SoundExchange Reporting Blog

I’m just back from a few days in San Francisco for the annual NFCB Community Radio Conference. I had a great time meeting lots of people, attending lots of interesting sessions and sampling some of the great local eats.

I also got to participate in a great panel discussion about music licensing. I spoke for a few minutes about – brace yourself – SoundExchange reporting for stations covered by the CPB-SoundExchange Webcasting Performance Agreement. The panel also included John Crigler and Melodie Virtue, two excellent lawyers from Garvey Schubert Barer in Washington, D.C. who know quite a bit about copyright issues and how they affect public broadcasters. In addition, Travis Ploeger, SoundExchange’s Manager of Licensing and Enforcement, was there and spoke in detail about statutory licensing for webcasters.

Travis, John and Melodie presented lots of great information and answered many excellent questions from station folk. I found it quite helpful and informative and hopefully the session attendees did as well. Nobody cried, cursed or stormed out in anger, so, all in all, I’d call it a success!

I had a few slides on SoundExchange reporting, which you can download here.

Travis also had some slides related to the statutory license, which you can download here.

This was my first time attending an NFCB conference and I hope to go to future ones. Thanks to all who attended our panel and a big thanks to the fine NFCB folks who put it all together!

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)…

For those who missed the big announcement, last week Public Interactive underwent a name change: we’re now known as NPR Digital Services. This is part of a broader plan to expand the services that we offer to public broadcasters, the first step of which is the Core Publisher. As we say while we now have a new name and  expanded services, we’re still keeping the same nonprofit dress code (whew!).

More information on our new services will be forthcoming in the coming weeks and months, so keep an eye peeled for that and, of course, feel free to contact me with any questions.

Also last week, I gave a brief talk at  AMPPR‘s Public Radio Music Conference in New York City. in addition to fielding questions related to SoundExchange reporting, I also presented some interesting stream usage and song play statistics that we’ve pulled from all that data you’ve been submitting to us. You can see the slides I presented here.

I enjoyed attending the conference and meeting more of you folks face-to-face. The next conference I’m scheduled to attend will be the big NFCB conference in early June. I hope to see many of you there!

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

Next week I’ll be traveling to beautiful Portland, Oregon for the Western States Public Radio (WSPR) Fall Conference 2009. I’ll be taking part in a session to talk about – what else? – SoundExchange reporting.

It will be similar to the session we had at the PRPD conference in Cleveland last month. I’ll be there to give everyone an update on the Q3 reports we are abut to submit to SoundExchnage, as well as more details on Composer Basic, which we are planning to make available to stations for submitting Q4 data.

The session will be headed up by Melodie Virtue, an attorney well versed on internet music copyright and royalty issues, and will also include Ginny Berson of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. Melodie and I will do brief presentations and then we’ll take any and all questions from those in attendance.

The session will be on Wednesday, November 4, from 1:15 – 2:30pm. I will also be around through the rest of the conference on Thursday, so whether you can make our session or not, be sure to say hello if you see me! I’ll keep folks updated on my activities during the conference on my Twitter account.

I will be joined at the conference by Public Interactive’s Sales and Marketing Manager, Joe Orlando, who will be available to answer any and all question you may have about PI’s product offerings.

We’ll also both be available to talk about the current NFL season, if that’s more to your liking.

I am pleased to announce that our friends at the Public Radio Program Directors Association (this means you Arthur!) have given us a slot at their upcoming conference in Cleveland to discuss – what else? – SoundExchange reporting! The SX session at the PRPD conference will be on Wednesday, September 16th at 11:00am. Here’s the skinny on the session:

Eliminate SoundExchange Stress with Dr. Phil and Friends

Are you suffering from online music reporting stress? Join this roundtable discussion on music rights and SoundExchange (SX) reporting for public broadcasters. Phil Johnson (aka:  Dr. Phil) will give a brief report card on how the system is doing, review reporting requirements, provide an exclusive first look at reporting tools coming to your station, and will reveal what you need to know about the upcoming Q3 deadline.  Panelists will provide history and details behind the agreement and a primer on internet music rights and royalties. After a brief presentation we will open the session to answer your questions on the complicated and evolving world of music rights and responsibilities in the realm of new media. Don’t miss this chance to alleviate reporting stress and ask questions about what is and is not permitted forstreaming.

In addition to myself (yes, Dr. Phil), the panelists will include my boss Debra May Hughes, who runs PI, as well as Jeff Luchsinger from the CPB, and John Crigler from the law firm of Garvey Schubert Barer. Both Jeff and John were involved in crafting of the deal between the CPB and SoundExchange. As the session blurb says, we’ll use the time to give you an update on SoundExchange reporting through Public Interactive, including the development of tools to help stations get us their data. Jeff and John will be able to help answer your larger questions on the CPB-SX agreement and music rights and licensing in the digital era.

Let me use this opportunity to refer you back to an excellent webinar about music licensing that John participated in last month for NFCB stations. If you haven’t already watched the video of the webinar, I would encourage you to do so when you have a spare hour. It’s worth your time.

I look forward to meeting many of you in person at the conference. Even if you can’t make the session, please be sure to swing by the Public Interactive booth on Wednesday afternoon and say hello! I’ll only be there on Wednesday, but our crack sales manager Joe Orlando will be there all week to answer any question you may have about PI’s products and services.

I expect that Cleveland will be rocking that week!

Last Friday an excellent webinar was hosted by our friends at the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB), for whom I gave a webinar on SoundExchange reporting at the end of June. Last Friday’s webinar was organized to answer to lingering legal questions about what can and can’t be streamed under the SoundExchange license, and also on what needs to be reported to SoundExchange via Public Interactive. The panelists were John Crigler and Melodie Virtue, two lawyers who were involved in crafting the agreement between the CPB and SoundExchange.

John and Melodie provided some excellent information on some of the legal issues around streaming music, and more details on the agreement between the CPB and SX. They were able to provide a lot of information that I can’t, not being a lawyer. It is recommended viewing for all stations. Pass the word.

You can download the entire video of the webinar here (Windows Media format).

It’s worth time to check it out.

Last Friday I gave a webinar about SoundExchange reporting through Public Interactive to stations that belong to the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB). I did a presentation and then we opened things up for Q&A. I was helped out in answering questions by Jeff Luchsinger, Director of Radio Systems Investment at the CPB, who helped craft the agreement between the CPB and SoundExchange.

You can see the slides from that presentation here.

It was a well attended event that sparked lots of good questions. One, in particular, that came up was the following:

Do we need to report live performances, i.e. the artist is playing live in the station’s studio?

The answer here is that since the performance is going out live from your studio and IF you get a valid release from the performers there would be no performance or recording royalty to pay in that case. Again, that is assuming you get a valid release signed by the artist!

There were also questions related to reporting on songs that are in the public domain. There is a quite a bit of fuzziness here, because while a song may be in the public domain in terms of publishing royalties, the recording of it may not be (i.e. a recent recording of an old standard). The recommended approach is to report all music you play and let SoundExchange sort out who (er, whom?), if anybody, is due a royalty.

Finally, there were multiple questions about On Demand archives and whether they are covered by the CPB-SX agreement. The answer depends on the format of the offerings. Podcasts and downloadable archives are not covered. Neither are archives which, while not downloadable, are interactive, meaning the user can restart/rewind/pause/fast forward the archive. Truly streamed archives (played on a loop, non-interactive, non-downloadable) are covered.

This is just the first of a series of such webinars for various station groupings so we can begin to share information on what the agreement between the CPB and SoundExchange means for stations, what Public Interactive’s role in SoundExchange reporting will be and what the next steps are for stations. In July I’ll be doing a series of similar webinars for NPR stations. Keep you eyes peeled for invitations to these webinars or email me and I can forward them along to you.