How Marlow handles your data.

Who we are

The data controller is Swedish Sound Group AB, org.nr 556952-8705, Kastellgatan 21A, 413 07 Gothenburg, Sweden. Marlow is its trading name. Where this page says we, it means Swedish Sound Group AB.

If you join the list

We keep your email address, and the date, IP address, and browser your request arrived with. We use it for one thing: to write to you when there is something worth writing about. The basis is your consent, and you can withdraw it whenever you like.

If you buy something

Payment is handled by Stripe. We do not see or store your card details. From a purchase we keep your name and email, the products and licenses tied to your account, and a record that the payment happened. The basis is the contract between us: we cannot sell you a license and support it without this.

Buying also puts your address on our list, so we can tell you when we release something. We say so next to the buy button, and every one of those letters carries a one-click unsubscribe that needs no account and no reply. The basis is the exemption for existing customers, which is narrower than consent: it lets us write to you about our own plugins and nothing else. Say no once and we stop, and it changes nothing about your licenses, downloads or receipts.

If you try a plugin first

Downloading a plugin you have not bought gives you a trial key: a real license that works fully for fourteen days and then stops being clean. We keep the key, the day it ends, and the dates we sent you the two emails that belong to it, one a few days before it ends and one when it has. Those two are part of the trial you asked for, not marketing, and the address is the one you gave us for the download. The basis is the same contract as a purchase: you asked to try it and we cannot run a trial without knowing when it started.

A trial key activates on one computer and stays with it. When you activate, we record the same things as for a bought license, below, and we also check that the computer has not already had a trial of the same plugin. That is the whole of what the one-per-computer rule looks at. If you buy, the trial key becomes your full license in place and nothing about it is deleted or re-sent.

When you activate a plugin

Activating a license records which machines it runs on, by way of a machine identifier and the name your computer reports, along with activation dates, the IP address the request came from, and the license in question. This is how a license knows it is yours and how you move it between machines. It is the minimum a license system needs to work.

On the same check, the plugin tells us which version of it you are running, your operating system, whether the machine is Intel or Apple Silicon, which plugin format is loaded, and the name of the DAW it is loaded in. We use it to decide what to keep supporting: which systems to test on, which formats are worth maintaining, and who is running a build we have since fixed. The basis is our legitimate interest in keeping a product you bought working on the machines people actually use.

We collect nothing about how you use the plugin. No settings, no presets, no project or file names, no session lengths. The check happens roughly once a week and when you open the side panel, and nothing else in the plugin talks to us. A copy with no key entered does not contact us at all; a trial key checks in the same way a bought one does, and no more often.

Logs

Our server keeps ordinary request logs: IP addresses, timestamps, what was requested. They exist for security and to keep the site running, and they are rotated and discarded in the normal course of things.

Who processes it

A short list: Stripe, for payments. Our host, WebSupport, in the EU, where the site and database live. Our email provider, to send you the letters you asked for. Meta, but only if you allowed it, and only for what the section below describes. Each sees only what it needs to do its job.

Cookies

Two kinds, and only one of them is up to you.

The necessary kind keeps you logged in, keeps a form submission safe, and remembers the answer you give below. Without these the site cannot do its job, so they are always set. They stay on our own domain and go nowhere else.

The other kind is for advertising, and nothing of it runs unless you say yes. If you do, we load Meta's measurement code, which sets its own cookies and tells Meta that you visited, which pages, and whether you went on to create an account, download the demo, or buy. Our server sends Meta the same handful of events directly, including a scrambled form of your email address and the IP address the request came from, so that the count is right when a browser blocks the first method. We do this to find out whether an advert we paid for actually brought anyone here, and for no other purpose. Meta may also use it to build its own picture of you, which is a real cost of saying yes and the reason we ask first.

Separately, and whatever you answer above, we note which link brought you here: the campaign tag on the address you arrived at, or the site that sent you. If you go on to make an account, that note is kept with it, so we can tell which of our own adverts were worth paying for. It stays on our server, it is never sent to anyone, and it does not follow you anywhere else. The basis is our legitimate interest in knowing whether our own marketing works.

The basis for the advertising cookies is your consent. Say no and none of them load, which costs you nothing and costs us only a number. Change your mind in either direction whenever you like: the Cookies link in the footer reopens the question, and refusing afterwards stops it immediately. We ask again every six months regardless.

How long we keep it

List subscriptions, until you unsubscribe or ask to be removed. Purchase and license records, for as long as you hold the license and as long as Swedish bookkeeping law requires after that. A trial that never became a purchase, for as long as the account it belongs to exists, because it is what stops a second trial on the same computer. Logs, until they rotate out. What a plugin reports about itself is overwritten each time it checks in, so only the current picture exists, and it is discarded when you deactivate that machine.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of what we hold, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or withdraw consent. Write to us and we will do it, without asking why. If we ever fall short, you can complain to the Swedish data protection authority (IMY).

Reaching us

Anything to do with your data: hello@marlowaudio.com.