SoundExchange Reporting Blog

Once again, thanks to lots of hard work by lots of people, a not-so-minor miracle has been worked and the latest batch of  quarterly reports (for Q1 2011) have been delivered to SoundExchange !

This latest round, submitted on Friday afternoon, covered 314 stations, 500(!) distinct content channels,  and 13,352,321 (music) aggregate tuning hours. It was yet another monumental effort of cat herding, data crunching and generally turning water into wine.

A big thanks goes to all who submitted data and to our most excellent tech folks here who crunch all that data to compile the statistics and reports. Well done, all!

For those who don’t already know, you can download your actual report (or reports, as there is a separate report for each channel) we generated and submitted on your behalf directly from Composer Pro or Basic.

• Just log in an go to View Reports under the SoundExchange Dashboard.
• There you’ll see a list of the reporting status for each of your channels for the current and past quarters.
• Scroll down to Q1 2011 (or whatever past quarter with a status of Complete) and click on the quarter in the left hand column; that’s the file that we generate from your data and send to SoundExchange.

Feel to free to download these reports and save for your records. Also, if I may, go ahead and print them out; these reports make for fantastic beach reading! Later this year we’re hoping to release e-reader compatible versions…

Of course, the best part of getting a round of reports done is that it means that it’s time to start all over again, this time for the Q2 2011 reports! Those reports, of course, cover April 1 through June 30 and the deadline for getting your data to us at NPR Digital Services is Friday, July 8, 2011. We are now ready, willing and able to accept your Q2 data.

Thanks again and keep up the great work, everyone!

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!

I am pleased as punch to announce that Public Interactive has once again completed a not-so-minor miracle by delivering another round of quarterly reports to SoundExchange, this time for Q4 2010.

Thanks to the hard work of many people at stations, syndicated shows, service providers and, of course, right here at Public Interactive, we were able to produce reports for 302 stations covering 482 content channels and 11,447,867 Music Aggregate Tuning Hours (a measure of the total hours of music transmitted to listeners) for the recently competed quarter. It’s truly a ridiculous task that somehow manages to get pulled off each quarter. It’s also an important task, helping to keep stations in compliance with the terms of the CPB-SoundExchange agreement and, hence, the copyright laws.

Now that the Q4 reports are done, that means we’re ready to accept your Q1 2011 reporting data (covering January 1 – March 31). Per usual, I can’t encourage everyone strongly enough to submit your reporting data as soon as possible after your chosen reporting weeks are over. Don’t don’t don’t wait until the last minute, please, I beg you.

For those who still refuse to heed this advice, the deadline for submitting your Q1 data to Public Interactive is Friday, April 8, 2011.

Again, a big thanks to all who submitted Q4 data; keep up the good work!

Finally, if you haven’t already, be sure to opt in for coverage under the latest CPB-SoundExchange agreement!

I hope everyone had a safe and fun New Year’s holiday. I’m sure you’re all just as excited as I am to be back in the office after a nice long break. Right?

Anyway, before you get too wrapped up in 2011, let’s not forget that many of you still have some important 2010-related business to take care of: namely, Q4 SoundExchange reporting.

This Friday (January 7) is the deadline to get us your reporting data for the recently completed quarter. A number of you have already submitted your data, but lots of you still haven’t. So, for the latter group of you, this is the week to get it done! You can’t put it off any longer, sadly.

As always, the reporting basics are here and, if you haven’t already, as soon as you submit your data, contact me to let me know you have and to make sure your data is all in order.

Got it? OK, then let’s go…

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!

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!

Now that Thanksgiving is over (though we’re still enjoying the leftovers!), it’s high time to start on my annual wish list for Santa. You can probably guess what’s at the top of my list, but if not, allow my friend and coworker here at Public Interactive, Suzanne Brendle, to spell it out:

Welcome back, hope you had a nice long weekend. I’m here to remind you that the Q4 deadline is January 7, 2011. This is right after the holiday season. Please think about your holiday schedule, and consider submitting data now so you don’t have to interrupt your celebrations. Think of it as an early holiday present from you to us.

I know Phil would appreciate it.

SoundExchange peace of mind really is priceless…especially around the holidays.

See http://soundexchange.publicinteractive.com for details.

Composer Pro and Public Interactive Streaming make the SoundExchange reporting process quick and easy. Clients who use both Composer Pro™ and Public Interactive Streaming don’t need to submit any additional data to SoundExchange for the required quarterly reports. Composer Pro™ also includes syndicated playlist information for both display and reporting.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we can make the SoundExchange reporting process easier for you, contact Marketing and Sales Manager Joe Orlando, at jorlando@publicinteractive.com or 888-729-8809.

Couldn’t have said it better myself, Suzanne! From her fingertips to Santa’s (and your) ears… Get those data in early, people, then go enjoy some eggnog.

Another calendar quarter has come and gone, which means that another round of SoundExchange reporting has also come and gone! Last week, after months of hard work by many people – mainly YOU people at the stations -  Public Interactive delivered the Q3 2010 reports to SoundExchange. Here’s the 411 on this round of reports:

• Stations reporting: 290
• Content streams reported on: 459
• Total Music Aggregate Tuning Hours (MATH) covered by the reports: 11,826,951

Once again, you people gave us lots and lots of data! Thanks to all who did.

For those who didn’t and who should, well, you really need to start; by not reporting you are putting your station at risk of being found in violation of copyright laws.

That would be bad. Don’t let it happen to you.

If you haven’t been reporting then there’s no better time to start than with the next round of reports!

Speaking of, the deadline for submitting your SoundExchange reporting data for those Q4 2010 reports (covering October 1 – December 31) is Friday, January 7, 2011.

As always, I urge, beg and plead with all of you to get us your data as soon as your reporting weeks are over. Don’t wait until the reporting deadline! Each quarter there are stations that wait until the last minute to submit their data, only to find their stream host can no longer produce the required streaming logs, or who don’t have enough time to fill in their playlist logs or some such problem which then prevents us from generating a report for that station. The best way to avoid such problems is to submit your data as soon as possible!

No matter when (or how) you submit your data, contact me as soon as you do, so I can verify that we have what we need.

Finally, I’ll be traveling to Las Vegas this week to speak at the Western States Public Radio conference about (what else?) SoundExchange reporting. I’ll speaking at 1:45 on Friday for about 10 minutes, just after lunch. If you’re going, please be sure to sit in on my session and say hello!

OK, enough with the pleading. Thanks again for all the hard work, folks!

Before getting into the main point of this post, allow me to remind all that the deadline for submitting your Q3 SoundExchange reporting data is this Friday, October 8, 2010. Sad, but true.

If you have already submitted data but haven’t checked with me yet, to ensure we have everything we need, please do so now!

If you haven’t yet submitted your Q3 SoundExchange data, then please, also, by all means, do so now!

Enough with the unpleasantries. I’m really writing here to let everyone know that Public Interactive has tweaked the statuses of your SoundExchange reports in Composer Basic and Pro. Previously, they were a bit confusing, so we’ve tried to  make them a little more self-explanatory. Here’s how they work now:

Incomplete – Means we haven’t received either playlist files and/or streaming logs from you.

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 PI 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 to ensure we have enough data to generate a report; in other words, we have data from you and based on that 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 upload your playlists and streaming logs to Public Interactive; your report status goes from Incomplete to Pending

2. PI successfully preprocesses your files, and your status goes from Pending to Ready.

3. Just before final submission to SoundExchange, PI generates the actual reports, and your status goes from Ready to Complete.

There you have it. Hopefully, this is somewhat less confusing than it was. If not, as always, contact me and I’ll try to clear it up…!

Have you noticed a chill in the air? It could be because Fall has arrived – or because, like Halloween, the Q3 data submission deadline is almost upon us!

Boo!

That deadline again, in case you don’t recall, is a little over a week away – Friday, October 8, 2010. It covers the period July 1 – September 30, 2010. All the gory details are here.

Couple of other juicy reporting tidbits:

1. We’ve added some new syndicated shows to the list of those providing us with playlist data. Be sure to keep an eye on the list of such shows here and make sure that your program guide in Composer Basic or Pro properly reflects when you streamed these syndicated shows during your reporting weeks.

2. While we’re on the topic of syndicated shows, I’m sure everyone knows of the name change for Speaking of Faith to Being. Many folks have already asked what this means for SoundExchange reporting and whether stations need to do anything on their end to ensure those playlists continue to get integrated into their reports. The answer is stations don’t need to do anything! PI will change the name of the show in Composer Basic and Pro to reflect the change.

3. PI has been in discussions with WFMT about obtaining playlists for their syndicated offerings (e.g., the Beethoven Satellite Network, the Jazz Satellite Network, etc.). They assured us they will be providing the data to PI in the near future. I’ll let everyone know when that’s the case – or if, for some reason, they don’t, in which case stations would need to get the data directly from WFMT themselves.

We’re also working with our buddies at PRX, to get playlists for their offerings.

4. Some of you may have noticed that we’ve added a new check to detect song overlaps in playlist files (i.e., songs that are identified as having been played at the same time).

If you upload a playlist file with song overlaps, a warning explaining this will be written to the error file, which you can view by clicking on the View link in the Error File column on the Upload Playlists/Streaming Logs screen.

You can see which songs overlap by opening the processed file, which you can review by clicking on the View link in the Processed File column on the same screen. Search for Song overlap in this file and you’ll the instances of overlap.

Song overlaps only lead to a warning, not an error, meaning they won’t prevent us from generating a report for you. It does mean, however, that some over counting of listening will occur due to the overlap.

Why should anyone care about over counting? Because over counting leads to inflated Music Aggregate Tuning Hours which can lead to higher royalty payments for the entire system. Not good.

Occasional overlaps of a few seconds here and there are no big deal, although, ideally, no overlapping is what everyone should be striving for. If your overlaps are more than a few seconds – or are something persistent your file – please take the time to review and fix them as best you can. It’s for the common good. Honest.

OK, that’s more than enough for now. Good luck, and thanks for all the hard work, everyone!

P.S. It was great to meet so many of you at this past weekend’s Public Radio Programming Directors conference in Denver! Next conference up for me: the Western States Public Radio conference in Las Vegas.