Whenever you use the Start To Finish Music (STFM) website, information may be collected through the use of cookies. By using our site, you agree to our use of cookies as described in this Cookie Policy.

What are ‘cookies’?

Cookies are small text files which are downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you visit a website or application. Your web browser (such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome) then sends these cookies back to the website or application on each subsequent visit so that they can recognise you and remember things like personalised details or user preferences.

Cookies are very useful and do lots of different jobs which help to make your experience on websites as smooth as possible. For example, they let you move between web pages efficiently, remembering your preferences, and generally improving your experience (see below for more examples). They are referred to as session or persistent cookies, depending on how long they are used:

• Session cookies only last for your online session and disappear from your computer or device when you close your browser. 
• Persistent cookies stay on your computer or device after the browser has been closed and last for the period of time specified in the cookie. These persistent cookies are activated each time you visit the site where the cookie was generated.

Which cookies do we use, and why?

1. ‘Strictly necessary’ cookies

These cookies are essential in helping you to move around our website and use features. These cookies do not gather information about you that could be used for marketing nor remember where you’ve been on the internet.

Some examples of these essential cookies include:

• Automatic forwarding to the least busy server
• Ensuring the functionality of a change from http to https and thus compliance with increased security requirements for data transfer.
• Saving your decision with regard to the use of cookies on our website.

2. Functional cookies

These cookies allow websites and applications to remember choices you make. Whilst these cookies don’t collect things like your name or email address, they do collect a unique user identifier code. This enables us to identify your device so that we can improve your experience and make sure your settings are remembered correctly.

Some examples of how we do this include:

• Remembering if you’ve been to the site before so that messages intended for first-time users are not displayed to you. 
• Restricting the number of times you’re shown a particular campaign message. This is sometimes called ‘frequency capping’. 
• Making sure you get shown campaign messages that are part of a sequence in the correct order.
• Remembering if we’ve already asked you if you want to fill in a survey or if you’ve completed a survey, so you’re not asked to do it again.

3. Analytics cookies

In order to keep our content relevant, easy to use and up-to-date, we use web analytics services to help us understand how people use them. For example, we can see which parts of our site are most popular, identify which articles have been read and identify when errors occur. Web analytics services use cookies to recognise your browser or device and, for example, identify whether you have visited our site before and what you have previously viewed or clicked on. This allows us to track information, such as how many individual users we have and how often they visit. It also helps us to analyse patterns of user activity and to develop a better user experience. 

Again, these cookies do not identify you directly as they do not collect information such as your name or email address. However, the information collected by these cookies will be linked to a unique user identifier code. This is a random sequence of numbers and letters which we can use to link information collected by the cookies back to you without the cookies collecting your name or email address. 

4. Third party cookies

All the cookies described so far in this policy are “first party cookies”, which means they are set and controlled by Start To Finish Music. Occasionally, third parties may set cookies on our Services which Start To Finish Music does not control. These are called “third party cookies”. This may happen in the following circumstances:

• Embedded content: On some pages of our website, we may include embedded content, for example from YouTube. When you visit a page with embedded content, the service provider may set its own cookies on your web browser to track the success of their application or to customise their application to you.

Start To Finish Music does not control the use of these cookies and cannot access them, as cookies can only be accessed by the party who originally set them. You should check the third party websites for more information about these cookies.

How to control your cookies

There are various ways that you can control and manage your cookies which are discussed in a bit more detail below. Please remember that any settings you change will not just affect Start To Finish Music cookies. These changes will apply to all websites that you visit (unless you choose to block cookies from particular sites). The settings you change will also only apply to the device on which you change them and will not apply across all your devices. If you want to opt out of cookies on all your devices, you will need to change the settings on all your devices individually.

Managing cookies in your browser

Most modern browsers will allow you to:

•  See what cookies you’ve got and delete them on an individual basis.
•  Block third party cookies.
•  Block all cookies from being set.
•  Delete all cookies when you close your browser.

You should be aware that any preferences will be lost if you delete all cookies. Ironically, this includes where you have opted out from cookies, as this requires an opt-out cookie to be set. This means that if you opt out from cookies and then delete all cookies, your opt out will not be saved and you will need to opt out again (which will store a strictly necessary cookie so that your device can remember that you have opted out). 

If you block cookies completely, many websites will not work properly and some functionality on these websites will not work at all. We do not recommend turning cookies off when using our site for these reasons.

The links below take you to the ‘Help’ sections for each of the major browsers so that you can find out more about how to manage your cookies.

• Google Chrome (opens in a new window)
• Firefox (opens in a new window) 
• Safari (opens in a new window)
• Safari iOS (opens in a new window) 
• Android (opens in a new window)
• Internet Explorer (opens in a new window)

Managing analytics cookies

It is possible to opt out of having your browsing activity recorded by analytics cookies. Start To Finish Music uses Google Analytics and you can opt out of their cookies by clicking here (opens in a new window). Please note that this will take you to Google’s website and generate a ‘no thanks’ cookie, which will stop any further cookies being set by Google.

Don’t forget that by not allowing analytics cookies, this stops us from being able to learn what people like or don’t like about STFM, so that we can make them better.