SoundExchange Reporting Blog

Now that Thanksgiving is over (though we’re still enjoying the leftovers!), it’s high time to start on my annual wish list for Santa. You can probably guess what’s at the top of my list, but if not, allow my friend and coworker here at Public Interactive, Suzanne Brendle, to spell it out:

Welcome back, hope you had a nice long weekend. I’m here to remind you that the Q4 deadline is January 7, 2011. This is right after the holiday season. Please think about your holiday schedule, and consider submitting data now so you don’t have to interrupt your celebrations. Think of it as an early holiday present from you to us.

I know Phil would appreciate it.

SoundExchange peace of mind really is priceless…especially around the holidays.

See http://soundexchange.publicinteractive.com for details.

Composer Pro and Public Interactive Streaming make the SoundExchange reporting process quick and easy. Clients who use both Composer Pro™ and Public Interactive Streaming don’t need to submit any additional data to SoundExchange for the required quarterly reports. Composer Pro™ also includes syndicated playlist information for both display and reporting.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we can make the SoundExchange reporting process easier for you, contact Marketing and Sales Manager Joe Orlando, at jorlando@publicinteractive.com or 888-729-8809.

Couldn’t have said it better myself, Suzanne! From her fingertips to Santa’s (and your) ears… Get those data in early, people, then go enjoy some eggnog.

For those we don’t realize it, the current agreement between the CPB and SoundExchange expires at the end of 2010. Those of you who like having the CPB pay your streaming royalties fear not, though, because a new agreement that takes effect on January 1, 2011 is already in place.

From a station’s perspective, the main aspects of the new deal, which runs through the end of 2015, are the same as the old one: the CPB pays all royalties for music streaming by covered stations and the vast majority of stations still only have to report on 14 days (of their choosing) per calendar quarter, etc.

However, there are some important things to keep in mind about the new deal:

All stations that are eligible for coverage under the agreement will have to opt-in for coverage under the new deal – even those of you who have already opted-in for coverage under the existing agreement!

Opting-in for coverage under the new deal will be a similar process to opting-in under the current deal (i.e., via a CPB web site). The exact process has not yet been determined. More information on how that will work, and when you’ll be able to opt-in, will be forthcoming via this blog and emails.

As a reminder, in order to be eligible for coverage under the CPB-SoundExchange agreement, your organization must be one of the following:

• An NPR member
• An NFCB member
• A CPB Community Service Grant recipient

If your station used to fall into one of these categories but no longer does, you will not be eligible for coverage under the new agreement. Public Interactive and the CPB are currently compiling the complete list of eligible stations based on the latest NPR/NFCB member lists and CPB grantees.

Covered stations will continue to report quarterly to SoundExchange via Pubic Interactive.

Finally, all stations streaming music still need to adhere to the restrictions imposed by the DMCA’s Performance Complement. Just a friendly reminder.

As always, contact me with any questions – or good turkey brining recipes. I’m on the lookout for one…

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Another calendar quarter has come and gone, which means that another round of SoundExchange reporting has also come and gone! Last week, after months of hard work by many people – mainly YOU people at the stations -  Public Interactive delivered the Q3 2010 reports to SoundExchange. Here’s the 411 on this round of reports:

• Stations reporting: 290
• Content streams reported on: 459
• Total Music Aggregate Tuning Hours (MATH) covered by the reports: 11,826,951

Once again, you people gave us lots and lots of data! Thanks to all who did.

For those who didn’t and who should, well, you really need to start; by not reporting you are putting your station at risk of being found in violation of copyright laws.

That would be bad. Don’t let it happen to you.

If you haven’t been reporting then there’s no better time to start than with the next round of reports!

Speaking of, the deadline for submitting your SoundExchange reporting data for those Q4 2010 reports (covering October 1 – December 31) is Friday, January 7, 2011.

As always, I urge, beg and plead with all of you to get us your data as soon as your reporting weeks are over. Don’t wait until the reporting deadline! Each quarter there are stations that wait until the last minute to submit their data, only to find their stream host can no longer produce the required streaming logs, or who don’t have enough time to fill in their playlist logs or some such problem which then prevents us from generating a report for that station. The best way to avoid such problems is to submit your data as soon as possible!

No matter when (or how) you submit your data, contact me as soon as you do, so I can verify that we have what we need.

Finally, I’ll be traveling to Las Vegas this week to speak at the Western States Public Radio conference about (what else?) SoundExchange reporting. I’ll speaking at 1:45 on Friday for about 10 minutes, just after lunch. If you’re going, please be sure to sit in on my session and say hello!

OK, enough with the pleading. Thanks again for all the hard work, folks!

Thanks to all who participated in yesterday’s webinar on SoundExchange reporting for syndicated shows. We had a good crowd on the line and there were lots of excellent questions asked. Below are links to a number of related files, web pages and documentation.

As promised, here are the slides from the presentation.

The video of the entire webinar can be downloaded here (format: WMV, size: 38MB).

General information on reporting by syndicated show producers is available here.

Specifics on playlist file formatting is here (including links to sample files and spreadsheets).

Details on uploading playlist files to PI are here.

As always, feel free to contact me with follow up questions or to register your syndicated show with PI so you can begin to submit playlist files to PI. Be sure to send me the following information:

• Show Name
• Show Contacts – People responsible for data submission to PI. For each, please provide: name, title, phone number, email address
• Show URL
• Playlist Management Tool (if any) – e.g., spreadsheet, Music Master, etc.
• Is this a syndicated 24×7 stream? If so, please provide the timezone for the playlists files that will be submitted

I’ll respond with the FTP account information that you’ll need to begin submitting data to PI.

Just want to remind everyone of two important SoundExchange-related events that are coming up soon:

1. We’ll be conducting a webinar this coming Thursday, September 16, 2010 from 2:00-3:00 EDT for producers of syndicated programming streamed by stations covered under the CPB-SoundExchange agreement. Anybody is welcome to attend, but we’ll be discussing a reporting process that’s specific to those folks. Here’s the description and registration information:

If you produce a syndicated show streamed by public radio stations, please join us to learn how to submit data on the music you stream to Public Interactive (PI, a division of NPR) for use in the generation of quarterly reports to SoundExchange (SX). This webinar will discuss the terms of the recent CPB-SX webcasting performance agreement and what syndicated show producers need to do to ensure that stations streaming their shows are in compliance with the terms of this agreement. We’ll discuss the required reporting data, as well the format and method in which the data should be reported to PI. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session.

Title:         SoundExchange Reporting for Syndicated Show Producers
Date:        Thursday, September 16, 2010
Time:        2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT

Reserve your seat now at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/796174776

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements

PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

2. Q3 2010, believe it or not, will soon be over which means, if you haven’t already, please get your Q3 reporting data (covering July 1- September 30, 2010) to Public Interactive as soon as possible. We’ve set a deadline of Friday, October 8 to submit your Q3 data to us but please please pretty please do not wait until the last minute to submit your data! It leaves little to no time to correct errors and deal with unforeseen problems (e.g., missing streaming logs).

Anyway, as always, the basics of reporting are detailed here.

Onward!

As you hopefully know by now, Public Interactive (PI) currently collects music playlists from a number of syndicated programs for the purpose of integrating them into quarterly SoundExchange reports for stations that stream those shows. PI does this to help make SoundExchange (SX) reporting compliance easier for stations that have chosen to be covered by the CPB-SX webcasting performance agreement.

Until now, we’ve gotten playlists mainly (though not exclusively) from those programs syndicated through the “big three” networks (NPR, PRI, APM). However, we know that there are lots and lots of other syndicated shows out there, and we’d like to pull as many of those shows into the SoundExchange reporting fold as possible.

To that end, I’ll be hosting a webinar on Thursday, September 16 at 2:00 PM EDT to talk about SoundExchange reporting for syndicated shows. In the webinar we’ll discuss the terms of the recent CPB-SX webcasting performance agreement and what data syndicated show producers need to provide to ensure that stations streaming their shows are in compliance with the terms of this agreement. We’ll discuss the required reporting data, as well the format and method in which the data should be reported to PI. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session, and a representative from the CPB will join us to help answer questions.

Why is this important? Because producers who do not provide the required song data for SoundExchange reporting are putting the stations that stream their shows at risk of being in violation of copyright laws! If you, or someone you know, offers a program for syndication to public radio broadcasters, please plan on attending or passing along the invitation.

Here are more details, including registration information, on the webinar:

Title:         SoundExchange Reporting for Syndicated Show Producers
Date:        Thursday, September 16, 2010
Time:        2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT

Reserve your seat now at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/796174776

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements

PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

We hope to see (er, hear) you there! Yes – YOU!

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!