SoundExchange Reporting Blog

Hopefully everyone knows by now that Public Interactive gets music playlists from a number of syndicated show producers. By filling out a schedule grid in Composer Basic or Pro and indicating which syndicated programs were aired, these playlists can then be integrated into a station’s quarterly SoundExchange reports. This makes being SoundExchange compliant easier for everyone.

Up until now, however, stations didn’t have the ability to specify which episode of a particular program was aired on a given day; the system simply assigned the playlist based on the date. This meant that stations couldn’t properly indicate when they aired a show rerun, aired multiple shows on a given day or simply aired the show on a different day from its original air date.

Thanks to some recent changes to Composer Basic and Pro, this has now been rectified, meaning that stations can specify which episode of a syndicated show they aired. Exciting – right?

To quote from the main Public Interactive blog:

We recently updated the Syndicated Show functionality a bit, so now you can also choose the episode you air.

• Just make sure your Program Guide is up to date.
• The system will automatically assign playlists for your syndicated programs as they become available. Syndicated show playlists will automatically appear on your program guide with a playlist icon, as they become available.
• For Composer Pro clients only: If playlists are uploaded ahead of time, they’ll also display in your ‘Now On Air’ widgets.
• To choose a different episode, simply log into your Composer Admin, and go to the Create/Edit Playlist screen.
• Click the choose Syndicated icon , and then select a different episode by ID or date.

Couple of important notes to note:

1. Producers upload their playlists at different times, and right now, many upload retrospectively, after the shows have aired.
2. This whole choosing an episode thing does not apply to continuous (24×7) syndicated offerings, such as Classical 24 and JazzWorks.

Again, the list of syndicated show producers currently providing playlists to Public Interactive is here.

If you produce a syndicated show and are not yet providing playlists to Public Interactive, here’s how you can.

Enjoy!

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.

Once again, thanks to lots of hard work by lots of folks – in particular YOU fine folks at so many stations – quarterly reports have been generated and delivered by Public Interactive to SoundExchange, this time for Q2 2010! The totals for this quarter’s reports:

Stations reporting: 288, a 9% increase over Q1 2010

Content streams reported on: 431, a 16% increase over Q1

Total Music Aggregate Tuning Hours (MATH) covered by the reports: 11,752,233, a 2.5% increase over Q1

That there is a lot of data, folks. Well done, everyone! Give yourself a pat on the back.

OK, that’s enough celebrating; time to get to work on Q3 2010 reporting! We are now accepting your reporting data for Q3 via Composer Basic and Composer Pro. The due date for data from the current quarter (July 1 – September 30) is Friday, October 8, 2010.

Once again, I urge one and all to get us your data as soon as your reporting weeks are over. Don’t wait until October! The sooner you do it, the more time there is to fix any problems and get us any missing data, and the sooner you will have SoundExchange peace of mind, which, really, is priceless.

Please, no matter what, contact me as soon as you upload your data. Do not just upload and assume all is fine! Check with me, please please pretty please. I really can’t emphasize this enough.

Anyway, thanks so much to all of you who submitted data for Q2. We appreciate it, the CPB appreciates it and the artists whose music you stream no doubt appreciate it.

The deadline for submitting your Q2 SoundExchange reporting data to Public Interactive has come and gone! Thanks to the many of you who got us your data on time and in the proper format and such!

For you stragglers, we can still try to squeeze you in, but you’d have to get us your data ASAP, and even then there are no promises, though we will do our best. Contact me if you do slip your data under my door in the next couple of days to let me know.

In the meantime, we’ve just posted a good reminder on the main Public Interactive blog about how to properly enter syndicated programming into your schedule grid, so that we can  integrate any playlists we get for your syndicated programs into your SoundExchange reports. Please take a few minutes to read and make sure your syndicated programs are entered properly into your schedule grid(s) in Composer Pro or Basic.

Anyway, thanks again to you stations that submitted Q2 data. Now, all we have to do is process it all…

It’s official: Q2 2010 is now over – which means, if you haven’t already, it is time to submit your SoundExchange reporting data to Public Interactive.

As you should know by now, the due date to get us your data is Friday, July 9, 2010.  It’s like the night before the big school project is due: there’s no more putting it off.

The basic reporting steps are detailed here.

Two important reminders for everyone:

1. Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE – even you PI streaming and Composer Pro clients – that is reporting on a 14-day sample (rather than the whole quarter) MUST set your reporting dates in Composer Pro or Composer Basic!!!

Emailing your reporting dates to me or otherwise noting them in filenames or files is not adequate! If you don’t set your dates in Composer Basic or Pro then we will tell SoundExchange that you have chosen to report on the whole quarter. If you only give us two weeks worth of compliant reporting data, but SoundExchange thinks you are reporting on the whole quarter, that means your reports are understating the amount of music you streamed. Not good.

To specify your reporting dates in Composer Basic or Pro, navigate to the Select Report Dates screen using the global What do you want to do? navigation drop down at the top of each screen, then enter the two start dates of your chosen reporting weeks; not the start and end date of your two weeks, but the start dates of each week. We do it this way because stations are free to report on non-consecutive weeks.

If you have more than one content stream to report on, be sure to set these dates for each of your content streams, navigating between them using the drop-down toggle at the upper right hand corner of the screen.

2. If you have entered, uploaded or otherwise submitted your Q2 data to us and you have not yet verified with me that we have what we need, contact me now! Do not assume that no news is good news. It isn’t. Is it ever?

That is all. Thanks, everyone!

It’s probably not something worth blowing a vuvuzela over but, for better or worse, the deadline for submitting your station’s Q2 2010 SoundExchange reporting data to Public Interactive is quickly approaching: Friday July 9, 2010.

For those who are new to this process, or for those who don’t have it down pat yet, here are the basic SoundExchange reporting steps for this quarter:

1. Choose your 14-day reporting period for Q2 2010, which must be two 7-day-consecutive periods completely contained between April 1 – June 30
2. Create properly formatted playlist logs or, for Composer Pro clients, enter playlists with required reporting data directly into Composer Pro
3. Obtain streaming access logs from your stream host for your chosen reporting period (not required for PI streaming clients)
4. Upload playlist and streaming log files to Public Interactive using Composer Basic or Composer Pro
5. Update/enter the guide information for each of your content streams in Composer Basic or Composer Pro, so that we can integrate playlists for those syndicated shows that you stream
6. Specify the start dates of your two chosen reporting weeks using Composer Basic/Pro
7. Contact me to let me know you’ve uploaded your data, updated your guide(s) and specified your reporting dates
8. Have a beverage of your choosing to celebrate!

OK, let’s get this set of reports over with ASAP so we can all enjoy the summer!

As we quickly approach the next SoundExchange reporting deadline, here at Public Interactive we’ve made some tweaks to the SoundExchange Dashboard portion of Composer Basic and Composer Pro to (hopefully) make the reporting process a little bit easier.

Having now gone through two quarters of reporting with the Dashboard in place, it was clear that one of the biggest areas of confusion for stations has been how to specify their two chosen reporting weeks each quarter. Many folks didn’t know how to do this, as the screen used for it was hard to find. We’ve now made some changes in attempt to make it easier to complete this important step in the reporting process.

An aside, this step is particularly important because, if your station provides two weeks worth of reporting data but doesn’t specify which weeks in the quarter they pertain to, then SoundExchange will assume the data is not a sample but a census (that is a complete accounting) of all the recordings you streamed during the quarter. This effectively means you have under-reported and could, in theory, affect royalty payments to artists and key metrics used as benchmarks in the agreement between the CPB and SoundExchange (e.g. Music Aggregate Tuning Hours).

So, it’s very important you set these dates in the tool.

To try and make a little more obvious as to how and where to do so, we’ve made the following changes to the SoundExchange Dashboard:

1. The Select Report Dates screen can now be accessed from the global What do you want to do? navigation at the top of each page, under SoundExchange Dashboard:

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2. The View Reports screen now displays the chosen reporting weeks for each of your content streams for the current reporting quarter, which are linked to the Select Report Dates screen:

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3. The chosen reporting period for the current quarter is now also displayed on the Upload Playlists/Streaming Logs screen, and a link to the Select Report Dates screen is provided:

the

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4. We’ve removed the previous functionality on the Upload Playlists/Streaming Logs screen that required you to specify the start and end dates for each individual playlist or streaming log file you uploaded to us. This was only causing confusion for users and these dates are now deduced from the files themselves.

5. If you have more than one content stream (e.g., an HD2 channel), you must specify reporting weeks for each one separately. You can now navigate between the Select Report Dates screens for each of your content streams by using the drop-down toggle we’ve added to the upper right hand corner of that screen (like you were already able to do on the upload logs and guide management screens):

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Important reminder: when specifying your two chosen reporting weeks in Composer Basic or Pro, you specify the start dates of each week, rather than the start and end dates of your reporting period. We do it this way because stations are free to choose two non-consecutive reporting weeks.

OK, if you haven’t already, please go forth, gather and submit your Q2 reporting data!

Slowly but surely, Q2 2010 SoundExchange reporting data is starting to dribble in to us here at Public Interactive. Thanks to you early birds for getting us your data already!

For the rest of you, please please PLEASE don’t wait until the deadline to get us your Q2 data. I encourage you to submit your reporting data as soon as your reporting weeks are over! If you wait until the last minute, problems can arise (not to mention other important business like, say, pledge drives). The earlier you get us your data, the more time we have to work together to fix any data problems and ensure that PI can generate and submit reports on your station’s behalf.

Q2 2010 SoundExchange Reporting Steps:

1. Choose your 14-day reporting period, which must be two 7-day-consecutive periods completely contained between  April 1 – June 30
2. Create properly formatted playlist logs and obtain streaming access logs from your stream host for your chosen reporting period
3. Submit playlist and streaming log files to Public Interactive using Composer Basic or Composer Pro
4. Update/enter the guide (schedule) information for each of your content streams in Composer Basic or Composer Pro, so that we can integrate playlists for those syndicated shows that you stream
5. Specify the start dates of your two chosen reporting weeks using Composer Basic/Pro
6. Contact me to let me know you’ve uploaded your data, updated your guide(s) and specified your reporting dates
7. Complete all of these steps by Friday, July 9, 2010
8. Rinse, lather, repeat in Q3…

Of course, there are some exceptions to the above. For example, some stations (they know who they are) must report for the entire quarter. Also, Composer Pro clients that enter playlist data using that tool don’t need to upload playlist files, and PI streaming clients don’t need to upload streaming logs, etc. But, otherwise, them’s the rules.

Oh yes, if you produce a syndicated program and are not yet providing us with playlists, please review this page on what data we need from you, then contact me so we can start collecting your show’s data.

Last week Public Interactive officially generated and submitted Q1 2010 reports to SoundExchange on behalf of 265 stations. The reports covered 373 content streams and 11.5 million Music Aggregate Tuning Hours, a nice increase from the Q4 2009 reports. Big thanks to all of you who submitted data for Q1!

Of course, there are still a number of you who didn’t submit data for Q1, and so are not in compliance with the terms of the CPB-SoundExchange agreement. If you have not been reporting, there’s no better time than the present to get in compliance before the stream police come a-knockin’. You’ve been warned.

Anyway, time now to get cracking on Q2 reports, which cover data from April 1 through June 30. The official deadline to get us your Q2 2010 reporting data will be Friday July 9, 2010.

If you have questions about how this all works, what data you need to give us and such, then please review this page on the basics of SoundExchange reporting through Public Interactive.

A few reminders for this next round of reporting:

1. Your chosen reporting weeks must be fully contained within Q2, (April 1 – June 30).

2. In addition to playlist and streaming log data, please be sure to fill out or update the guide for each of your content streams in Composer Basic or Pro so that we may integrate playlists for syndicated shows that you stream. The full list of syndicated shows for which we’re gathering playlists (which continues to grow) is here. If you produce a syndicated program and are not yet providing us with playlists, please review this page on what data we need from you and how to get it to us.

3. When submitting data to us, make sure to specify the start dates of your two chosen reporting weeks using Composer Basic/Pro (unless you are one of the lucky few that have to do full quarter reporting).

Oh yeah, and one more thing: AFTER SUBMITTING YOUR DATA PLEASE CONTACT ME to let me know that you have and to double check that we have what we need!!!!! We’re still tweaking the reporting system on our end to ensure no data falls through the cracks, but there are still some holes. Don’t assume that no news is good news!

Onward!