People named in public music records

Sessio ApS is the data controller for the processing described on this page. We are a Danish company based in Copenhagen.

• Sessio ApS
• CVR 45830012
• Burmeistersgade 2, 1. th, 1429 København K, Denmark
• Email: [email protected]

We have not appointed a data protection officer. [email protected] reaches the people who handle these requests directly.

When a Sessio member asks us to look for royalties or credits that may belong to them, we search music-industry sources, including:

• Lists that collecting societies publish of works and recordings they have not been able to pay out, because the rights holder is unknown or unidentified.
• Licensed commercial data feeds we have a written agreement to use.
• Public music-credit, release and catalogue databases.
• Public pages on artist and label websites, and public artist or channel pages on streaming, video and social services.

A song is rarely the work of one person. A single record in one of those sources can name writers, composers, performers and other contributors, and there is no reason any of them should also be a Sessio member. We did not choose which names are in those records, and we cannot take a name out of the source itself: the source belongs to the society or database that published it.

We keep our own copy of the records we are allowed to search, together with a simplified searchable version of the names and identifiers in them — the same name with accents and punctuation stripped out — so we can compare them with a Sessio member's own catalogue. We do not build a separate profile of you from that record, and we do not use your name for anything unrelated to it. Where a comparison produces a possible match, it is shown only in the limited results of the search a member asked for.

If you think unclaimed money on one of those lists is yours, the place to claim it is the collecting society that published the list. They hold the money and they decide who is paid; Sessio does not.

These are the promises in our privacy policy, written out for the person they are about:

• We use the details only to understand and verify the specific work or recording they appear in.
• We do not create an account-like record for you. There is no profile of you inside Sessio and no page about you.
• We do not rank you. Sessio suggests people to its members; someone who does not use Sessio is never one of those suggestions.
• We do not contact you. No email, no letter, no message — not to sell you anything, and not about the record.
• We do not use your details for unrelated recommendations, or for any purpose other than understanding the work or recording.
• We do not look you up anywhere else. We do not go searching for more information about you, we do not try to find your contact details, and we do not join what one source says about you to what another says.
• If your name stays inside a member's saved finding, it stays only within that finding.

How the matching works, plainly. A computer compares names and titles and scores how similar they look. That score decides whether a record is put in front of a Sessio member as a possible lead. It is never a decision about who owns what: no claim is filed and no money moves because of it. A person reviews the lead, and only the member can send anything to a collecting society.

If we ever did contact someone named in a record, that first message would carry all the information the GDPR requires us to give — who we are, what we hold, where it came from and what you can do about it. Today no such route exists, and we are not building one out of the records themselves.

A name is kept only as part of the record it belongs to, and it follows that record. We do not keep a separate list of people, and there is no file about you that outlives the work or recording your name is attached to.

• Our copy of a source record is kept as part of the material we are licensed to search. The name goes when the record goes.
• A name inside a Sessio member's saved finding follows that finding: the member can delete it at any time, and it goes when they close their account. The full schedule is in section 8 of our privacy policy.

If you would rather not wait for any of that, you can ask us to delete the records that name you — see section 5.

You have rights over information about you whether or not you use Sessio. Publishing this notice instead of writing to you individually removes only our duty to send you a letter; it removes none of your rights.

• See what we have (access) — a copy of the records that match the name you give us, where each one came from, what we do with them, and who has received them.
• Correct it (rectification) — if a detail about you is wrong.
• Delete it (erasure).
• Freeze it (restriction) — have the records left out of every search while a question is open.
• Object — tell us you do not want us holding records that name you.

What an answer from us looks like

When you ask what we hold, our answer is a list of the records that match the name and the spellings you gave us. It is not a certificate that we hold nothing about you. Different people share a name, names are spelled differently in different countries, artists work under stage names, and a band's name and a person's name can look identical in a register. So the honest form of our answer is "these are the records matching the name you gave", and we will not dress it up as more than that.

Correcting our copy is not correcting the source

The record came from a collecting society or a database, and theirs is the authoritative version. We can correct our copy, and we will tell you exactly which source the record came from so you can ask them to correct the original. If only our copy were corrected, the next refresh from that source would bring the old version back.

When we delete, we make it stick

Deleting the records on their own would not be enough: the next time we refresh that source, the same record would return. So alongside the deletion we keep a minimal entry that blocks it from coming back. That entry holds no name — only the source's own reference for the record, or a one-way scrambled code that cannot be read back as a name. We will tell you that the entry exists, what it holds and why it is there. We do not refuse a deletion on the grounds that the record was already public.

If you object, we do not argue

For records naming someone who does not use Sessio, we do not claim overriding grounds to keep them. We take the records out of every search straight away, and then delete them and block their return, unless you would rather we did something else.

Telling anyone who already received it

If something we correct, delete or restrict had already reached someone else — an organisation using Sessio, a member whose saved finding quotes it, or a society a claim was already sent to — we tell them, and if you ask, we tell you who they were. Where something has already been sent and cannot be unsent, we say so plainly rather than implying it was pulled back.

One right that does not apply here

Data portability covers information you gave us yourself, and a register's published record is not that. We would rather say so than quietly leave it out.

Write to us. That is the whole procedure.

• Email [email protected], or
• post a letter to Sessio ApS, Burmeistersgade 2, 1. th, 1429 København K, Denmark.

There is no form to fill in and no account to create. You do not have to explain why you are asking. Any other Sessio address or support channel reaches us too — it will be passed to the right people.

Write in English or Danish and we answer you directly. Write in another language and we will have your request translated. The translation is our job, not yours, and it does not come out of your time.

It helps if you tell us the name to search for, including any other spellings or stage names it may appear under, and what you want: to see, to correct, to delete, to freeze or to object. One request covers one person and up to six spellings or names for that person — enough for almost anyone, and it stops this route being used to look people up in bulk.

Please do not send identity documents. We never ask for a passport, a driving licence, a photo or a national ID number. If one arrives anyway, we do not open it, copy it or keep it: we delete it the same working day and tell you we have.

When you will hear back

We acknowledge your request on the working day we receive it and tell you the date your answer is due. We answer without undue delay and at the latest within one month. Our own target is 10 working days. If a request is genuinely complicated we may take up to two further months, but then we tell you why within the first month — and being short-handed or away on holiday is never that reason.

If we cannot be sure who you are

Some of what you can ask for is simply the record as the society or the database already publishes it. We do not ask you to prove who you are for that: it would be absurd to demand identification before handing back a row that anyone can read on a public list.

Where an answer would go further than the published record — what our own systems made of it, or which Sessio members or organisations have seen it — we need to be reasonably satisfied that you are the person named, and to get there without collecting new information about you. If we cannot, we do not guess: we will not hand your details to someone who might not be you. Instead we freeze the records so they are left out of every search, explain in writing why we stopped, and tell you how to complain.

If you are unhappy with how we handled your request, or with the fact that we hold records naming you at all, you can complain to a data protection authority. In Denmark that is Datatilsynet, and you may also go to the authority in the EU country where you live or work. You can take the matter to court as well.

• Datatilsynet — Carl Jacobsens Vej 35, 2500 Valby, Denmark
• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: +45 33 19 32 00
• Website: www.datatilsynet.dk

Complaining costs you nothing, and you do not have to come to us first.

Our privacy policy covers everything else we do, including what happens for the people who do use Sessio. The paragraph about people named in external records is in section 3.5, and it says the same as this page in shorter form: read the privacy policy.

If anything on this page is unclear, or if you want it explained in Danish, email [email protected] and a person will answer you.