Cookies Policy — How Riyadh Music Uses Cookies and Tracking Technologies
Cookies Policy — How Riyadh Music Uses Cookies and Tracking Technologies
Effective Date: March 23, 2026 Last Updated: March 23, 2026 Publisher: The Vanderbilt Portfolio Website: riyadhmusic.com Contact: info@riyadhmusic.com
This Cookies Policy explains how The Vanderbilt Portfolio (“Publisher,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) uses cookies and similar tracking technologies on the Riyadh Music website at riyadhmusic.com (“Website” or “Site”). This policy should be read in conjunction with our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, which provide additional context about our overall approach to data collection, use, and protection.
Riyadh Music provides editorial content, market intelligence, and industry analysis focused on Saudi Arabia’s music ecosystem — covering MDLBEAST, Soundstorm Festival, Riyadh Season concerts, streaming data, artist development, venue infrastructure, and regulatory frameworks. Understanding how cookies and tracking technologies operate on our Website helps you make informed decisions about your browsing experience and privacy preferences.
What Are Cookies?
Cookies are small text files that are stored on your device (computer, tablet, smartphone, or other internet-connected device) when you visit a website. Cookies serve a variety of purposes: they can remember your preferences, help the website function properly, provide analytics data to the website operator, and enable advertising networks to deliver targeted advertisements.
Cookies are categorized along two primary dimensions:
Duration: Session cookies are temporary and are deleted when you close your browser. Persistent cookies remain on your device for a set period or until you manually delete them.
Origin: First-party cookies are set by the website you are visiting (in this case, riyadhmusic.com). Third-party cookies are set by domains other than the website you are visiting — typically by analytics services, advertising networks, or social media platforms that provide functionality embedded in the website.
In addition to traditional cookies, this policy covers similar tracking technologies including:
Web Beacons (Tracking Pixels): Small transparent image files embedded in web pages or emails that allow us to track page views, email opens, and user interactions.
Local Storage: A browser mechanism that allows websites to store data on your device more persistently than cookies, with greater storage capacity.
JavaScript Tags: Code snippets that execute in your browser and can collect information about your browsing behavior, device characteristics, and interactions with the website.
Categories of Cookies Used on This Website
We organize the cookies and tracking technologies used on Riyadh Music into four functional categories. Each category serves a distinct purpose, and your ability to control each category varies as described below.
Category 1: Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly necessary cookies are essential for the Website to function properly. Without these cookies, core features of the Website — including page navigation, secure area access, and content delivery — would not work. These cookies do not collect information about you for marketing purposes or remember where you have been on the internet.
Examples of strictly necessary cookies used on this Website:
- Session Management Cookies: Maintain your browsing session as you navigate between pages, ensuring that the Website responds correctly to your requests.
- Security Cookies: Help detect and prevent security threats, fraudulent activity, and violations of our Terms of Service.
- Load Balancing Cookies: Distribute website traffic across multiple servers to ensure optimal performance and prevent any single server from becoming overloaded.
- Content Delivery Network (CDN) Cookies: Set by our CDN provider to deliver website assets (images, scripts, stylesheets) efficiently from the server geographically closest to you.
Your Control: Strictly necessary cookies cannot be disabled without impairing Website functionality. They are set automatically when you access the Website. Because they are essential to Website operation, they do not require consent under most privacy frameworks.
Category 2: Analytics and Performance Cookies
Analytics cookies collect information about how visitors use the Website — which pages are visited most frequently, how visitors navigate between pages, whether visitors encounter error messages, and other usage metrics. This information helps us understand our audience, improve the Website’s performance, and make data-driven editorial decisions.
Google Analytics: We use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google LLC (“Google”). Google Analytics uses cookies to collect and analyze Website usage data. The information generated by these cookies about your use of the Website is transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States.
Key Google Analytics cookies used on this Website include:
| Cookie Name | Type | Duration | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| _ga | Persistent | 2 years | Distinguishes unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. Included in every pageview request to calculate visitor, session, and campaign data for analytics reports. |
| ga[ID] | Persistent | 2 years | Used by Google Analytics to maintain session state across page requests. |
| _gid | Persistent | 24 hours | Distinguishes users and tracks their behavior during a single browsing day. |
| _gat | Session | 1 minute | Used to throttle request rate to Google Analytics, preventing excessive data collection during high-traffic periods. |
Google Analytics IP Anonymization: We have enabled IP anonymization in Google Analytics, which truncates your IP address before it is stored, providing an additional layer of privacy protection.
Google Analytics Opt-Out: You can opt out of Google Analytics tracking by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, available at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout. This add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript from sharing visit information with Google Analytics.
Hugo Site Analytics: As a static site generated by Hugo, our Website may use additional lightweight analytics tools to track page performance metrics including page load times, resource loading sequences, and rendering performance. These tools use cookies or local storage to maintain performance benchmarks across visits.
Your Control: Analytics cookies can be managed through the cookie consent mechanism presented when you first visit the Website, or through your browser settings. Disabling analytics cookies does not affect Website functionality but does prevent us from understanding how you interact with our content.
Category 3: Advertising Cookies
Advertising cookies are used to deliver advertisements that are relevant to you and your interests. They also serve to limit the number of times you see an advertisement and help measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. Advertising cookies are typically placed by advertising networks and platforms with the website operator’s permission.
Google AdSense: Our Website displays advertisements served by Google AdSense. Google AdSense uses cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to our Website and other websites on the Google Display Network. These cookies enable Google and its advertising partners to target advertisements based on your browsing history, interests, and demographic information.
Key Google AdSense and Google advertising cookies include:
| Cookie Name | Type | Duration | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| __gads | Persistent | 13 months | Set by Google Ad Manager to measure ad interactions and prevent the same ads from being shown repeatedly. |
| __gpi | Persistent | 13 months | Used by Google to store and track ad personalization preferences across sites using Google advertising services. |
| _gcl_au | Persistent | 90 days | Used by Google AdSense for experimenting with advertisement efficiency across websites using their services. |
| IDE | Persistent | 13 months | Used by Google DoubleClick to register and report user actions after viewing or clicking an advertiser’s ad, measuring ad efficacy and presenting targeted ads. |
| NID | Persistent | 6 months | Stores user preferences and other information, such as preferred language, how many search results to show per page, and whether to have Google SafeSearch filter turned on. |
| DSID | Persistent | 2 weeks | Used to identify a signed-in user on non-Google sites and to remember whether the user has agreed to ad personalization. |
| test_cookie | Session | 15 minutes | Set by DoubleClick to determine whether the user’s browser supports cookies. |
Google Ad Personalization Controls: You can control how Google uses your data for advertising through the following mechanisms:
Google Ads Settings: Visit https://adssettings.google.com to view and modify your ad personalization preferences, including the ability to opt out of personalized ads entirely.
Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) Opt-Out: Visit https://optout.networkadvertising.org to opt out of targeted advertising from NAI member companies.
Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) Opt-Out: Visit https://optout.aboutads.info to opt out of targeted advertising from DAA member companies.
European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance (EDAA): For users in the European Economic Area, visit https://www.youronlinechoices.eu for ad preference management.
Opting out of personalized advertising does not eliminate advertising from the Website. It means that the advertisements you see will be generic rather than tailored to your interests and browsing history. Our advertising revenue from Google AdSense supports the free access to editorial content that constitutes the majority of our Website, so advertising will continue to be displayed regardless of your personalization preferences.
Your Control: Advertising cookies can be managed through the cookie consent mechanism on our Website, through the Google and industry opt-out tools described above, or through your browser settings. Please note that disabling advertising cookies may result in less relevant advertisements but will not affect Website functionality.
Category 4: Functional Cookies
Functional cookies enable the Website to provide enhanced functionality and personalization based on your interactions. They may be set by us or by third-party providers whose services we have integrated into the Website.
Examples of functional cookies:
- Preference Cookies: Remember your display preferences, such as text size settings or dark/light mode selection if applicable.
- Language Cookies: Remember your preferred language setting.
- Social Media Integration Cookies: Set by social media platforms (X/Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok) when their sharing buttons or embedded content are loaded on our pages. These cookies may track your browsing activity across websites for the respective platform’s own purposes.
- Embedded Content Cookies: When we embed video (YouTube, Vimeo) or audio content in our articles, the hosting platform may set cookies through the embedded player.
Your Control: Functional cookies can be managed through your browser settings. Disabling these cookies may result in reduced Website functionality or loss of personalization features.
How to Manage and Delete Cookies
You have several options for managing cookies on your device:
Browser Settings
Most web browsers allow you to control cookies through their settings. The process varies by browser:
- Google Chrome: Settings > Privacy and Security > Cookies and other site data
- Mozilla Firefox: Settings > Privacy & Security > Cookies and Site Data
- Safari: Preferences > Privacy > Manage Website Data
- Microsoft Edge: Settings > Cookies and site permissions > Manage and delete cookies and site data
You can configure your browser to block all cookies, block only third-party cookies, accept all cookies, or receive a notification each time a cookie is set so you can decide on a case-by-case basis.
Cookie Consent Mechanism
When you first visit the Website, a cookie consent banner is presented that allows you to accept or reject non-essential cookies. You can update your preferences at any time by clearing your cookies and revisiting the Website, which will trigger the consent mechanism again.
Impact of Blocking Cookies
Blocking or deleting cookies may affect your experience on the Website:
- Blocking strictly necessary cookies may prevent the Website from functioning correctly.
- Blocking analytics cookies will not affect functionality but will prevent us from understanding how you use the Website.
- Blocking advertising cookies will result in untargeted advertisements rather than personalized ones.
- Blocking functional cookies may disable personalization features and social media integrations.
Do Not Track Signals
Some browsers include a “Do Not Track” (DNT) feature that signals to websites that the user does not wish to be tracked. There is no uniform industry standard for interpreting DNT signals, and our Website does not currently respond to DNT signals. However, you can manage tracking through the cookie controls described in this policy.
Cookie Usage in Context of Saudi Arabia’s Music Industry
As a publication focused on Saudi Arabia’s music ecosystem, our Website attracts visitors from diverse geographic regions — primarily Saudi Arabia, the wider MENA region, the United States, Europe, and other international markets. Cookie behaviors may vary based on your location due to the following factors:
CDN Distribution: Our content delivery network routes requests to the nearest server, which may affect which cookies are set and their associated domains.
Advertising Availability: Google AdSense ad inventory and personalization capabilities vary by geographic market. Users in regions with robust AdSense advertiser demand (such as the United States and Europe) may receive more personalized advertising than users in regions with thinner inventory.
Regulatory Requirements: Users accessing the Website from the European Economic Area are subject to GDPR cookie consent requirements, while users in Saudi Arabia are subject to the PDPL framework. Our cookie consent mechanism adapts to present appropriate disclosures and controls based on detected user location.
Updates to This Cookies Policy
We may update this Cookies Policy periodically to reflect changes in the cookies and tracking technologies we use, changes in applicable laws, or changes in our business practices. Updates will be posted on this page with the “Last Updated” date revised accordingly.
Material changes to our cookie practices — such as the introduction of new third-party tracking technologies or significant changes to the categories of data collected — will be highlighted through prominent notice on the Website.
Contact Us
If you have questions about this Cookies Policy or our use of cookies and tracking technologies, please contact us:
Email: info@riyadhmusic.com Subject Line: “COOKIES” Publisher: The Vanderbilt Portfolio Website: riyadhmusic.com
For questions about our broader data practices, please refer to our Privacy Policy or contact us with “PRIVACY” in the subject line.