SoundExchange Reporting Blog

It may only be December 16 but for you stations that have to do SoundExchange reporting through Public Interactive Christmas has come early (or, for some, Hanukkah has come right on time)! The long awaited, much ruminated, never to be duplicated (where’s Muhammad Ali when you need him?) Composer Basic has finally and officially been launched! Big thanks to all of you stations who helped us with beta testing.

It has been launched just in time, too, for stations to use for getting us their Q4 reporting data (from within October 1 – December 31, 2009) which you may already know is due to us by Friday, January 15, 2010.

Composer Basic is the tool you will now use to manage your station’s contact and stream information with us for SoundExchange reporting, upload playlist and/or streaming log files, specify your chosen quarterly reporting weeks and access completed reports that we have generated and submitted to SoundExchange on your behalf. Composer Basic will also allow you to specify your weekly schedules, for the purpose of letting us know what syndicated programming you stream, so that we can collect playlists from the producers of those shows and integrate them into your station’s SoundExchange reports.

Composer Basic is for stations that are not already PI Composer clients. As mentioned in an earlier post, those stations have been upgraded to Composer Pro, which offers all of the functionality of Composer Basic, plus playlist entry and public facing pages and widgets to display your guides and playlists.

If your station has registered with Public Interactive for SoundExchange reporting (and you’re not already a Composer Pro client) then your designated contacts should have already received an email from us with login information and basic instructions for getting started with Composer Basic. Please take a few minutes to login, review the data that we have on hand for you and get familiar with the tool.

If your station did not receive your Composer Basic login, please contact me and I’ll get that to you.

Full documentation on Composer Basic can be found here. Also, a Composer Basic Quick Start Guide is available here. Feel free to print these out and take them home; they both make for excellent bedtime reading – not to mention last minute stocking stuffers!

Here are some important points to know about using Composer Basic:

1. In order to use Composer Basic your station will first need to review and agree to the Terms of Service that Public Interactive and NPR have developed, which grants Public Interactive permission to collect your data and submit reports to SoundExchange on your behalf,  and also gives you access to Composer Basic. You will not be able to access Composer Basic (and Public Interactive will not be able to collect your data and submit reports to SoundExchange on your behalf) until you do so.

2. Stations (and their vendors such as Spinitron and StreamGuys) that were previously given FTP accounts with Public Interactive to transfer data files to us, can continue to upload data files that way if they like. However, stations will still be required to login to Composer Basic to review whether data files have been uploaded and accepted and to specify their chosen reporting weeks each quarter and to update their guide data for reporting weeks.

3. Stations should take time to review what, if any, guide data we already have for your streams and make any necessary corrections. However, be aware that for Q4 2009 reports the only syndicated show for which we will be integrating playlist data is Classical 24. If you streamed this show during your Q4 reporting weeks, please make sure that the guide data in Composer Basic  properly reflects when you streamed the show.

That’s it! Thanks for everyone’s patience – both in the past and in the future – as we work to make this tool as useful as possible for everyone.

Happy… whatever it is you celebrate at this time of year!

As I have mentioned here before, we have posted guidelines for the formatting of playlist and streaming log files to be submitted to Public Interactive for SoundExchange reporting on this here blog. With the deadline for getting us your Q3 SoundExchange reporting data really not all that far off (seven weeks from Friday, but who’s counting?) – and since these guidelines have been tweaked a bit since first posted, I figured it was worth it to revisit these guidelines.

Streaming Access Log File Guidelines

Since, in general, streaming log files are produced by software applications (e.g. Windows Media, SHOUTcast, Icecast, Real, etc.) these really are just guidelines to make sure your server is logging the required data, since stations won’t generally have control over the formatting. We’re ready to work with the various formats produced by these tools, since there are only a handful of them that most stations use.

Playlist Log File Guidelines

Playlist log files, however, are another matter. These really are requirements, not just guidelines, in that we must have your data in a fairly specific format in order to make automated processing possible. Many stations track playlist data using a homegrown application or a spreadsheet, so it’s just not possible for us to try and accommodate the near infinite variety of possible data formats that could arise. For those that use commercial applications (e.g. Spinitron, MusicMaster, Liquid Compass, etc.) we have been working with the vendors where possible to communicate our formatting needs.

Please be sure to review our playlist file formatting requirements if you haven’t recently! If the data is not given to us in the required format we will not process it and won’t be able to submit reports on your behalf to SoundExchange.

Some of the finer points of the formatting to bear in mind:

• Files must be tab-delimited, text files (i.e. no spreadsheets, Word documents, PDFs, etc.)
• Please use the following exact field identifiers: Title, Artist, Album, Label, Start Time, End Time, Duration. Field ordering within the file doesn’t matter, so long as your are consistent throughout.
• Please do not include any other data in the playlist file, other than the header row and playlist entries (i.e. no schedule data)
• Start Time must include the date (i.e. one field for the start date and time, not two separate fields); same for End Time.
• Times must be in 24-hour format

If your station will be entering playlist data by hand, we have prepared an empty, sample spreadsheet that you could use as a starting point.

Download this sample playlist entry spreadsheet here.

It has all of the required fields (though remember that we only need either End Time OR Duration, not both), including the proper field headers, and formatting for start and end times. Once you enter your data you would simply choose to Save As a Tab Delimited text (.txt) file, which you can then send to Public Interactive. Voila!

These requirements are pretty well set now, but it’s possible we may tweak things if the need arises in the future. When and if that happens I will be sure to note it here in the blog. Thanks to everyone for your patience as we work the kinks out of this whole process.