SoundExchange Reporting Blog

Just wanted to say Happy End-of-Year-Holiday-of-Your-Choice to all and thanks for your hard work during 2010 to meet your SoundExchange reporting requirements! You people are doing swell.

Speaking of, don’t forget, if you haven’t already submitted your Q4 2010 reporting data to us, you have until Friday January 7 to do so – but don’t wait until then! Get it done now so you can enjoy some worry free eggnog!

I’ll be taking the week after Christmas off, but you can still upload your data even while I’m gone. As always, please be sure to drop me a note letting me know that you’ve completed your submission so I can verify that we have what we need to do your report.

Oh yeah – and Happy New Year, too!

Hopefully everyone knows by now that Public Interactive gets music playlists from a number of syndicated show producers. By filling out a schedule grid in Composer Basic or Pro and indicating which syndicated programs were aired, these playlists can then be integrated into a station’s quarterly SoundExchange reports. This makes being SoundExchange compliant easier for everyone.

Up until now, however, stations didn’t have the ability to specify which episode of a particular program was aired on a given day; the system simply assigned the playlist based on the date. This meant that stations couldn’t properly indicate when they aired a show rerun, aired multiple shows on a given day or simply aired the show on a different day from its original air date.

Thanks to some recent changes to Composer Basic and Pro, this has now been rectified, meaning that stations can specify which episode of a syndicated show they aired. Exciting – right?

To quote from the main Public Interactive blog:

We recently updated the Syndicated Show functionality a bit, so now you can also choose the episode you air.

• Just make sure your Program Guide is up to date.
• The system will automatically assign playlists for your syndicated programs as they become available. Syndicated show playlists will automatically appear on your program guide with a playlist icon, as they become available.
• For Composer Pro clients only: If playlists are uploaded ahead of time, they’ll also display in your ‘Now On Air’ widgets.
• To choose a different episode, simply log into your Composer Admin, and go to the Create/Edit Playlist screen.
• Click the choose Syndicated icon , and then select a different episode by ID or date.

Couple of important notes to note:

1. Producers upload their playlists at different times, and right now, many upload retrospectively, after the shows have aired.
2. This whole choosing an episode thing does not apply to continuous (24×7) syndicated offerings, such as Classical 24 and JazzWorks.

Again, the list of syndicated show producers currently providing playlists to Public Interactive is here.

If you produce a syndicated show and are not yet providing playlists to Public Interactive, here’s how you can.

Enjoy!

Let’s see, as of today (Monday, December 6), there are 19 shopping days left until Christmas (and a whole lot fewer for Hanukkah). For you procrastinators, that may seem like an eternity and if that’s how you roll, more power to you.

One thing I would most definitely recommend against putting off, however, is doing your quarterly SoundExchange reporting. As of today, there are 23 business days until the deadline (Friday, January 7, 2011) for submitting your Q4 2010 SoundExchange reporting data to Public Interactive. Don’t be one of those poor folks desperately compiling your two weeks worth of playlists during the first week of January with a lingering New Year’s hangover.  Not fun.

While SoundExchange reporting may be one of the few things less pleasant than shopping during the holidays, on the plus side, it doesn’t require a trip to the mall. It really is the little things…

Seriously, please,  just get it done and submitted and enjoy the rest of the holiday season without that hanging over your head.

As always, the reporting basics are detailed here. Also, as always, contact me with any questions and to let me know you’ve uploaded your data or completed your submission.

Happy shopping!