Terms & Legal

Guess When Music is a hobby project. It’s free, it has no ads, and it doesn’t sell your data. You can play without an account; an account is only for posting solo scores under your name. Either way it collects as little as it can.

Here’s what you should know:

When you create or join a game, you choose a display name and a colour. You don’t need an account or an email address to play.

While a game is running, the game server holds what it needs to run it: display names, colours, guesses and scores. It also keeps a saved copy, so the game survives if everyone’s phone locks or the connection drops.

That copy is deleted when the host leaves the game. A copy left behind by a game nobody closed stops being used after six hours, and is cleared the next time its game code comes up. We don’t keep a history of games with friends, their scores or their players.

Solo rounds are different: when you finish one, the game server saves it. That record holds the score, the songs, the year you guessed for each and how long it took you, the country you played from (worked out from your connection) and a random ID your browser keeps so your rounds can be told apart from everyone else’s. Until you log in, it doesn’t hold your name, and nothing ties it to you as a person. Nobody else can see a round until it is posted. If you’d like yours deleted, get in touch.

If you log in, we store your email address, the display name you choose and whether you said yes to news from us. Your solo rounds, past and future, are then tied to your account and posted under that name. Posted rounds are public: on the leaderboard and on each round’s own page, anyone can see your display name, your score, how long you took, the country you played from and how each guess went: years off, time and points. Which songs you got is shown only to you. Your email address is never shown. Logging in is by a code sent to your email; there is no password. You can delete all of it yourself, at any time, under “Delete account” in the menu.

If you share a score, the link itself carries your name and score, so anyone you send it to can see them. We don’t store the link.

The game runs on Vercel (the website) and PartyKit (the game server). Like any web host, they process your IP address to deliver the game to you.

We use PostHog, hosted in the EU, to understand how the game is used. It records page visits, button presses and game events, such as a game starting, the number of players, the years guessed and the amount of a donation.

It’s set up not to build profiles of people. Visits are tied to a random ID kept in your browser, never to your account or email.

One thing to know: a page visit includes the page address, and the address of a game or share page contains the display name you typed. Pick a nickname if you’d rather your real name didn’t end up there.

We don’t use advertising trackers, and we don’t sell or share this data.

Donations are voluntary, one-off, and handled by Stripe. Your card details go straight to Stripe and never touch our servers.

If you enter an email for a receipt, it goes to Stripe for that purpose. We don’t store it ourselves. Stripe keeps its own record of the payment, as payment providers must.

A donation doesn’t buy or unlock anything; the game is the same for everyone. If something went wrong with a payment, get in touch.

Guess When Music plays 30-second song previews from Deezer. They’re streamed through our server to the host’s device. We don’t host, store or redistribute any music files. Cover art comes from Deezer and Spotify.

If a host connects their own Spotify Premium account (optional, and not always available), sign-in happens at Spotify. We keep the resulting sign-in tokens in that host’s browser to control playback, and store nothing about the Spotify account on our servers.

All music rights remain with the respective rights holders. Guess When Music has no affiliation with Deezer or Spotify.

We keep a few small things in your browser to make the game work: your language choice (a cookie), a random ID per tab so that a refresh puts you back in your game, a random ID that stays in your browser so your solo rounds can be told apart, your login if you have one, and whether you’ve donated or asked not to see the donation prompt again.

PostHog stores the random ID described above. Stripe sets its own cookies to prevent fraud, but only once you open the donation form. If a host connects Spotify, their sign-in tokens are kept in their browser too.

No advertising cookies, and nothing that follows you to other sites.

This is a hobby project maintained by one person in their spare time. We can't guarantee uptime, and we reserve the right to change or shut down the service at any time without notice.

If something breaks, we're sorry. Please let us know.

Guess When Music is provided as-is, with no warranties. We're not liable for anything that goes wrong — including but not limited to: wrong year guesses, lost friendships, disputed decades, or arguments about whether a song "sounds like" 1987.

If something significant changes, we'll update this page. The date below reflects the last update.

Questions about your data or this policy? Get in touch.