SoundExchange Reporting Blog

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!

Big conference week for us!

I’ll be speaking at AMPPR’s Public Radio Music Conference in New York City on Thursday, March 10 about – what else? – SoundExchange reporting. In addition to answering whatever questions you guys have, I’ll be sharing some interesting stats, charts and graphs on some of things we’ve gleaned from all the data that we’ve been collecting.

Meanwhile, down in Austin we’ll be well represented at the iMA conference, where we’re hosting the opening reception, on Thursday from 7:30-9:30pm where our new leader, Bob Kempf, will speak (click here to RSVP).

A number of of our folks will also be taking part in the session Take Advantage of NPR and PBS! Tactics You Can Implement Now (Friday at 9:45am), where they’ll be discussing topics like Project Argo and NPR’s Core Publisher Pilot.

If you’ll be attending one of these conference, be sure to say hello to me or my co-workers! We don’t bite.

Finally, if you haven’t done the following two things already, please do so ASAP:

1. Register for coverage under the new CPB-SoundAgreement

2. Submit your Q1 2011 SoundExchange reporting data (deadline, Friday, April 8, 2011)

We hope to see you in New York or Austin!

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…!

Recently, the folks at SoundExchange held a webinar geared towards webcasters, that is you folks who stream music. It was, to put it mildly, extremely informative. They covered many of the basics of the statutory license, royalty rates, reporting requirements, various Webcasting Service Agreements (such as the CPB-SoundExchange agreement), etc. It also included a lengthy Q&A session that touched on many interesting issues.

For those who didn’t attend, SoundExchange has made a video of the webinar available on their YouTube channel. I’ve also embedded the webinar video below.

You can also read the questions and answers that came up here, but I strongly, enthusiastically, and most definitely whole-heartedly recommend watching the entire video, so you can hear the discussion before the Q&A for background. Trust me, you’ll learn a lot about what this whole thing is about and who SoundExchange is and exactly what they do (and don’t do).

Some of the takeaways, for me:

• The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which governs all of this is  real law and the penalties for breaking it are potentially high
• Much like myself and Public Interactive, SoundExchange cannot provide legal advice
• SoundExchange cannot provide waivers for the DMCA’s Performance Complement, even for classical music; only the rights holders (i.e., the labels) can do so

But, please, do yourself a big favor and make time to watch the webinar video.

Finally, in addition to webinars like this and the aforementioned YouTube channel, SoundExhange also offers lots of helpful information for both stations and artists on their blog, as well as via Facebook and Twitter. Check it all out.

The fine folks at the syndicated show Hearts of Space are now providing playlists to Public Interactive for SoundExchange reporting purposes.

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

If Hearts of Space 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.

I am pleased as punch to announce that Public Interactive has once again completed a not-so-minor miracle by delivering another round of quarterly reports to SoundExchange, this time for Q4 2010.

Thanks to the hard work of many people at stations, syndicated shows, service providers and, of course, right here at Public Interactive, we were able to produce reports for 302 stations covering 482 content channels and 11,447,867 Music Aggregate Tuning Hours (a measure of the total hours of music transmitted to listeners) for the recently competed quarter. It’s truly a ridiculous task that somehow manages to get pulled off each quarter. It’s also an important task, helping to keep stations in compliance with the terms of the CPB-SoundExchange agreement and, hence, the copyright laws.

Now that the Q4 reports are done, that means we’re ready to accept your Q1 2011 reporting data (covering January 1 – March 31). Per usual, I can’t encourage everyone strongly enough to submit your reporting data as soon as possible after your chosen reporting weeks are over. Don’t don’t don’t wait until the last minute, please, I beg you.

For those who still refuse to heed this advice, the deadline for submitting your Q1 data to Public Interactive is Friday, April 8, 2011.

Again, a big thanks to all who submitted Q4 data; keep up the good work!

Finally, if you haven’t already, be sure to opt in for coverage under the latest CPB-SoundExchange agreement!

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!

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!

Let’s see, as of today (Monday, December 6), there are 19 shopping days left until Christmas (and a whole lot fewer for Hanukkah). For you procrastinators, that may seem like an eternity and if that’s how you roll, more power to you.

One thing I would most definitely recommend against putting off, however, is doing your quarterly SoundExchange reporting. As of today, there are 23 business days until the deadline (Friday, January 7, 2011) for submitting your Q4 2010 SoundExchange reporting data to Public Interactive. Don’t be one of those poor folks desperately compiling your two weeks worth of playlists during the first week of January with a lingering New Year’s hangover.  Not fun.

While SoundExchange reporting may be one of the few things less pleasant than shopping during the holidays, on the plus side, it doesn’t require a trip to the mall. It really is the little things…

Seriously, please,  just get it done and submitted and enjoy the rest of the holiday season without that hanging over your head.

As always, the reporting basics are detailed here. Also, as always, contact me with any questions and to let me know you’ve uploaded your data or completed your submission.

Happy shopping!