SoundExchange Reporting Blog

This week I’m headed to lovely San Francisco for the annual NFCB Community Radio Conference. It’ll be my first time attending this gathering so I’m excited to meet lots of folks and attend a lot of interesting sessions.

I will also be participating in a panel Music Licensing on Thursday, June 2 from 4:00-5:15pm, which should be very informative and useful for any stations that stream music. Here are the session details:

Music Licensing
Moderator: Janis Lane-Ewart, KFAI, Minneapolis, MN
John Crigler, Garvey Schubert Barer, Washington, D.C.
Phil Johnson, NPR Digital Services, Boston, MA
Alan Korn, Berkeley, CA
Travis Ploeger, SoundExchange, Washington, D.C.
Melodie Virtue, Garvey Schubert Barer, Washington, D.C.
Everything you ever wanted to know about music licensing—for broadcast, for streaming, for podcasting and other digital media.  Who gets paid how much and by whom; reporting requirements and how to meet them; the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and what it means to you.

If you’re going to the conference, you won’t want to miss this chance to learn from, and ask questions of, the experts – not me so much (though I’ll be happy to answer your reporting questions), but a couple of great legal minds with lots of experience in this area AND a real, live SoundExchange representative. Don’t miss it!

Joining me at the conference will also be NPR Digital Services’ Sales and Marketing Manager Joe Orlando, who’ll be available to answer your questions about any and all of our offerings, and Keith Hopper, our Director of Product Strategy, who’ll be taking part in a panel on Content Management Systems on Thursday morning.

Here’s the full NFCB conference agenda.

Even if you don’t attend my session, please say hello if you see me! I’d love to press the flesh and put faces to names (and call letters)…

Just wanted to bring to everybody’s attention a very interesting rundown of the basics of music licensing in digital media here, recently written by David Oxenford and Robert Driscoll. They do a first rate job of describing many of the issues in layman’s terms. I highly recommend that everybody take a few minutes to read it.

DISCLAIMER: I myself am not a lawyer, and so cannot provide any further interpretation of these issues for you. If you ask I will recommend – as I already have to many – that you consult with your own legal counsel about any questions involving interpretation of the laws that govern all of this (i.e., the Digital Millennium Copyright Act).

Mr. Oxenford just published a piece today about how SoundExchange is starting to contact stations that are in not in compliance with royalty payments for music streaming. I’m not aware of SoundExchange having yet contacted of any of stations covered by the CPB-SX agreement for non-compliance – but I assume it’s only a matter of time. Don’t be one of those stations!

On another note, the deadline for getting Public Interactive your Q1 2010 SoundExchange reporting data is fast approaching. Please please please don’t wait until the last minute to submit your data!

Last week I was in in beautiful Portland, Oregon for the Western States Public Radio (WSPR) Fall Conference 2009. On Wednesday I took part in a session on everybody’s favorite topic, SoundExchange reporting.

The session panelists also included Washington, DC attorney Melodie Virtue and Ginny Berson of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. Melodie went over the legalities of the DMCA and such and I covered the basics of reporting to SoundExchange through Public Interactive then we fielded questions. I thought it was an excellent session and hopefully those in attendance did also.

For those who couldn’t make it, here’s an action shot from the session:

WSPR 2009 SoundExchange Session

You can almost feel the excitement in the air, can’t you?

Big thanks for Paul Stankavich of KPLU for inviting us to hold this session and for putting the whole conference together. Thanks Paul!

You can download the various slides and handouts from the session using the links below.

Melodie’s slides on music licensing

My slides on SX reporting through PI

My SX Reporting Quick Start Tips handout