SoundExchange Reporting Blog

I wanted to highlight some findings that I recently presented at the AMPPR Public Radio Music Conference which we dug up in all that Q4 2010 SoundExchange data that you guys sent to us.

As you all know well, we collect lots and lots and lots of data on the music you pubcasters stream each quarter for these SoundExchange reports which you all love so much. As part of the report generation process, we use those data to count how many people heard each of the songs you played on your streams.

Each time a listener hears a song on your stream, that’s counted as a performance of the song (and this is the stat that SoundExchange uses to distribute royalties to the performers on the recordings and the record labels). Technically, SoundExchange calls the number of times a song was heard the Actual Total Performances, or ATP, of the song.

Since we had that all calculated, I thought it’d be interesting to see which songs were the most performed in Q4 2010, based on your data submissions. Here, then, were the top five most performed songs of Q4 2010, grouped by the format of the channel/stream on which it was played (excluding News & Information channels):

Couple of important notes here:

1. This is for the period October 1- December 31, 2010
2. This is based on data for 302 public stations and 482 distinct content channels for which reports were generated in Q4 2010
3. ATP is adjusted to a monthly average for each song over the quarter, since most stations reported on 14 days per quarter, while some reported on the entire quarter
4. This is based on music streaming audience only, not broadcast

Finally, while I was at it, I figured, what the heck, let’s see if public radio was suffering from the same awful affliction that my 11 year-old daughter currently is, namely, Bieber Fever. Let’s take a look…

Whew! I say that’s one more very good reason to keep funding public broadcasting, in my hunmble opinion.

If you find this sort of thing interesting, or have questions of your own that we could try to answer using these data, please let me know and we’ll do our best to find the answer.

For those who missed the big announcement, last week Public Interactive underwent a name change: we’re now known as NPR Digital Services. This is part of a broader plan to expand the services that we offer to public broadcasters, the first step of which is the Core Publisher. As we say while we now have a new name and  expanded services, we’re still keeping the same nonprofit dress code (whew!).

More information on our new services will be forthcoming in the coming weeks and months, so keep an eye peeled for that and, of course, feel free to contact me with any questions.

Also last week, I gave a brief talk at  AMPPR‘s Public Radio Music Conference in New York City. in addition to fielding questions related to SoundExchange reporting, I also presented some interesting stream usage and song play statistics that we’ve pulled from all that data you’ve been submitting to us. You can see the slides I presented here.

I enjoyed attending the conference and meeting more of you folks face-to-face. The next conference I’m scheduled to attend will be the big NFCB conference in early June. I hope to see many of you there!

Big conference week for us!

I’ll be speaking at AMPPR’s Public Radio Music Conference in New York City on Thursday, March 10 about – what else? – SoundExchange reporting. In addition to answering whatever questions you guys have, I’ll be sharing some interesting stats, charts and graphs on some of things we’ve gleaned from all the data that we’ve been collecting.

Meanwhile, down in Austin we’ll be well represented at the iMA conference, where we’re hosting the opening reception, on Thursday from 7:30-9:30pm where our new leader, Bob Kempf, will speak (click here to RSVP).

A number of of our folks will also be taking part in the session Take Advantage of NPR and PBS! Tactics You Can Implement Now (Friday at 9:45am), where they’ll be discussing topics like Project Argo and NPR’s Core Publisher Pilot.

If you’ll be attending one of these conference, be sure to say hello to me or my co-workers! We don’t bite.

Finally, if you haven’t done the following two things already, please do so ASAP:

1. Register for coverage under the new CPB-SoundAgreement

2. Submit your Q1 2011 SoundExchange reporting data (deadline, Friday, April 8, 2011)

We hope to see you in New York or Austin!