SoundExchange Reporting Blog

We’re glad to announce that the fine folks at PubMedia are now uploading playlists for their PubJazz 1 service regularly to NPR Digital Services.

This means that these data are now available for the following:

1. Display in Composer Pro playlists
2. Use in quarterly SoundExchange reports

All without you having to do (much of) anything. Good news for a Monday, yes? Yes.

Your one task, if your station streams the show, will be to make sure that your schedule grid in Composer Basic/Pro accurately reflects when you offered it. Also, make sure when adding it to your grid that you select PubMusic PubJazz1 from the list of syndicated programs on the Edit Program page.

If the show was already in your grid, you’ll need to go back in and select it from the list of syndicated programs so that we’ll know to integrate those playlists into your quarterly SoundExchange reports.

The PubMedia team also plans on uploading playlists for their other services (PubJazz 2, Blues, etc.) in the near future. So keep your eyes peeled for announcements from that we’re receiving those data as well.

Finally, if you’re not sure whether a syndicated program you stream is uploading playlists to NPR Digital Services – or if you’re not sure what to do if you know a program doesn’t – then take a look at this post which reviews the basics.

If your station streams either (or both) Concierto or Acoustic Café, your SoundExchange reporting just got easier. Both shows are now uploading playlists to NPR Digital Services, so you don’t need to gather that data yourselves for your quarterly reporting.

Big thanks to the folks at those shows for making everybody’s reporting life easier.

Now, to make sure that we are able to properly integrate the playlists for those shows into your SoundExchange reports, you need to do the following:

Go to Create/Edit Program Guide in Composer Basic or Pro and make sure that your schedule grid properly reflects when you stream these shows.

Also, whether you just added the show to your grid or it was already there, make sure that it is now selected from the list of syndicated programs on the Edit Program page, like so:

Finally, after making changes to your schedule, make sure to click the go live with changes button on the Create/Edit Program Guide screen to make it official.

Reminder: the full list of syndicated shows that provide playlists to NPR Digital Services for SoundExchange reporting is here.

If a syndicated show that you stream is not on this list, then your station is responsible for obtaining and reporting the required playlist data to NPR DS. More details on that here.

After another three months of blood, sweat, and tears (not to mention cursing), NPR Digital Services was able to compile all that data that you stations and shows uploaded to us into the Q2 2011 SoundExchange reports, which were officially delivered last week.

Here are the top line numbers: we generated reports for 316 stations (licensees) and 503 content channels. All told, those reports covered over 830,000 songs which generated 13.6 million music aggregate tuning hours.

That right, is a lot of data. I’ll be digging deeper into the reporting data and sharing more findings in the coming weeks – so stay tuned!

Thanks to all who reported. You can download the final report file(s) that we generated and submitted to SoundExchange on your behalf via Composer Basic or Pro. Simply go to View Reports and click on the Quarter (e.g. Q2 – 2011) in the left hand column (note that there is a separate report for each of your channels).

Now that those reports are done this, of course, means that we’re already working on the next round of reports. We’re now accepting your data for Q3 (July 1 – September 30). The deadline to get us your Q3 data is Friday, October 7, 2011.

As always, I beg, plead and request on bended knee that you don’t wait until the last minute to gather and report your data. Make your life easier by getting it done and off of your mind as soon as possible.

Thanks again and enjoy the rest of the summer!

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.

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!

Does your station regularly air or stream only portions of a multi-hour syndicated program and, if so, have you ever wondered how you can get the correct playlists integrated into your SoundExchange reports? Well, wonder no more!

We’ve recently added the functionality to specify which hours of a syndicated program you air or stream. If we receive playlists from the show producer, we’ll then be able to integrate the proper subset of the show playlist into your quarterly SoundExchange reports and (if you’re a Composer Pro client) into your online Program Guide.

Wanna see how to do that? Sure, you do! So, let’s give it a try…

Let’s say that you stream the second hour of UnderCurrents on Wednesday from noon to 1:00pm. First thing to do is go to Create/Edit Program Guide and create the entry for UnderCurrents Wednesday at noon for an hour, being sure to choose it from the list of syndicated programs under Program, like so:

So, now UnderCurrents is in your guide and associated with the playlists that they provide directly to NPR Digital Services. Yay! Problem is, you air the second hour of the show but, by default, our system assumes that you start the show at the beginning and so the playlist we assign to that hour are for the first hour of the show.

What to do?

Here’s what you can now do to rectify this: go to Create/Edit A Playlist, which brings you to the Playlist Manager screen. Scroll down to Wednesday at noon and click on the Choose a different syndicated playlist icon there for UnderCurrents:

That’ll bring you to the following screen:

You may already be familiar with this screen, as it allows you to choose the specific episode of a syndicated program that you aired on a given date. Now, though, if you scroll to the bottom of the screen you’ll see:

This is where you can specify that you start the show with the second hour. Choose the hour of the show you start with, then pick the associated show episode and bingo! You’re now good to go.

Pretty cool – yes? Well, we think so…

The Bluegrass Review is now providing playlists to Public Interactive for the purpose of SoundExchange reporting. This means that if your station streams the show, we can now integrate their playlist data into your quarterly SoundExchange reports, thereby helping you comply with the reporting requirements – so that’s good!

Please join me in thanking the Bluegrass Review folks for providing these data!

If your station streams the show, please be sure that your schedule grid in Composer Basic/Pro accurately reflects when you offered it. Also, make sure when adding it to your grid that you select The Bluegrass Review from the list of syndicated programs on the Edit Program page.

If the show was already in your grid, you’ll need to go back in and select it from the list of syndicated programs so that we’ll know to integrate those playlists into your quarterly SoundExchange reports.

Finally, remember, if you haven’t already opted-in for coverage under the new CPB-SoundExchange Webcasting Agreement, do it now! Lots of stations already have, but a good number of you that were covered under the old agreement (which expired at the end of 2010) still haven’t. Until you do, you’re on your own for royalty payments and reporting to SoundExchange…!

Good news for those of you who stream Afropop Worldwide: they’ve begun uploading playlists to Public Interactive for SoundExchange reporting purposes! Big thanks to the folks there for providing the data to us so you guys can meet your reporting requirements.

If your station streams the show, please be sure that your schedule grid in Composer Basic/Pro accurately reflects when you offered it. Also, make sure when adding it to your grid that you select Afropop Worldwide from the list of syndicated programs on the Edit Program page.

If Afropop was already in your grid, you’ll need to go back in and select it from the list of syndicated programs so that we’ll know to integrate those playlists into your quarterly SoundExchange reports.

Finally, remember, if you haven’t already opted-in for coverage under the new CPB-SoundExchange Webcasting Agreement, do it now! Lots of stations already have, but a good number of you that were covered under the old agreement (which expired at the end of 2010) still haven’t. Until you do, you’re on your own for royalty payments and reporting to SoundExchange…!