SoundExchange Reporting Blog

Are you feeling stressed, unhappy and overwhelmed by the effort to complete and submit your Q2 2011 SoundExchange reporting data to us at NPR Digital Services (due date THIS FRIDAY, July 8, by the by)? Well, first off, take a deep breath and consider having an adult beverage. Everything will OK… Feel better? Good.

Now, it may be that there are other SoundExchange reporting options available to you.

The fine legal minds at Garvey Schubert Barer have produced an updated version of their chart comparing and contrasting the various SoundExchange royalty rates and terms. It may be that your station qualifies for different payment and reporting terms under one of the many webcasting agreements that have been made with SoundExchange (e.g., college broadcasters, microcasters, etc.) You can download the latest version right here.

NPR Digital Services cannot provide any other information or advice on any of these other reporting agreements. We simply present this chart to be helpful and refer you to your own legal counsel to fully understand all of the options, and associated requirements and responsibilities, that may be available to your station.

Should your station choose to opt-out of coverage under the CPB-SoundExchange agreement, in order to report and/or pay SoundExchange under different terms, please let us know and we’ll tell you what you need to do to opt-out from the CPB deal.

Looking for something new to like on Facebook? Or for a new Twitter account to follow? Or how about a new YouTube channel to subscribe to? Well, then, how’s about hooking up with our friends at SoundExchange via social media?

That’s right, everybody’s favorite performing rights organization is very active in the social media world. Here are some of the ways that you can interact with them:

• Like them on Facebook; too bad there isn’t an option to love them on FB (you know you want to).
• Follow them on Twitter – but, wait, they also have a dedicated Twitter account for support issues here.
• Subscribe to the YouTube channel, which is where they post lots of interesting and helpful videos including artist testimonials and webinars for artists, labels and service providers.

I would encourage you to check them out on these sites; I find them all very informative and the SoundExchange staff is quite willing to interact, answer questions and generally be helpful, particularly on Twitter.

But if all this social media stuff ain’t your bag, you can always go old school and simply check out their web site and, specifically, their blog, for lots of information as well.

Potentially bad news for those of you who stream music from EMI: they just announced that they’re withdrawing a portion of their catalog from ASCAP for new media licensing.

What does that mean?

It means that if you currently stream music that they’ve pulled out of ASCAP, you will now have to negotiate directly with (and potentially pay royalties directly to) EMI for the rights to keep streaming the music that as been withdrawn.

Ouch.

Of course, these rights, which are for the underlying musical compositions, are separate from the royalties that SoundExchange collects and distributes for performance rights to the sound recording.

David Oxenford has lots more information on this here.

One question that comes my way regularly in regards to music streaming is about podcasting and whether it falls under the terms of the CPB-SoundExchange webcasting agreement. The short answer is that it doesn’t. The statutory license administered by SoundExchange only covers non-interactive digital music offerings (e.g. streams).

Offering copyrighted recordings as part of a podcast is whole other matter from doing it via a stream/webcast and introduces a whole new set of legal questions. When someone asks me about it, I always refer people to their own legal counsel in order to understand all of the intricacies involved.

Recently, this question came up on the Public Radio Discussion Group mailing list and someone (only identified as Will R) posted links to two very, very useful articles on the legal and copyright issues around podcasting. They were so good that I wanted to share them here for those not on the list.

The first was Podcasting Stripped to Basics by Carly Didden of the law firm Garvey Schubert Barer.

The second was the more detailed Podcasting Legal Guide, for those who really want to get into the nitty-gritty.

If you’re thinking of podcasting music I highly, strongly and fervently recommend that you at least read the former. Great stuff.

Big thanks to Will R for sharing these articles, whoever you are…!

Thanks to all who have submitted Q4 2010 SoundExchange reporting data! We’re plowing through the mountain of data (and still tracking down a few of you stragglers) and will be generating and submitting the final reports to SoundExchange later this month. Per usual, I’ll blog about the report totals when the reports are done and submitted.

In the meantime, I must call your attention to another important matter: the new agreement between the CPB and SoundExchange which took effect as of January 1. I’ve written previously about the old and new agreements and that, while the new agreement keeps the same reporting requirements for stations, everyone – yes, everyone – must again opt-in for coverage under the new agreement.

This week the CPB launched a new Internet Music Rights web site, through which eligible stations can affirm their intent to comply with the terms of the new agreement, which is in effect from 2011 through the end of 2015.

So, if you haven’t already, go to the site, log in if you’ve previously registered and have credentials, or register with the CPB and complete the opt-in process. After that, if you haven’t already, register with Public Interactive so that we can begin accepting your quarterly data and submitting reports on your behalf. Stations that have previously registered with Public Interactive do NOT need to register with us again.

Remember, if you don’t opt-in for coverage under the new deal, you are on your own for paying royalties and reporting to SoundExchange – even if you were covered under the old agreement.

Got it?  OK, as always, contact me with questions and don’t wait – get covered now!

For those we don’t realize it, the current agreement between the CPB and SoundExchange expires at the end of 2010. Those of you who like having the CPB pay your streaming royalties fear not, though, because a new agreement that takes effect on January 1, 2011 is already in place.

From a station’s perspective, the main aspects of the new deal, which runs through the end of 2015, are the same as the old one: the CPB pays all royalties for music streaming by covered stations and the vast majority of stations still only have to report on 14 days (of their choosing) per calendar quarter, etc.

However, there are some important things to keep in mind about the new deal:

All stations that are eligible for coverage under the agreement will have to opt-in for coverage under the new deal – even those of you who have already opted-in for coverage under the existing agreement!

Opting-in for coverage under the new deal will be a similar process to opting-in under the current deal (i.e., via a CPB web site). The exact process has not yet been determined. More information on how that will work, and when you’ll be able to opt-in, will be forthcoming via this blog and emails.

As a reminder, in order to be eligible for coverage under the CPB-SoundExchange agreement, your organization must be one of the following:

• An NPR member
• An NFCB member
• A CPB Community Service Grant recipient

If your station used to fall into one of these categories but no longer does, you will not be eligible for coverage under the new agreement. Public Interactive and the CPB are currently compiling the complete list of eligible stations based on the latest NPR/NFCB member lists and CPB grantees.

Covered stations will continue to report quarterly to SoundExchange via Pubic Interactive.

Finally, all stations streaming music still need to adhere to the restrictions imposed by the DMCA’s Performance Complement. Just a friendly reminder.

As always, contact me with any questions – or good turkey brining recipes. I’m on the lookout for one…

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Apparently there’s some confusion among a few stations regarding when they must begin reporting to SoundExchange (SX). Some stations are under the impression that reporting isn’t required until 2011. This is most definitely not true; any stations streaming copyrighted sound recordings on-line must report to SoundExchange now. Failure to do so puts your station at risk of being found in violation of copyright law.

This applies to all stations which are under the CPB-SX agreement. CPB is paying the royalties but your station must file the reports. Stations covered by the CPB agreement have the benefit of not paying royalties, but they must report now.  The rules and laws about royalty payments and reporting of musical performances over the Internet have been in place since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into law in 1998. Many stations were apparently either not aware of these obligations or chose to ignore them. While the announcement last year of the agreement between the CPB and SoundExchange may have brought these obligations to light for some stations, they did not delay the requirement to begin providing reports.

The bottom line is, if your station is not already providing reports for SoundExchange, it should begin doing so immediately. Each quarter, Public Interactive (PI) sends SoundExchange a list of all stations that have opted to be covered under the CPB-SX agreement, along with the data from those who have reported. As you might imagine, it would be fairly easy for SoundExchange to figure out which stations are not reporting. And stations which aren’t reporting could be in violation of copyright law. CPB selected Public Interactive to help stations comply with the reporting requirements in order to avoid any such repercussions. PI is not involved in the disbursement of payments to artists or in deciding whether stations are, or are not, in compliance. We have tools and recommendations to make reporting easier.

So, if you’re not already reporting, don’t wait any longer! Please contact us today to get started.

This week there was a small, but not insignificant, bit of news for you classical music folks: NPR has secured an agreement from Naxos, one of the world’s largest classical music labels, to waive the performance complement of the DMCA. This waiver applies to all public radio stations covered by the CPB-SoundExchange agreement and eliminates the need to abide by the performance complement for any classical music whose rights are held by Naxos.

So – good news! Couple of things to bear in mind here:

1. This does not affect the reporting of classical music to SoundExchange via Public Interactive; that is, the same reporting rules continue to apply (e.g. report each track separately, include album titles, etc.).

2. This only applies to stations covered by the CPB-SoundExchange agreement. If your station has not explicitly opted-in to be covered by the deal, then the waiver does not apply to you.

3. The waiver only applies to the playing of recordings owned by Naxos.

NPR views this as, hopefully, the beginning of a process of approaching other labels as well. Let’s all cross our fingers. It’s the little things…

During our session on SoundExchange reporting at the PRIMA conference in New Orleans last week, an excellent question was posed: does Public Interactive have any plans to share information that could be gleaned from all of the playlist and stream listenting data that we’re collecting for reporting purposes?

Yes, indeed, a most excellent question!

The short-term answer is we don’t have a plan yet for reporting such information, because we’ve been quite busy just reaching out to stations, gathering data, building our tools like Composer Pro, and generating the quarterly reports. The long-term answer is most definitely yes! We would love to report back information and statistics that would be of interest to the system.

Now that the question has been raised – and now that we’ve gotten our reporting legs under us, a bit – we would like to begin generating and sharing aggregate information based on the data we’ve gathered.

The obvious question, though, is, what do you people want to know?

To that end, we’d like to begin soliciting your input on what type of information based on SoundExchange reporting data should we report back to the system? If you have any ideas or suggestions, please add them as a comment to this post, so all can see what others are interested in. Once we get an idea of what kind of information folks are interested in, we’ll see about generating some reports that answer your questions.

Keep in mind the following parameters:

• We can only share aggregate statistics, meaning we cannot share data for any specific station. Stations, of course, have access to their own SX reports that we generate via Composer Basic or Pro.

• We have two types of data upon which to draw:
  • Playlists (potentially) include the following information for each song streamed:
    • Song Title
    • Featured Artist
    • Album Title
    • Marketing Label
    • Song play frequency/time of each play/Actual Total Performances (number of people that heard a song)
  • Streaming access logs includes information about stream listening, such as time and duration of listener sessions.

• We can also break things down by stream format, which is identified as one of the following:
  • Classical
  • Jazz
  • Music Mix
  • News and Information
  • News/Classical
  • News/Jazz
  • News/Music Mix
  • Adult Album Alternative

So, we can answer – or try to answer – questions like:

What’s the most frequently played piece of music on classical streams?

What song was heard by the most listeners?

What are the peak listening hours for AAA streams?

Etc., and so on.

Think about it, noodle on it, kick it around a bit and let us know what you’d like to learn from all this. Once we get some feedback, we’ll figure out what the popular questions are and do our best to provide some answers both now and going forward.

Happy 2010 everyone! Let’s start off the year with some legal housekeeping.

As a condition of the Webcasting Performance Agreement between CPB and SoundExchange we are required to notify all entities covered by the agreement of the following:

As of January 1, 2011, Covered Entities must comply with the reporting requirements applicable to Web Site Performances under 37 C.F.R. Part 370 and other regulations, as well as comply with their other obligations under Sections 112 and 114 of the Copyright Act. Covered Entities should begin diligent efforts to prepare to do so in advance of January 1, 2011. A failure to comply with such reporting requirements may cause Web Site Performances on or after January 1, 2011 to infringe the copyright in any Sound Recordings performed.

We’ll be emailing this reminder to you covered stations in the next few days also.