SoundExchange Reporting Blog

Thanks to the blood, sweat and tears (not to mention the cursing) of lots of people, NPR Digital Services was able to complete and submit the Q4 2011 SoundExchange reports last week.

For those interested in the gory details, the reports covered:

• 327 stations
• 522 content channels
• 19.4 million aggregate tuning hours devoted to music streaming
• 890,000(ish) recordings

Each (featured) performer on every one of those recordings is now eligible to collect royalty money (paid on behalf of your station by the CPB) from SoundExchange. See? We’re helping starving (and some not-so-starving) artists to get paid!

Now that the hangover from the Q4 reports has (just about) cleared, it’s time to face reality and get crackin’ on your reporting data for the Q1 2012 reports. Those data should come from with the period of January 1 through March 31 and must be submitted to to NPR Digital Services by Friday, April 6 2012.

Keep up the great work, everyone!

Thanks to all who attended my session Digital Media Metrics at the Public Radio Programming Conference here in Baltimore today. Also, big thanks to Mike Reszler of APM/MPR for, in actuality, graciously letting me horn in on what was originally his session, so I could present some streaming usage metrics that we’ve gleaned all that there SoundExchange data you guys send us each quarter.

Here, as promised, is my slide deck for your downloading pleasure: SoundExchange Reporting – PRPD 2011

As always, I’m greatly enjoying the PRPD conference and, in particular, meeting many of you in person. I’ll be here for the rest of the conference, often times hanging out at the NPR Digital Services booth, so please introduce yourself if you see me

Just wanted to remind y’all (or, as we said it back in my native and beloved Pittsburgh, yinz) of a couple of important events and items. Namely:

1. I’ll be traveling to Baltimore next week to speak at the annual Public Radio Programming Conference. Be sure to stop by my session or the NPR Digital Services booth and say hello!

2. The deadline for submitting your Q3 SoundExchange data to us is starting to get uncomfortably close (close enough to start raising my blood pressure, at least): it’s a little over three weeks away: Friday, October 7, 2011.

3. Finally, while more and more syndicated shows are submitting playlist data to NPR Digital Services, many still do not. If you stream one that doesn’t, you (unfortunately) are responsible for getting the required data and uploading to us along with your local playlists. If you produce a syndicated show that is not currently sending playlist data to us, then please start!

I hope to see many of you next week in Baltimore!

As I continue digging through the Q2 2011 SoundExchange reporting data in preparation for my talk at the upcoming Public Radio Programming Conference, I thought I ‘d share some findings about the songs reported in this last quarter.

First, though, a definition. When compiling the data you supply to us for your quarterly SoundExchange reports, one of the statistics we calculate for each song you report is the total (or actual) number of performances. That’s not the same as the number of plays or spins; instead, it’s a count of the number of people that heard the song, which we calculate using your streaming access logs.

Anyhow, using that measure, here, then, are the 10 most performed songs (across all channel formats) on station streams covered by the CPB-SoundExchange webcasting agreement in Q2 2011:

1. Gonzaghuinha “Tanacara”
2. Death Cab for Cutie “You are a Tourist”
3. Gomez “Options”
4. Fleet Foxes “Helplessness Blues”
5. TV On the Radio “Will Do”
6. Foster the People “Pumped Up Kicks”
7. Dawes “Time Spent in Los Angeles”
8. Lykke Li “I Follow Rivers”
9. My Morning Jacket “Circuital”
10. Bon Iver “Calgary”

What do think? Any of these songs in your station’s rotation?

Here’s another preview of the information I’ll be sharing at next month’s Public Radio Programming Conference in Baltimore.

Each content channel that we report on to SoundExchange each quarter must be identified as one of the following formats:

• Classical
• Jazz
• Music Mix
• News and Information
• News/Classical
• News/Jazz
• News/Music Mix
• Adult Album Alternative

The recently filed Q2 2011 reports covered 503 content channels streamed by 316 public radio stations and here’s how they break down by format:

So, almost a third of all reporting channels are of the News/Music Mix variety, while only a small (but feisty!) 5% of channels are News/Jazz.

If this sort of information floats your boat, and you’ll be in Baltimore for the conference, be sure to drop by my session on 9/21 for more such goodies!

Attention fans of metrics and crab cakes: I’ll be speaking at the PRPD‘s upcoming Public Radio Programming Conference in Baltimore. Specifically, I’ll be taking part in the following session:

Digital Media Metrics: Making Sense of it All

In the digital world we can count almost anything, and in many cases the numbers can be overwhelming: page views, visits, visitors, time on site, bounce rates, click paths and the list goes on. So where do you focus? Where do you put energy? This session will look at smart metrics vs. dumb metrics, and it will focus on the most important question: what should you count and why? More than just a primer on digital metrics, this session will help you devise a strategy to move from tracking digital metrics to being a digital analyst. And learn fascinating streaming trends from SoundExchange reporting.

Mike Reszler – Managing Director of Digital Strategies & Content, APM &MPR

Phil Johnson – SoundExchange Reporting Project Manager, NPR Digital Services

This session will be during the first set of breakout sessions, on Wednesday, September 21 at 11:00am (consult the conference schedule for exact location). It should be an interesting and informative session; in addition to all of the great info that Mike will be sharing, I’ll be presenting some streaming metrics based on all that data you’ve generated and submitted for quarterly SoundExchange reporting.

NPR Digital Services will also have a booth at the conference, where I’ll be hanging out between sessions, so be sure to stop by to say hello, ask questions and enjoy our usual stellar offering of free candy! I hope to see many of you there.

While we’re on the topic, don’t forget, the deadline to submit your Q3 2011 SoundExchange data (covering July 1 through September 30) to us at NPR DS is Friday, October 7.

After another three months of blood, sweat, and tears (not to mention cursing), NPR Digital Services was able to compile all that data that you stations and shows uploaded to us into the Q2 2011 SoundExchange reports, which were officially delivered last week.

Here are the top line numbers: we generated reports for 316 stations (licensees) and 503 content channels. All told, those reports covered over 830,000 songs which generated 13.6 million music aggregate tuning hours.

That right, is a lot of data. I’ll be digging deeper into the reporting data and sharing more findings in the coming weeks – so stay tuned!

Thanks to all who reported. You can download the final report file(s) that we generated and submitted to SoundExchange on your behalf via Composer Basic or Pro. Simply go to View Reports and click on the Quarter (e.g. Q2 – 2011) in the left hand column (note that there is a separate report for each of your channels).

Now that those reports are done this, of course, means that we’re already working on the next round of reports. We’re now accepting your data for Q3 (July 1 – September 30). The deadline to get us your Q3 data is Friday, October 7, 2011.

As always, I beg, plead and request on bended knee that you don’t wait until the last minute to gather and report your data. Make your life easier by getting it done and off of your mind as soon as possible.

Thanks again and enjoy the rest of the summer!

Are you feeling stressed, unhappy and overwhelmed by the effort to complete and submit your Q2 2011 SoundExchange reporting data to us at NPR Digital Services (due date THIS FRIDAY, July 8, by the by)? Well, first off, take a deep breath and consider having an adult beverage. Everything will OK… Feel better? Good.

Now, it may be that there are other SoundExchange reporting options available to you.

The fine legal minds at Garvey Schubert Barer have produced an updated version of their chart comparing and contrasting the various SoundExchange royalty rates and terms. It may be that your station qualifies for different payment and reporting terms under one of the many webcasting agreements that have been made with SoundExchange (e.g., college broadcasters, microcasters, etc.) You can download the latest version right here.

NPR Digital Services cannot provide any other information or advice on any of these other reporting agreements. We simply present this chart to be helpful and refer you to your own legal counsel to fully understand all of the options, and associated requirements and responsibilities, that may be available to your station.

Should your station choose to opt-out of coverage under the CPB-SoundExchange agreement, in order to report and/or pay SoundExchange under different terms, please let us know and we’ll tell you what you need to do to opt-out from the CPB deal.

Question: What to do if your station streams a syndicated program, particularly a music show, but that show is not listed as one of those that currently provides playlists directly to NPR Digital Services for SoundExchange reporting?

Answer: Two options:

1. Request the required playlist data directly from the producer and submit it to NPR Digital Services like you would playlists for your own local programming

and/or

2. Encourage the producer to contact us to begin uploading playlist data for the show directly to NPR Digital Services

The latter is the best solution, since your station – and any others that stream the show – wouldn’t have to worry about collecting and submitting the show’s playlists each quarter. Instead, you can just add the show to your schedule grid in Composer Basic or Pro, mark it as a syndicated program, and then sit back, relax, and not worry about properly reporting the music played by that syndicated show.

While NPR Digital Services already collects playlists for many widely syndicated programs (not just music shows, either) as a service to make reporting easier for stations, please be aware that your station is ultimately responsible for reporting all of the music on your streams – and it is your station that could pay a very steep price for copyright infringement if the music on a syndicated program is not properly reported to SoundExchange.

So, if there are syndicated programs that you stream which (a) play music that needs to be reported to SoundExchange but (b) are not currently providing playlists to NPR Digital Services, contact the producers now to make sure the data comes to either you or us.

Attention those of you who stream (and report to SoundExchange on) classical music. Consider the following chart that’s based on reporting data from Q1 2011 for stations covered by the CPB-SoundExchange webasting agreement:

Click to enlarge

This chart reflects the most performed artists as reported by the 300+ stations that we generated SoundExchange reports for in Q1 2011. A “performance” is one transmission of a song to a stream listener (not just spins).

So, according to the data we received, The Decemberists were the most performed artists on CPB-covered stations in Q1 (HAPPY NOTE: No sign of Justin Bieber!).

“OK,” you say, “And?” These findings are no real surprise.

Right, but look a little more closely at the chart. Who comes in as the second most performed artist in Q1? That’s right: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Also high on the list are Beethoven and Bach.

Having seen Amadeus many times (great flick!), I know for a fact that Mozart is dead. Long dead. As are, I’m pretty sure, Beethoven and Bach.

Now, I wasn’t a history or music major (I went with economics – big mistake), but I’m pretty sure they all died well before the first ever sound recording was made, which means none of them could possibly be the featured artist on a sound recording, which is who receives the digital performance royalties that SoundExchange collects and distributes.

Plus, even if one of them were still alive, they were all composers, not performers. Composers and songwriters don’t get paid by SoundExchange; performers do!

See the problem now?

When reporting the performance of a classical piece, you MUST MUST MUST report the featured artist/group/orchestra on the recording, NOT the composer.

By not properly reporting the performing artist you are not only not in compliance with the SoundExchange reporting requirements, you are also preventing those artists from getting paid by SoundExchange.

Not good.

SoundExchange themselves just wrote about this issue on their blog.

Please make sure that you are properly reporting artists in the future. Classical musicians have it hard enough; let’s not make it harder by keeping them from getting some of that money that CPB paid to SoundExchange for the music you stream…