VRC Downbeat

Legal

Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 23, 2026

VRC Downbeat is a free, open-source app for playing music together online. It is built to work without accounts, without tracking and without collecting personal data wherever possible. This page explains exactly what data is processed when you visit this website, use the app or connect to the official Downbeat Server — and what is deliberately not collected.

Who is responsible

Responsible for this website, the app and the official Downbeat Server (“controller” under the EU General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR):

The short version

1. Visiting this website

No cookies, no tracking

vrcdownbeat.org is a static site. It sets no cookies, runs no analytics and embeds no third-party trackers. Fonts are self-hosted — your browser does not contact Google or any other font service.

Access logs

Requests to vrcdownbeat.org are written to a reduced web-server log that contains the time, HTTP status, request method, requested path and a two-letter country code (provided by Cloudflare). This log deliberately contains no IP addresses and no browser details. Other endpoints on the same server (for example the live-streaming subdomain) keep standard web-server logs including the IP address, used solely to keep the service secure and to diagnose abuse. All web-server logs are deleted automatically after 14 days.

Cloudflare (CDN)

The website is delivered through Cloudflare, which acts as a reverse proxy and therefore technically processes your IP address to deliver the page and to fend off attacks. Cloudflare acts as our processor under its Data Processing Addendum; transfers to the US are covered by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses.

Hosting

The server behind it is operated by Hetzner Online GmbH in Germany under a data processing agreement (Art. 28 GDPR).

Microsoft Store

The recommended way to get the app is the Microsoft Store. Installation and updates are handled by Microsoft under the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

2. Using the app

No telemetry

The app sends no telemetry, crash reports or usage data. Your settings, song library, downloads and recordings stay in local files on your PC (by default in Music\VRC Downbeat in your user folder; you can choose another folder in Settings › General). The app contains no advertising and no third-party SDKs.

Log files on your PC

So that you can look up what went wrong — and attach the files yourself when you report a problem — the app writes technical log files on your PC:

• a small diagnostic log per run in its own folder (%APPDATA%\BandJam\trace);
• in the Logs folder of your data folder: MIDI logs (which MIDI devices were found, with their factory names such as “Roland FP-10”), crash reports and, since version 1.4, one log per jam (timings, data rates and buffer levels; the people in the jam appear only as a random code that changes with every jam).

These files contain no display names, song titles, file paths or network addresses. They are never sent anywhere by the app. Logs older than 30 days are deleted when the app starts (Settings › General, on by default), and you can delete them yourself at any time.

Sessions via the official Downbeat Server (room codes)

When you host or join a room through the official relay, the app transmits: your chosen display name, the room code, your app version and — for private rooms — a SHA-256 hash of the room password (the password itself never leaves the host’s PC and the hash is never written to logs).

Everything inside the session — chat, songs, jam audio, voice, recordings — is end-to-end encrypted between musicians and host (X25519 key exchange, XChaCha20-Poly1305). The relay only forwards encrypted bytes and cannot read them. It stores none of them, with one exception: song transfers (see below). As with any internet connection, the relay technically sees the IP addresses of connected devices in order to route traffic, but they are held in memory only and are never written to logs.

Song transfers. Since version 1.3, when someone in a room sends a song (for example the host’s backing track for a jam), the app uploads the song package once to the relay and the recipients download it from there. The package is end-to-end encrypted before it leaves the sender; the relay never has the key and never sees song or file names. It is deleted as soon as every recipient has it, when the room closes, when nobody starts downloading it within 10 minutes, after 2 hours at the latest, and whenever the relay restarts.

Reconnecting. If the host’s connection to the relay drops, the room is kept open for up to 2 minutes so that the host’s app can take it back under the same room code. A random reconnect token, held in memory only, makes sure that only that host can do so.

The relay keeps an event log for operations, troubleshooting and abuse prevention: rooms opened and closed (with room code, the host’s chosen display name and app version), musicians joining and leaving (with their chosen display name, duration and transferred data volume), technical connection data (app versions, data rates, round-trip time, resent packets, interruptions and why a connection ended) and the size and duration of song transfers. These event logs contain no IP addresses, passwords, keys, song titles or file names and are deleted automatically after 30 days.

For live troubleshooting, the operator’s room inspector reads a status snapshot that the relay keeps in memory and overwrites every second: the open rooms with the same details as the event log. It is never written to disk, and a room drops out of it 15 minutes after it closed.

Direct-IP sessions

If you host on your own PC instead, the connection is made directly between you and your musicians — no relay is involved and nothing is processed on our servers. The same end-to-end encryption applies. Note that in this mode the people you invite connect to the IP address you share with them yourself.

Remote Control (local network)

Since version 1.4 you can control the app from a phone or tablet. Only when you choose Remote Control › Start Local Server does the app start a small web server on your PC (ports 47910–47919). Your phone or tablet opens it over your local network; the QR code is generated by the app itself and only contains that local address. The page and everything you do on it travel only between your own devices — nothing goes through our servers, the internet or any third-party service.

The page shows your song list and your mixer, including channel names and the display names of the musicians in your room. It has no password: anyone on the same local network who opens the address while the server runs can see and use it. Use it on networks you trust (if Windows asks, allow private networks only) and stop the server when you no longer need it. It also stops when you close the app.

Random app ID

From version 1.3 on, the app creates a random app ID on its first start. It is a random number — not derived from your PC, hardware, account or name. When you join a session it is sent only to that session’s host, inside the end-to-end encrypted connection, so the host’s app can recognise you again even if you change your display name (for example to remember your level in the host’s Live Mix and to label your take in recordings). The relay server never sees it and it is not stored on our servers. It is also written into the description file of recordings that contain your take; those stay on the PCs of the session unless someone sends them on. The ID lives in your local app settings — deleting them creates a new one.

Optional features that contact third parties

These run only when you actively use them:

Create Backing Tracks (stem separation)

Since version 1.2 the app can split a song into stems (drums, bass, vocals, guitar, piano, other). The separation is computed entirely on your own PC using the open-source Demucs model (Meta AI) on your graphics card or CPU. Your audio files, their names and the resulting stems never leave your computer and are not sent to us or to anyone else.

The model itself (a data file of roughly 250–320 MB) is not included in the app. The first time you click Create stems, the app shows a dialog with the model’s licence and asks for your confirmation. Only then does it download the file from vrcdownbeat.org/models/. This request goes through Cloudflare and our server exactly like a visit to this website and appears in the reduced access log described in section 1 (time, status, path, country code — no IP address, deleted after 14 days). If our server cannot be reached, the app retries the download from huggingface.co (Hugging Face, Inc., USA), where the same model is published. In that case Hugging Face receives your IP address and the request as any web server does; its processing is governed by the Hugging Face Privacy Policy. No account, cookie or identifier of yours is sent in either case.

The downloaded model is stored in the app’s own folder on your PC (%APPDATA%\BandJam\models) and can be deleted at any time. Nothing else is downloaded automatically, and no information about what you separate is ever transmitted.

Live streaming (invitation only)

Hosts with a streaming invitation can broadcast their mix as a public MP3 stream. For this we store an account consisting of a user name and a SHA-256 hash of the stream key — nothing else. Anything you broadcast is publicly reachable via the listener link while you stream; nothing is recorded on the server. The streaming endpoint keeps standard web-server logs (see above, deleted after 14 days).

3. Anonymous statistics

To understand whether the project is being used, a script aggregates daily totals: rooms opened, session hours, transferred data volume, website downloads per country, live-stream listener hours. These are plain numbers per day — no IP addresses, names, room codes or any other personal data — and are kept indefinitely as the project’s usage history.

4. Microsoft Store

If you install VRC Downbeat from the Microsoft Store, Microsoft processes data related to the store itself (download, installation, automatic updates) under the Microsoft Privacy Statement. The app you receive is identical and contains no additional data collection.

5. Legal bases

Where the GDPR applies, processing is based on Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (providing the service you request — relaying your session, delivering the website and downloads, operating your streaming account) and Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in keeping the service secure, preventing abuse and keeping anonymous usage statistics).

6. Sharing of data

Data is shared only with the processors named above (Hetzner, Cloudflare) and only for the purposes described. It is never sold, rented out or used for advertising. The third-party services listed in section 2 (ipify, check-host.net, VB-Audio, Hugging Face) are contacted by the app directly from your PC and only when you use the respective feature; they act as independent controllers of the connection data they receive, and we do not pass any data to them.

7. Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to access (Art. 15), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20) and to object to processing based on legitimate interest (Art. 21). You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority (Art. 77). To exercise your rights, email [email protected]. Note that for most of the data described above (e.g. relay event logs) we cannot link entries to you as a person — which also means there is usually nothing personal to hand over or delete.

8. Changes

This policy will be updated when the app or the services change. The current version is always available at vrcdownbeat.org/privacy.html.