More Questions Answered
July 2nd, 2009 by Phil JohnsonPublic Interactive and the CPB recently met with SoundExchange to clarify a few outstanding and quite frequently asked questions about SoundExchange reporting. A number of these were related to reporting on classical music. Here are some answers:
Q: Classical recordings often don’t have album titles. What should we report in those cases?
A: Report whatever title is on the physical CD or album from which it came (i.e. what’s on the spine). Whatever it says there is what is to be reported.
Q: How are we supposed to report song titles for classical pieces? Is a Beethoven symphony 4 tracks or 1?
A: However the label divides up the album tracks, that’s what to go on. So, if they split a Beethoven symphony into four tracks, each one is to be reported as a separate song title.
Q: What does “artist” mean for a classical performance? Is this the composer?
A: For classical music the Featured Artist/Group/Orchestra should be the soloist, orchestra or conductor that is featured prominently on the album.
In addition, many stations still have questions about the specific data that Public Interactive needs to collect in order to generate SoundExchange compliant reports. Here are a couple of the most popular and my answers:
Q: What pieces of information about songs do we need to track and report to Public Interactive for SoundExchange reporting?
A: For each song played on each stream, please provide the following data:
- Song title
- Featured artist/group/orchestra
- Album title
- Marketing label
- Start date and time of song play
- End date and time of play or duration of song
Q: Why does Public Interactive need to know the start times and end times or duration of each song?
A: Start and end times/duration are needed to calculate (1) the number of people who heard a given song (in order to match song play time with stream access during that time from your streaming logs) and (2) your station’s music Aggregate Tuning Hours (music ATH), which is the total hours of music streamed times the number of people listening at the time music was played.
Q: What type of data should be included in raw streaming logs?
A: Usually stations don’t have control over what is logged by their streaming server. In general, most streaming server applications (e.g. Shoutcast, Icecast) log similar information. Basically, in order to create SX-compliant reports Public Interactive needs raw streaming access logs that capture the following information:
- IP Address of requester (for filtering our requests from outside the United States)
- URL requested
- Status of request
- Start date and time of request
- End date and time or duration or request
Q: Why does Public Interactive need to know the IP address of users accessing our streams?
A: SoundExchange pays royalties based on music streamed to listeners in the United States. They have asked us to filter out requests from users outside of the country. In order to do this (as best as possible) PI needs to know the user’s IP address.
I have updated the FAQ page on this site to include all of these new questions and answers.
Please keep those questions coming!
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Another classical music inspired question…
If we are not allowed to play more than 3 tracks from an album in a three hour period, and we play an entire symphony or other longer classical composition, (which is usually divided into many tracks on a CD) will we be in violation of the DMCA or does the restriction apply to the work as a whole?
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Start times: I don’t think start and end times and stream logs will guarantee an accurate calculation. Calculating number of people listening to a stream will always be an estimate. There’s no way to know if someone is actually listening right? Listeners of broadcast radio. or streams, are not always engaged in active listening. What if they start the stream and leave the room, go to lunch, go to a meeting. And, are you assuming 1 listener per stream? What if it’s an entire household? Your calculation will always be inaccurate. Also, Start times will likely be approximate anyway, since the dataentry for playlists can occure pre-show, on air or after the show. Are you assuming all stations use automated play systems? DJ’s playing CD’s here don’t have time to measure all these datapoints exactly. We can give you approximate start times, if you really need accurate duration, perhaps it’s something you could calculate from the basic data of song, artist, album, label – look it up on CDDB or some other DB.
July 4th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Dennis – For general questions about what you can and can’t stream under the DMCA, we recommend you speak with your legal counsel. PI’s role here is to collect the data necessary from stations for SoundExchange reporting purposes; we can’t provide legal advice on these sorts of issues.
The best I can offer is to point you to the following very brief summary of the DMCA which may point you in the right direction:
http://www.kurthanson.com/HTM-RAIN/NewsArchives/1200/1201200.htm
Good luck!
July 4th, 2009 at 9:59 am
Chris – You bring up many valid points. We can’t know with 100% certainty who was listening to a stream at a given point. As you say, it will always be an estimate. However, we have to make our best calculation with the data at hand, and using streaming access logs and playlist logs with the most accurate times that stations can provide is the best we can do.
Duration alone, even if 100% accurate, is not good enough. We need to know when music is playing (as closely as possible) in order to make our best estimate of music aggregate tuning hours. That’s what we’re required to do.
So, just do your best to give accurate start and end times (or start time and duration). It is in everybody’s best interest to do so.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Thanks Phil,
Appreciate the magnitude of the task on your end.
On the topic of user IP addresses. We can send you access logs, but our streaming software does not track concurrent listeners. It only shows new connections, and doesn’t show when folks leave. The file does contain the IP address of the requester. How do we report this, just send you the log file?
July 6th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Hey Chris – Yes go ahead and send us what you have and we’ll see what we can do with it, for starters at least. Your logs may capture session duration, which is common.