SoundExchange Reporting Blog

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!

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!

I’m just back from three days in Las Vegas for  Western States Public Radio’s 2010 Conference. I’m not much of a gambler (total losses: $3), but it was still fun to see Sin City live and in person. The highlight, by far, was going to see Cirque du Soleil’s The Beatles LOVE show. Simply fantastic and very highly recommended!

The other highlight was getting to give a (short) session on SoundExchange reporting, which included some interesting stream usage data that we’re starting to glean from all of those files you folks are giving to us each quarter. You can download my slide deck here. As always, please contact me with any questions or comments.

Big thanks to Paul Stankavich and Tom Mara and all of the WSPR folks for giving me a few minutes of time to speak, and for once again putting together a great conference!

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!

Before getting into the main point of this post, allow me to remind all that the deadline for submitting your Q3 SoundExchange reporting data is this Friday, October 8, 2010. Sad, but true.

If you have already submitted data but haven’t checked with me yet, to ensure we have everything we need, please do so now!

If you haven’t yet submitted your Q3 SoundExchange data, then please, also, by all means, do so now!

Enough with the unpleasantries. I’m really writing here to let everyone know that Public Interactive has tweaked the statuses of your SoundExchange reports in Composer Basic and Pro. Previously, they were a bit confusing, so we’ve tried to  make them a little more self-explanatory. Here’s how they work now:

Incomplete – Means we haven’t received either playlist files and/or streaming logs from you.

Pending – Means we’ve received both playlists and streaming logs from you, but they haven’t been preprocessed. Before the final reports are generated, files get preprocessed to ensure they match our formatting and have the appropriate data fields. Playlist files get automatically preprocessed shortly after upload; streaming logs, on the other hand, get processed manually by PI staff, and so may take some time before they are preprocessed.

Ready – Means we have both playlists and streaming logs and that they’ve been preprocessed successfully to ensure we have enough data to generate a report; in other words, we have data from you and based on that we can generate a report.

Complete – The final report for SoundExchange has been generated.

Basically, this all means that reporting should work like this:

1. You upload your playlists and streaming logs to Public Interactive; your report status goes from Incomplete to Pending

2. PI successfully preprocesses your files, and your status goes from Pending to Ready.

3. Just before final submission to SoundExchange, PI generates the actual reports, and your status goes from Ready to Complete.

There you have it. Hopefully, this is somewhat less confusing than it was. If not, as always, contact me and I’ll try to clear it up…!

Some very promising news came out of our nation’s capital yesterday: a bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives that would eliminate the Performance Complement of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) for public radio stations.

The Performance Complement, you may recall, is that particularly annoying bit of law that says things like you can’t stream more than four songs by the same artist in a three hour period, etc. and so forth. Needless to say, eliminating these silly restrictions would be a great boon to all.

Below is the official press release from NPR with more details.

Before you get too excited, though, there are a couple of things to bear in mind:

1. This bill is not law yet – it’s just a bill, yes it’s only a bill. Until and unless it becomes a law, the Performance Complement is still in effect.

2. If this bill does become a law, this won’t affect SoundExchange reporting. That is to say, all of the music you stream would still have to be reported as it is currently, including the onerous “report each track individually” requirement. Changing that is a whole other kettle of fish.

But still – exciting and hopeful! Thanks to all who helped get things this far. Keep all your digits crossed.

NPR Applauds the Introduction of the Public Radio Music Enhancement Act of 2010

September 30, 2010; Washington, D.C. – NPR expresses its support of the Public Radio Music Enhancement Act of 2010, H.R. 6307, introduced yesterday by Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) in the U.S. House of Representatives.  The bill will improve the audience experience provided by public radio music stations in communities across America by easing restrictions on public radio stations’ music streams imposed by the performance complement.

“My legislation offers a narrow fix that has broad implications for the music-loving public in my home state of Wisconsin and across the country,” said Congresswoman Baldwin. “I look forward to working with NPR to further enhance its programming and better serve its listeners,” Baldwin said.

“We are enormously grateful for Congresswoman Baldwin’s leadership on this issue. Music is a critical element of public radio’s community service, connecting audiences with the performers, songwriters, musicians, lyricists and composers who enhance their lives. Congresswoman Baldwin’s common-sense legislation would allow public radio to improve that service and enhance audience enjoyment in the digital age,” said Vivian Schiller, NPR’s president and CEO.

Included as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998, the performance complement arbitrarily limits the number of times stations can stream songs online from the same artist, album or compilation within a 3-hour period. In effect, this prevents public radio stations—some of the last free sources of music in quintessential genres like classical, jazz and folk—from streaming symphonies in their entirety, promoting local and emerging artists, or properly educating their listeners about the lives and careers of American musical masters.

“We look forward to working with Congresswoman Baldwin on this important legislation as the process moves forward,” Schiller concluded.

-NPR-

Media relations contact: Danielle Deabler, ddeabler [at] npr [dor] org / 202.513.2303

Have you noticed a chill in the air? It could be because Fall has arrived – or because, like Halloween, the Q3 data submission deadline is almost upon us!

Boo!

That deadline again, in case you don’t recall, is a little over a week away – Friday, October 8, 2010. It covers the period July 1 – September 30, 2010. All the gory details are here.

Couple of other juicy reporting tidbits:

1. We’ve added some new syndicated shows to the list of those providing us with playlist data. Be sure to keep an eye on the list of such shows here and make sure that your program guide in Composer Basic or Pro properly reflects when you streamed these syndicated shows during your reporting weeks.

2. While we’re on the topic of syndicated shows, I’m sure everyone knows of the name change for Speaking of Faith to Being. Many folks have already asked what this means for SoundExchange reporting and whether stations need to do anything on their end to ensure those playlists continue to get integrated into their reports. The answer is stations don’t need to do anything! PI will change the name of the show in Composer Basic and Pro to reflect the change.

3. PI has been in discussions with WFMT about obtaining playlists for their syndicated offerings (e.g., the Beethoven Satellite Network, the Jazz Satellite Network, etc.). They assured us they will be providing the data to PI in the near future. I’ll let everyone know when that’s the case – or if, for some reason, they don’t, in which case stations would need to get the data directly from WFMT themselves.

We’re also working with our buddies at PRX, to get playlists for their offerings.

4. Some of you may have noticed that we’ve added a new check to detect song overlaps in playlist files (i.e., songs that are identified as having been played at the same time).

If you upload a playlist file with song overlaps, a warning explaining this will be written to the error file, which you can view by clicking on the View link in the Error File column on the Upload Playlists/Streaming Logs screen.

You can see which songs overlap by opening the processed file, which you can review by clicking on the View link in the Processed File column on the same screen. Search for Song overlap in this file and you’ll the instances of overlap.

Song overlaps only lead to a warning, not an error, meaning they won’t prevent us from generating a report for you. It does mean, however, that some over counting of listening will occur due to the overlap.

Why should anyone care about over counting? Because over counting leads to inflated Music Aggregate Tuning Hours which can lead to higher royalty payments for the entire system. Not good.

Occasional overlaps of a few seconds here and there are no big deal, although, ideally, no overlapping is what everyone should be striving for. If your overlaps are more than a few seconds – or are something persistent your file – please take the time to review and fix them as best you can. It’s for the common good. Honest.

OK, that’s more than enough for now. Good luck, and thanks for all the hard work, everyone!

P.S. It was great to meet so many of you at this past weekend’s Public Radio Programming Directors conference in Denver! Next conference up for me: the Western States Public Radio conference in Las Vegas.

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.