SoundExchange Reporting Blog

FINAL REMINDER: The deadline for submitting your Q2 2011 SoundExchange reporting data to NPR Digital Services is this Friday, July 8, 2011.

Anyhoo, with lots of you submitting reporting data right now, it seems like a good time to review the meanings of the various statuses for your quarterly SoundExchange reports in Composer Basic and Pro. These are the statuses you see on the View Reports screen, which you can get to by clicking on View Reports under the SoundExchange Dashboard in the global Composer navigation.

Here’s how they break down:

Incomplete – Means we haven’t received either playlist files and/or streaming logs from you. NOTE: Composer Pro clients will see this status until we export your playlist data from the tool for use in SoundExchange reports. That usually doesn’t happen until after the end of the quarter.

Pending – Means we’ve received both playlists and streaming logs from you, but they haven’t been preprocessed. Before the final reports are generated, files get preprocessed to ensure they match our formatting and have the appropriate data fields. Playlist files get automatically preprocessed shortly after upload; streaming logs, on the other hand, get processed manually by NPR DS staff, and so may take some time before they are preprocessed.

Ready – Means we have both playlists and streaming logs and that they’ve been preprocessed successfully; in other words, based on the data we have from you we can generate a report.

Complete – The final report for SoundExchange has been generated.

Basically, this all means that reporting should work like this:

1. You’re enjoying the time off between reporting deadlines and haven’t uploaded any data to us yet, so your status is Incomplete

2. After some last minute scrambling on deadline day, like most people, you upload your playlists and streaming logs to NPR Digital Services at 4:55pm (ET), causing your report status to change to Pending

3. While you’re enjoying a post-submission adult beverage, NPR DS successfully preprocesses your files, and your status changes to Ready

4. Just before final submission to SoundExchange, NPR DS generates the actual report, and your status changes to Complete

5. Once NPR DS submits all of the most recently completed quarters’ reports to SoundExchange (in one big pile) the new quarter appears in Composer and your status for that report is Incomplete. So continues the viscous cycle.

Make sense? Hopefully it does, but if not, you know what do…

If you’ve already submitted your Q2 2011 SoundExchange reporting data to NPR Digital Services (big thanks!) – which are due on July 8, just two scant weeks from Friday! – or even if you haven’t yet (for shame), now is a good time to review the contact and stream information for your station that was provided to us in the past. People leave stations, new channels are added, formats and schedules are changed, etc. Whenever any of those things happen, we need to know about it for SoundExchange reporting purposes.

So, if you haven’t recently, please do the following as soon as you can, and on a regular basis in the future, such as when you submit your data to us each quarter:

1. Update your station contacts – These are the people responsible for SoundExchange reporting and the ones who should get SoundExchange-related email reminders and updates from us. To review and update the list in Composer Basic or Pro go to Edit Station Info under SoundExchange Dashboard using the What do you want to do? global navigation at the top of each page.
2. Review your station’s existing streams – These are the content channels that your station streams and for which reports need to be generated each quarter. This should be all distinct content streams, regardless of format. To see the list of streams we currently have for you, go to Edit Station Info and scroll to the bottom of the page. where it lists your Station Streams. For each stream, make sure that the Format is correct. If not, click on the Edit link for that stream and update it appropriately.
3. Notify NPR Digital Services and CPB of any new or obsolete streams – If the list of station streams that we have in Composer Basic/Pro for you is incorrect, please contact me to let us know which ones are obsolete or what new channels you’ve added (we have to add or remove streams from your account). For each new stream, please be sure to specify which of the follow formats it is:
   Classical
   Jazz
   Music Mix
   News and Information
   News/Classical
   News/Jazz
   News/Music Mix
   Adult Album Alternative  

   Also, you’ll need to notify the CPB of any new or obsolete streams, using their Internet Music Rights site.

4. Review channel schedules – Be sure to review the schedule grid that we have for each of your streams in Composer Basic/Pro, to ensure that they properly reflect when you streamed syndicated programs that provide NPR Digital Services with playlists for SoundExchange reporting (full list here). To review and update your schedule grid, go to Create/Edit Program Guide under Program Guide Composer in the global navigation. If you have more than one stream you can toggle between the schedule grid for each one using the My Stations drop down selector in the upper right corner of the screen.

Thanks as always and happy summer!

Question: What to do if your station streams a syndicated program, particularly a music show, but that show is not listed as one of those that currently provides playlists directly to NPR Digital Services for SoundExchange reporting?

Answer: Two options:

1. Request the required playlist data directly from the producer and submit it to NPR Digital Services like you would playlists for your own local programming

and/or

2. Encourage the producer to contact us to begin uploading playlist data for the show directly to NPR Digital Services

The latter is the best solution, since your station – and any others that stream the show – wouldn’t have to worry about collecting and submitting the show’s playlists each quarter. Instead, you can just add the show to your schedule grid in Composer Basic or Pro, mark it as a syndicated program, and then sit back, relax, and not worry about properly reporting the music played by that syndicated show.

While NPR Digital Services already collects playlists for many widely syndicated programs (not just music shows, either) as a service to make reporting easier for stations, please be aware that your station is ultimately responsible for reporting all of the music on your streams – and it is your station that could pay a very steep price for copyright infringement if the music on a syndicated program is not properly reported to SoundExchange.

So, if there are syndicated programs that you stream which (a) play music that needs to be reported to SoundExchange but (b) are not currently providing playlists to NPR Digital Services, contact the producers now to make sure the data comes to either you or us.

Attention those of you who stream (and report to SoundExchange on) classical music. Consider the following chart that’s based on reporting data from Q1 2011 for stations covered by the CPB-SoundExchange webasting agreement:

Click to enlarge

This chart reflects the most performed artists as reported by the 300+ stations that we generated SoundExchange reports for in Q1 2011. A “performance” is one transmission of a song to a stream listener (not just spins).

So, according to the data we received, The Decemberists were the most performed artists on CPB-covered stations in Q1 (HAPPY NOTE: No sign of Justin Bieber!).

“OK,” you say, “And?” These findings are no real surprise.

Right, but look a little more closely at the chart. Who comes in as the second most performed artist in Q1? That’s right: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Also high on the list are Beethoven and Bach.

Having seen Amadeus many times (great flick!), I know for a fact that Mozart is dead. Long dead. As are, I’m pretty sure, Beethoven and Bach.

Now, I wasn’t a history or music major (I went with economics – big mistake), but I’m pretty sure they all died well before the first ever sound recording was made, which means none of them could possibly be the featured artist on a sound recording, which is who receives the digital performance royalties that SoundExchange collects and distributes.

Plus, even if one of them were still alive, they were all composers, not performers. Composers and songwriters don’t get paid by SoundExchange; performers do!

See the problem now?

When reporting the performance of a classical piece, you MUST MUST MUST report the featured artist/group/orchestra on the recording, NOT the composer.

By not properly reporting the performing artist you are not only not in compliance with the SoundExchange reporting requirements, you are also preventing those artists from getting paid by SoundExchange.

Not good.

SoundExchange themselves just wrote about this issue on their blog.

Please make sure that you are properly reporting artists in the future. Classical musicians have it hard enough; let’s not make it harder by keeping them from getting some of that money that CPB paid to SoundExchange for the music you stream…

I’m just back from a few days in San Francisco for the annual NFCB Community Radio Conference. I had a great time meeting lots of people, attending lots of interesting sessions and sampling some of the great local eats.

I also got to participate in a great panel discussion about music licensing. I spoke for a few minutes about – brace yourself – SoundExchange reporting for stations covered by the CPB-SoundExchange Webcasting Performance Agreement. The panel also included John Crigler and Melodie Virtue, two excellent lawyers from Garvey Schubert Barer in Washington, D.C. who know quite a bit about copyright issues and how they affect public broadcasters. In addition, Travis Ploeger, SoundExchange’s Manager of Licensing and Enforcement, was there and spoke in detail about statutory licensing for webcasters.

Travis, John and Melodie presented lots of great information and answered many excellent questions from station folk. I found it quite helpful and informative and hopefully the session attendees did as well. Nobody cried, cursed or stormed out in anger, so, all in all, I’d call it a success!

I had a few slides on SoundExchange reporting, which you can download here.

Travis also had some slides related to the statutory license, which you can download here.

This was my first time attending an NFCB conference and I hope to go to future ones. Thanks to all who attended our panel and a big thanks to the fine NFCB folks who put it all together!