SoundExchange Reporting Blog

I trust that everybody had a great Thanksgiving. I sure did! The last of the turkey leftovers was eaten last night. Always a sad moment when the bird is gone for good.

Speaking of turkeys, SoundExchange Q4 reporting data, as many of you know, is due to us here at Public Interactive by Friday January 15, 2010.

Here, again, are the relevant points to keep in mind:

1. Unless I have already told you otherwise, choose two 7-day consecutive periods within the quarter (October 1 – December 31, 2009) to report on. To repeat, your reporting data must must must be completely contained within Q4 or we cannot include it!

2. For each song streamed, the following information is required (yes, it is all required): song title, featured artist(s), album title, marketing label, start date and time, and EITHER end date and time OR duration of play.

3. Stations that are not Public Interactive Composer clients must submit a playlist log that matches our playlist file formatting requirements. Playlist files that do not match this format cannot be processed by us and will be rejected.

4. Stations that do not have their streams hosted by Public Interactive must submit streaming access logs that cover the chosen reporting period. Playlist logs alone are not sufficient; without streaming access logs (not aggregate usage statistics) we cannot generate reports on your station’s behalf.

This information should be old hat to many of you by now. Now, on to some new and exciting information!

This week we have begun rolling out changes to our Composer product to make data transfer, and managing of SoundExchange reporting information, easier. This involves two things:

1. Existing Public Interactive Composer clients were all upgraded earlier this week to Composer Pro! What is Pro? It’s the same Composer Program Guide and Playlist tools (with a new look), plus the new SoundExchange Dashboard. The Dashboard allows you to manage your contact and stream information with us for SX reporting, upload streaming log files (if your streams are not hosted with us), specify your quarterly reporting periods and access completed reports that we generate and submit to SX on your behalf.

If you haven’t already, please check out the Dashboard, review your contact and stream information and generally get familiar with it. An updated Composer Pro User Guide is also now available, detailing the changes.

2. A beta version of Composer Basic is now being shared with a handful of stations that are not PI clients. What is Basic? It includes the Composer Program Guide tool, for fletting us know what syndicated programming you stream, plus the new SoundExchange Dashboard. The Dashboard allows you to manage your contact and stream information with us for SX reporting, upload playlist and streaming log files, specify your quarterly reporting periods and access completed reports that we generate and submit to SX on your behalf.

This is the tool that the rest of you will use going forward which has a guide input tool to manage your weekly schedules, for the purpose of letting us know what syndicated programming you stream, as well as the SoundExchange Dashboard, which you will use to manage your contact and stream information with us for SX reporting, upload playlist and streaming log files, specify your quarterly reporting periods and access completed reports that we generate and submit to SX on your behalf.

If you’ve been lucky (or unlucky, depending on your point of view) enough to have been picked for beta testing, we appreciate your feedback and help!

We hope to make Composer Basic available to all stations who have registered with the CPB and PI for SoundExchange reporting in the next two weeks, so be on the lookout for an email from us with your login and connection instructions.

Thanks to those early bird stations that have already submitted their Q4 data, and to everyone for being patient with us as we build out these tools.

A big thanks to all you stations who submitted data for Q3 SoundExchange reports! It was a huge effort all the away around. We’re happy to say that we were ale to report on 175 stations, covering 230 separate content streams, which was a big jump from the Q2 reports (67 stations, 94 streams). We were happy, the CPB was happy and – most importantly – SoundExchange was happy by this upward trend. So, thank you all again.

As good as the Q3 turnout was, there is still much more to be done.

Stations that did not submit data for Q3 must start reporting; SoundExchange knows who you are and, while they have been understanding about everybody getting on board under the terms of the CPB-SoundExchange agreement, they expect every station streaming music to comply fully with the reporting requirements. I went to Washington, DC last week to meet with the folks at SoundExchange to update them on our progress and they made it clear that, in the not too distant future, they will begin knocking on doors of stations that are not in compliance. Please, please, please don’t be one of those stations.

OK, enough of that. You get the picture.

That brings us to the next order of business: Q4 reports!

In order to guarantee that we can generate and submit reports to SoundExchange on behalf of your station, you must submit your Q4 data to Public Interactive – in the required format (more on that below) – no later than Friday, January 15, 2010.

Here are the relevant points to keep in mind:

1. Unless I have already told you otherwise, choose two 7-day consecutive periods within the quarter (October 1 – December 31, 2009) to report on. To repeat, your reporting data must must must be completely contained within Q4 or we cannot include it!

2. For each song streamed, the following information is required (yes, it is all required): song title, featured artist(s), album title, marketing label, start date and time, and EITHER end date and time OR duration of play.

3. Stations that are not Public Interactive Composer clients must submit a playlist log that matches our playlist file formatting requirements. Playlists files that do not match this format cannot be processed by us and will be rejected.

4. Stations that do not have their streams hosted by Public Interactive must submit streaming access logs that cover the chosen reporting period. Playlist logs alone are not sufficient; without streaming access logs (not aggregate usage statistics) we cannot generate reports on your station’s behalf.

5. Depending on when your data is ready for submission, you will submit it to us either via FTP or Composer Basic. The latter is still not ready for general consumption, though we are working hard to make it available for Q4 data submissions. Either way, contact me when you are ready to submit your data and I will tell you how to do it.

Once more, just for the record, the deadline to get us your SoundExchange reporting data for Q4 (October 1 – December 31, 2009) is Friday, January 15, 2010. Learn it. Know it. Live it.

Of course, we are happy to accept your Q4 data well before January 15, if you have it available. Remember: if the data is not formatted properly we will ask you to reformat it and resubmit it to us. In order to ensure that we have your properly formatted data by January 15 it is best to get it to us as soon as you can.

This coming Friday, September 4, is not only the beginning of Labor Day weekend, but it also marks six weeks until the deadline to get your Q3 SoundExchange reporting data to Public Interactive – Friday, October 16, 2009.

It really sneaks up on you, doesn’t it? Kind of like old age.

Of course, we’ll be happy to take your reporting data before then, if you have it ready. Thanks to those stations that have already delivered their Q3 data to us!

As a reminder, here are the particulars about SoundExchange reporting through PI:

1. Make sure you have registered with the CPB, accepted the terms of the CPB-SX agreement, and registered with PI for SoundExchange reporting. If you have not completed all of these steps then PI cannot submit reports to SoundExchange on your behalf. If you are not sure whether your station has completed all of these steps, contact me and I can tell you.

2. Unless you have already been told otherwise, you choose two 7-day-consecutive periods within the current calendar quarter (July, August, September) on which to report. SoundExchange would like data for two weeks during which you play music that is representative of what you play during the whole quarter.

3. Prepare a data file of the songs you streamed during the reporting period (one file per content stream) that conforms to our playlist log file guidelines. Your playlist file(s) must conform to these basic requirements or we cannot process them and hence cannot generate and submit reports on your station’s behalf to SoundExchange! (NOTE: Existing PI Composer clients don’t need to send us a playlist log file, since we have access to your Composer data; just make sure you’ve filled out the playlist and guide data for your reporting weeks.)

4. Contact your IT department or stream host and request the raw streaming access logs that cover your chosen reporting weeks. Read more here about our streaming access log file guidelines, which describes what data we need. (NOTE: Existing PI streaming clients don’t need to send us streaming log access files.)

5. Once you are ready to send us your data files, if you do not already have an FTP account from PI, contact me and I will give you one to transfer the files to us.

6. Open a bottle of champagne to celebrate! You deserve it.

For those wondering, Composer Basic – an online tool that stations will use to manage stream information, push data files to PI and input schedule data (for use in incorporating syndicated programming playlists) – is not yet ready for prime time, so data uploads will continue to be via FTP. We’re hoping to have this tool online and available for stations before the end of the quarter.

Finally, for those going to the Public Radio Program Directors conference in a couple of weeks, please note that we will be having a session on SoundExchange reporting. If you’re going to be there be sure to attend and stop by the Public Interactive booth to say hello and ask questions.

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.

I’ve just whipped up a couple of pages outlining the formatting guidelines for both playlist and raw streaming access log files.

I’ve include some sample files to download and use as guides.

Please take a look and feel free to contact me with any questions.