Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

WhatIsMusic2U.com is a non-commercial research survey about the role of music in people's lives. It is operated by Günter Stangl as a private individual, not as a business entity. There is no company, no commercial activity, no revenue, and no client relationship.

The survey is part of a research project ("Project Amadeus") that investigates how people relate to music across cultures, generations, and countries. Participation is entirely voluntary.

2. What we collect

We collect two categories of information, and they are never connected to each other:

2.1 Anonymous survey responses

When you complete the survey, your answers are stored as a single row in a data file. This data contains:

Data field	Example	PII?	Purpose
Response ID	28441	No	Sequential counter
Timestamp	2026-04-15T14:30:00Z	No	When submitted
Country	AT (from language selection)	No	Geographic analysis
Age bracket	3 (= 25–34)	No	Generational analysis
Survey answers	act1_q1: 4, act2_q4: [1,3,5]	No	Research data
Completion status	completed / exited_act2	No	Quality analysis
Duration	487 seconds	No	Engagement analysis

This data is genuinely anonymous. It contains no name, no email address, no IP address, no device fingerprint, no cookies, and no information that could identify a specific person. Under GDPR Recital 26, anonymous data is not personal data and falls outside the scope of the regulation.

2.2 Email addresses (optional)

At the end of the survey — or via a separate sign-up page — participants may optionally provide their email address for one of two purposes:

WARM email (survey results): If you enter your email to receive your personal results, your email address is used once to send you a results email. It is passed directly to our email service provider (Amazon SES) at the moment of sending. Your email address is not stored on our servers, not written to any database, and not saved anywhere after the email has been sent. Your email address is never connected to your survey responses.

HOT email (project updates): If you choose to leave your email for future updates about the project — either at the end of the survey or via our sign-up page at whatismusic2u.com/join — your email address is stored in an encrypted file, separate from all survey data. It will be used once to notify you when the next phase of the project launches. After that notification, your email address will be deleted.

Email type	Stored?	Purpose
WARM (results)	No — used at send time, then discarded	Send your personal results once
HOT (inner circle)	Yes — encrypted, separate from survey data	One notification when next phase launches

3. What we do NOT collect

We want to be explicit about what we do not do:

We do NOT collect	Explanation
Your name	We never ask for it
Your IP address	Not logged by our systems
Cookies	We use zero cookies
Device fingerprints	No browser or device identification
Location data	No GPS, no geolocation API
Browsing behavior	No analytics, no tracking pixels, no heatmaps
Third-party tracking	No Google Analytics, no Facebook Pixel, no ad trackers
Advertising profiles	No data is sold, shared with, or accessible to advertisers

The survey uses no cookies, sets no local storage, and runs no background scripts. The entire survey runs in your browser. Our server is only contacted twice: once to load the page, and once to receive your submitted answers.

4. Legal basis for processing

Processing activity	Legal basis	GDPR reference
Anonymous survey responses	Not applicable — anonymous data outside GDPR scope	Recital 26
WARM email (sending results)	Consent: voluntary submission of email	Art. 6(1)(a)
HOT email (inner circle)	Consent: voluntary submission of email	Art. 6(1)(a)

Consent is given through the affirmative action of entering an email address and pressing the submit button. Email submission is entirely optional — the survey can be completed without providing any email address.

5. How data is processed

5.1 Survey responses

Your survey answers are stored as one row in a CSV file on Cloudflare R2 (cloud storage). This file is periodically downloaded by the project operator for statistical analysis. The analysis calculates aggregate results (percentages, averages, country comparisons) that are published on the website's results dashboard. No individual response is ever published or made identifiable.

5.2 Email delivery

WARM emails are sent through Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES), a service operated by Amazon Web Services, Inc. The email address is transmitted to SES via encrypted API call (TLS) for the sole purpose of delivering one email. Amazon SES processes this data under their Data Processing Addendum (DPA), which is GDPR-compliant.

5.3 Hosting and infrastructure

Service	Provider	Purpose
Website hosting	Cloudflare, Inc. (USA)	Serves the survey pages globally
Submission endpoint	Cloudflare Workers	Receives survey submissions
Data storage	Cloudflare R2	Stores anonymous survey data + encrypted HOT emails
Email delivery	Amazon Web Services, Inc. (USA)	Sends results emails via SES
Domain + DNS	Cloudflare, Inc.	Domain routing and SSL

Both Cloudflare and AWS are US-based companies that process data under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs), providing adequate safeguards for data transfers outside the EU as required by GDPR Chapter V.

6. Data retention

Data	Retention period	Deletion
Anonymous survey responses	Retained for research duration	Not subject to GDPR deletion (anonymous)
WARM email address	Not retained — discarded after delivery	No deletion needed (not stored)
HOT email address	Until launch notification sent, then deleted	Can be deleted on request at any time via /manage

7. Your rights

Under GDPR, you have the following rights regarding your personal data. Because most of our data processing involves anonymous data, some rights apply in a limited way:

7.1 HOT email addresses

If you provided your email address for the inner circle, you can exercise your rights at any time using our self-service page:

Manage your email →

On this page you can:

Look up whether your email is stored in our inner circle list. Update your email address if it has changed or was entered incorrectly (Art. 16 — rectification). Delete your email address permanently from our list (Art. 17 — erasure / Art. 7(3) — withdrawal of consent).

No login or account is required. You simply enter your email address and the system will show you your options.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Austrian Data Protection Authority (Datenschutzbehörde). Alternatively, you can exercise any of these rights by contacting us at contact@whatismusic2u.com.

7.2 WARM email addresses

WARM email addresses (used to send your survey results) are not stored after sending. There is nothing to access, rectify, or delete because the data no longer exists on our systems.

7.3 Anonymous survey data

Because survey responses contain no personal data, they cannot be attributed to any individual. This means we cannot identify, retrieve, modify, or delete a specific person's survey response. GDPR rights to access, rectification, and erasure do not apply to anonymous data (Recital 26).

This is by design, not by limitation. We deliberately collect no identifying information so that your survey participation remains permanently anonymous.

8. Supervisory authority

If you believe your data protection rights have been violated, you have the right to lodge a complaint with:

Participants from other EU countries may also contact their own national data protection authority.

9. Children

The survey does not specifically target children. However, participation is open to all ages. We collect age bracket information (e.g., "under 16") but no identifying information from any participant, regardless of age. No email address is required to participate.

10. Changes to this policy

If we make material changes to this privacy policy, the updated version will be published on this page with a new effective date. The current version always applies to new survey submissions.

11. Managing your email

We provide a self-service page where you can manage your email address at any time, without needing an account or login:

Manage your email · Join the inner circle

Both pages are accessible from the footer of every page on our website.