Last updated 2 October 2026
Hack The Beats is owned and operated by Built By Signal LLC (builtbysignal.com); "we" below means that company. You can listen to and mix the featured beats without an account, and then we keep nothing about you. If you sign in with Google, we keep your name, your email address and the songs and snapshots you save, so that they are there when you come back. We count visits with Google Analytics unless you opt out.
A few settings (the volume, where you left the knobs and channels, which tips you have already seen, your answer about analytics) are stored in your browser on your device. Clearing your browser's site data removes them. Editing the code, saving songs, and every beat beyond the featured ones need an account.
Signing in with Google gives us, through Google's Firebase service:
Your songs are private to you. If you switch on sharing for a song, anyone who has that song's link can listen to it, play with its controls and keep a copy of their own, and will see your name next to it. A copy credits the song it came from, with your name, and keeps that credit after you switch sharing off. Switching sharing off makes the link stop working. The people who run the site can see the songs that are currently shared, and can switch sharing off for a song, for example after a complaint. They also see a short profile of each account: your name, when you joined and last visited, and how many songs you have and how many of them are shared. They never see the titles or code of your private songs.
While a song is shared, you can also tick Let the site feature this. That offers it to the people who run the site, who may pick it for the From the community shelf in the song list. If they do, the shelf shows its title, its credit, your name, its tempo and number of tracks, up to 300 characters of the notes at the top of its code and, for a copy, the title and credit of the song it came from, to anyone who visits; a click opens the song by its link. The code itself and your account are never part of the shelf. Unticking the box, switching sharing off or deleting the song takes it off the shelf straight away. Anyone who already has its link can still open it until you switch sharing off, which closes the link for good.
A shared song's link is its own address on the player, so our server sees which link was opened. It reads the song to answer with the song's title, your name next to it and a picture made from it, so that the link shows the song when it is pasted into a chat or a post; apps that preview links fetch exactly that. For a few minutes after you switch sharing off, a cached preview can still show the title, and apps that previewed the link may keep their own copies for longer. The song's code and your account are never part of a preview.
A recording of the mix, or a video clip of a song, is made on your device from what is playing in your browser. It is never uploaded to us. It goes only where you download or share it.
A snapshot is made on your device the same way. It is kept in your browser's storage, and in your account so that it is on your pads wherever you sign in. Snapshots are private to you: they are never shared, and nobody else can open them from the site. Clear the slot deletes one from your account and the browser, and signing out removes your account's snapshots from that browser.
We use Google Analytics, which sets cookies and tells us which pages are visited, roughly where visitors are, what kind of device they use, and when someone presses play, signs in, shares a song or keeps a copy of one, offers a song to the community shelf or opens one from it, makes a recording or a video clip, or starts and finishes the first steps. It is on unless you opt out. Your first visit shows a notice with an Opt out button, and you can at any time. Opting out stops the counting in that browser and removes the cookies Google Analytics set. If your browser sends the Global Privacy Control signal, we treat that as opting out. The page that plays shared songs never loads Google Analytics.
The site is served by Google Firebase Hosting, link previews are made by a Google Cloud function, and accounts and songs are stored with Google Firebase (Authentication and Cloud Firestore). Google keeps standard request logs (the address asked for, and the IP address it came from) for a limited time. Sound samples are fetched from the public sample packs a song names, such as GitHub; those hosts see your IP address when a sample is downloaded, as any website you visit does.
Built By Signal LLC. Questions about this notice: the address on the About page.