Log File Guidelines
July 13th, 2009 by Phil JohnsonI’ve just whipped up a couple of pages outlining the formatting guidelines for both playlist and raw streaming access log files.
I’ve include some sample files to download and use as guides.
Please take a look and feel free to contact me with any questions.
July 13th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
What about smaller public radio stations that play music from a variety of sources (believe it or not – we still play vinyl!). We also do not have a digital music database from which to automatically extract the Sound Exchange reporting. This leaves us with two choices: quit streaming – which would be counter to CPB’s primary objective in helping to grow public radio stations. Or purchase expensive ($10,000 +) tracking software – forcing us to compile our music onto a central digital database. Manual data entry is not feasible.
I realize our little station represents a shrinking amount of public radio stations that carry out the true spirit of ‘public radio’ and we’ve managed to avoid the cookie-cutter sound of most NPR stations. It seems this new requirement completely overlooks smaller community radio stations and forces us to maintain a digital music database. Are there any provisions for stations like ours to avoid the expense of tracking software?
July 15th, 2009 at 8:30 am
Unfortunately, the rules apply the same to all stations, regardless of size: in order to keep streaming music, stations need to be compliant with SoundExchange reporting, which requires tracking and reporting what you play. How your station collects this data is up to you. PI is here to help make the reporting part easier, once you have the data. But you do need to provide it to us so we can report it to SoundExchange on your behalf to be compliant, no matter your station size.
Please remember that all almost all stations (including yours) only need to report on two weeks out of each calendar quarter, not the entire quarter’s worth of data.