. A permitted app can also modify data associated with your account, such as which songs are in your library and playlists. You can disable an app’s access on your iOS or iPadOS device by going to Settings > Privacy > Media & Apple Music. On Mac, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Media & Apple Music. If you have removed the app or granted an app access using a version of iOS prior to iOS 11 or iPadOS, you can disable its access in your Apple Music account settings.

Retention

When you use a payment card, Apple may retain and automatically update your card number and billing information for future purchases, recurring transactions or other uses you authorise. Apple may obtain this information from your financial institution or payment network and also use it for fraud prevention and verification.

Learn More About Apple Music

For more detailed information, including features and pricing, visit www.apple.com/uk/apple-music.

For information about Apple Music Web Player & Privacy, visit www.apple.com/uk/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-music-web.

Published Date: May 13, 2022