Privacy Policy
Live Beats WebRadio · Last updated: July 1, 2026
Live Beats WebRadio ("the app"), package name com.lbwebradio.radio, is an internet radio player built with a privacy-first approach. This policy explains what stays on your device, what technical data is shared with third parties, and who is responsible for the app.
Data Controller
Live Beats WebRadio is developed and maintained by Christian Flach, who acts as the data controller for this app. Contact: livebeatswrp@gmail.com.
Summary
- No account needed. We don't collect your name, email, or any other personal identifier.
- No analytics, no ads, no crash-reporting SDKs. None of that is in the app.
- No cookies. The app's network clients don't use a cookie jar.
- Your favorites, settings, and preferences live in Android DataStore, on your device. We never see them.
- A few things do go to outside services — finding stations, looking up server locations, and pulling up album art — and they're listed below.
Information Stored On Your Device
The following stays on your device and is never transmitted to us:
- Your favorite stations, including any "Super Favorites" and genre tags
- App settings (theme, language, album art preference, data tracking preference, sleep timer, etc.)
- Listening session history (previous/next station navigation)
- Estimated data usage statistics — bytes consumed per session and month, tracked locally to power the "Data Guard" and usage reporting features
- Saved songs, if you use that feature
- Cached server location data (country and flag) for your favorite stations
Backing up or moving your favorites to the desktop app uses .lbrx files. That file gets created and read locally, wherever you choose to save it — your device, or somewhere like Google Drive if you pick that as the destination. We never see a copy.
Information Sent to Third Parties
To work, the app talks to a handful of outside services. As with any internet request, your IP address is automatically visible to each receiving server, and every request identifies the app name, version, and that it's running on Android via a standard User-Agent string. Under some data protection laws (including the GDPR), an IP address is itself considered personal data, so this exposure is treated as personal data processing below, not merely "technical" data — see the Legal Basis section for how we justify it.
| Service | Purpose | What is sent |
|---|---|---|
| Radio-Browser (radio-browser.info) |
Station directory, search, and the Discover/Browse tab | Your search terms and filters. Playing a station sends an automatic "play count" signal, the same way any app using their directory does. Tapping the thumbs-up icon sends a one-time vote — this only happens on that explicit tap, never automatically. |
| Internet radio stream servers | Playing the stream you picked | A connection to that station's stream URL — no different than opening the same stream in a browser. |
| ipwho.is | Identifying the server location (country and flag) of the radio station | Only the streaming server's IP address, sent to ipwho.is/{ip}?fields=success,country_code,flag.emoji — a request scoped to just that data. No account, device, or personal identifiers are included. Your own IP is visible to this service during the request, as with any internet request. |
| Apple iTunes Search API | Looking up album artwork for the currently playing track | The artist and track name read from the station's broadcast metadata (ICY metadata), when available. This reveals what you're currently listening to, to Apple. No account or device identifier is included. |
| Last.fm API | Fallback album artwork lookup if iTunes has no match | The artist and track name — again revealing current listening activity, this time to Last.fm — sent using an app-level API key (not specific to you or your device). |
| Image & CDN hosts (various) |
Displaying station favicons and album artwork | The app downloads images from URLs supplied by Radio-Browser, iTunes, or Last.fm — for example Apple's is1-ssl.mzstatic.com or Last.fm's lastfm.freetls.fastly.net, or a station's own web server. These can be many different third-party hosts depending on the station or track, not one fixed service. |
You can turn these off. The "Show Album Art" and "Show Server Location" settings actually do what they say: switch them off and the app stops contacting iTunes, Last.fm, and ipwho.is entirely — no metadata or server info gets sent.
Legal Basis for Processing (GDPR)
For users in the European Economic Area, we rely on legitimate interest (GDPR Article 6(1)(f)) to provide the core app functionality you've requested, limited to what's necessary to deliver streaming, station directory, and metadata services. This includes the technical data described above, such as IP addresses visible to third-party services during these requests, which we recognize as personal data under the GDPR even though no account or identity information is attached to it.
Notifications
Android's notification system shows playback controls while a station plays in the background. That's all handled by the OS — no outside service involved.
Permissions
| Permission | Why it's needed |
|---|---|
| Internet | Streaming, searching stations, fetching metadata/artwork |
| Notifications | Playback control notification (Android 13+) |
| Wake Lock | Keeps audio playing when the screen turns off |
| Foreground Service / Media Playback | Android requires this for background audio apps |
Security Note
Some radio stations still broadcast over plain http:// instead of https://. That's a limitation of those individual stations, not something we can fix on our end — it's common across radio apps generally. In practice it means your network provider could potentially see which station you're streaming, same as with any unencrypted connection.
Data Retention & Deletion
We don't run servers that store your favorites, settings, or listening history — there's nothing on our end to retain in the first place. That data lives in Android DataStore on your device and stays there until you delete it yourself, either inside the app or by clearing the app's data/storage in Android settings. Uninstalling the app removes it too.
Because we never receive this data, we have no way to retain or delete it on your behalf — your device is the only copy. The one exception is anything you choose to export yourself (like an .lbrx backup file); once it's saved somewhere, deleting it is up to you, the same as any file.
Children's Privacy
The app isn't directed at children and doesn't knowingly collect personal information from anyone. Depending on where you live, the age at which you can use online services without parental involvement varies — for example, 13 in the United States, or as high as 16 in parts of the European Union (with individual EU member states able to set it as low as 13). We don't gate any content by age beyond whatever individual radio stations broadcast.
Changes to This Policy
If anything here changes, we'll update the "Last updated" date above. Using the app after a change goes live means you accept the updated version.
Contact
Questions about this policy or the app's data practices can be sent to:
Live Beats WebRadio
Developer: Christian Flach
Email: livebeatswrp@gmail.com