SoundExchange Reporting Blog

I just booked my flight and hotel for the Public Radio Program Directors annual conference in Denver next month. I was in Cleveland for last year’s conference which I enjoyed quite a bit; I guess Arthur Cohen decided to take the PRPD’s talents to the Mile High City this year.

I’m looking forward to this year’s event, to seeing and meeting lots of you folks responsible for your station’s SoundExchange reporting and to seeing Denver for the first time.

While there won’t be a SoundExchange-specific session this time around, I will be there to answer whatever SX-related questions you have. If you don’t see me milling about the sessions, come look for me at the Public Interactive booth, which will  be manned by our own Joe Orlando and Suzanne Brendle. Be sure to come by and say hello!

While I have you on the line, don’t forget that the data submission deadline for your Q3 SoundExchange reporting data (covering July 1 – September 30) is Friday, October 8, 2010. Please be sure to submit your data to us as soon as your reporting weeks are over and contact me to let me know you have uploaded your data.

At the recent RAIN Summit West in Las Vegas, there was an interesting session given on the basics of SoundExchange – who they are and what they do, including a little music copyright 101. The session was led by Kyle Funn, SoundExchange’s Manager of Licensing and Enforcement. Below is the video of his talk, which I highly recommend that everybody watch. It’s short, only 6:48 (it was a PechaKucha presentation), and is well worth the time.

One thing to bear in mind: the terms of the CPB-SoundExchange agreement overrides some of the basics that Kyle talks about (e.g. “writing a check”). This session is obviously addressed to all stations streaming music, not just public broadcasters.

Anyway, I recommend that everybody give this a listen.

Last Friday, Public Interactive‘s own Joe Orlando led a session on SoundExchange reporting at the 2010 AMPPR conference in New York City. I would have been there to lead the session myself, but the timing was bad, since we were very busy dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on the Q1 2010 SoundExchange reports, which we will be delivering this week.

So, since I was too busy harassing as many of you folks as possible about giving us Q1 data a the last minute, Joe took his whip and a chair to NYC and entered the lion’s den on my behalf. Not surprisingly, by all accounts Joe did a great job and the session was well attended. Thanks, Joe!

You can access his session slides here.

Next week I’ll post Q1 report wrap-up and try to kick start Q2 reporting.Thanks to all who provided (or tried to provide) Q1 data.

It never ends…

This morning I gave a presentation on SoundExchange reporting to the PRIMA Winter 2010 conference in lovely and Super Bowl-crazy New Orleans. We had a good and lively discussion – not to mention a tasty breakfast beforehand.

You can download the slides from the presentation right here.

Big thanks to the PRIMA folks for letting me come and speak and thanks to all who participated.

And, of course, thanks to New Orleans for being, well, New Orleans! It’s hard to find a better place to have some fun!

After several weeks of drowning in data files, crunching untold numbers and consuming enough coffee to raise the GNP of Colombia a few points, we have officially generated and delivered reports to SoundExchange for Q4 2009! Thanks to all who got us data – or at least tried to. Thanks to your efforts we were able to report on 227 stations covering 300 streams, a roughly 30% percent increase in both over the Q3 SX reports!

If you didn’t deliver your Q4 data to us, but do have it – hold on to it! We currently don’t have a procedure for submitting reports after the delivery date. We may at some point be able to accept it and generate reports after the fact, but for now just keep it in a safe place in case PI – or SoundExchange – asks for it.

As good as the response was for Q4, there are still lots of you stations that haven’t reported. Please please please plan to start doing so for Q1 2010. If you don’t start complying, bad things will happen. I’m not sure what those things are or when they will commence but yes, indeed, they will, sooner or later.

On our end, we’re already planning on starting work for the next round of reports by making the SoundExchange Dashboard component of Composer Basic/Pro more user friendly, and by finally starting to collect data from syndicated shows, starting with the biggies (NPR, PRI, APM music shows). Be sure to keep checking back here for information on that end of things.

On a different note, next week I will be attending the PRIMA conference in New Orleans (Who Dat?), and will be leading a session on – what else? – SoundExchange reporting. That session will be at 9:00am on Friday, and will include Mike Riksen, NPR’s VP of Policy and Representation. If you’re attending, be sure to load up on coffee and beignets beforehand and bring your SX reporting questions!

Finally, for those wondering, the deadline to get us your reporting data for Q1 2010 (covering January 1 – March 31) will be Friday, April 9, 2010. Of course, you don’t need to wait until the last minute to give us your data. I encourage everyone to get us your data as soon as your reporting weeks are over!!! The sooner you get it to us, the sooner we can validate that you gave us what we need, fix any problems and generally get it out of the way.

As a reminder, data should now be submitted to us using either Composer Pro or Composer Basic (well, vendors can still submit data to us on your behalf via FTP). If you are not a Public Interactive Composer Pro client and have not received a login to Composer Basic for data submission, please contact me and I will give your station’s login.

Last week I was in in beautiful Portland, Oregon for the Western States Public Radio (WSPR) Fall Conference 2009. On Wednesday I took part in a session on everybody’s favorite topic, SoundExchange reporting.

The session panelists also included Washington, DC attorney Melodie Virtue and Ginny Berson of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. Melodie went over the legalities of the DMCA and such and I covered the basics of reporting to SoundExchange through Public Interactive then we fielded questions. I thought it was an excellent session and hopefully those in attendance did also.

For those who couldn’t make it, here’s an action shot from the session:

WSPR 2009 SoundExchange Session

You can almost feel the excitement in the air, can’t you?

Big thanks for Paul Stankavich of KPLU for inviting us to hold this session and for putting the whole conference together. Thanks Paul!

You can download the various slides and handouts from the session using the links below.

Melodie’s slides on music licensing

My slides on SX reporting through PI

My SX Reporting Quick Start Tips handout

Next week I’ll be traveling to beautiful Portland, Oregon for the Western States Public Radio (WSPR) Fall Conference 2009. I’ll be taking part in a session to talk about – what else? – SoundExchange reporting.

It will be similar to the session we had at the PRPD conference in Cleveland last month. I’ll be there to give everyone an update on the Q3 reports we are abut to submit to SoundExchnage, as well as more details on Composer Basic, which we are planning to make available to stations for submitting Q4 data.

The session will be headed up by Melodie Virtue, an attorney well versed on internet music copyright and royalty issues, and will also include Ginny Berson of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. Melodie and I will do brief presentations and then we’ll take any and all questions from those in attendance.

The session will be on Wednesday, November 4, from 1:15 – 2:30pm. I will also be around through the rest of the conference on Thursday, so whether you can make our session or not, be sure to say hello if you see me! I’ll keep folks updated on my activities during the conference on my Twitter account.

I will be joined at the conference by Public Interactive’s Sales and Marketing Manager, Joe Orlando, who will be available to answer any and all question you may have about PI’s product offerings.

We’ll also both be available to talk about the current NFL season, if that’s more to your liking.

It used to be that two things in life were certain: death and taxes. For those streaming music on the web, add one more thing: quarterly SoundExchange reporting.

To that end, this is a reminder to you public radio stations that have chosen to be covered by the CPB-SoundExchange agreement that we’re a little more than three weeks away from the deadline to get us at Public Interactive your reporting data on music streaming for the third quarter of 2009. That deadline is Friday, October 16, 2009!

A number of stations have already given us their data for processing (thanks!) and many, many more have told me they are working on it. We’re happy to take your data as soon as you have it ready. But October 16 is really – honestly, truly – the latest that we’ll be able to take your data for inclusion in Q3 reports that will be submitted to SoundExchange. We submit all station reports in one big batch to SX, so we cannot grant extensions.

I won’t rehash the basics of registration and reporting here; you can read about those particulars in this post.

Let me use this space to answer a few common questions and highlight some other things to keep in mind:

1. Your chosen 14 day reporting period must indeed be fully contained within Q3 (July 1 – September 30). SoundExchange will not accept reports containing data outside those three months.

2. Composer Basic (which includes the SoundExchange Reporting Dashboard) – which will be used to transfer your data files to us – is not yet ready for public consumption. For now, data transfers will continue to be done via FTP.

3. Your playlist files must be in the proper file format, described here, or we cannot process them and, hence, will not be able to file reports on your station’s behalf.

4. If you submitted files to us for Q2 in a different format you still need to submit Q3 files (and beyond) in the required format! For Q2 we accepted just about whatever data we could get, due to the time constraints, but we are requiring the new format going forward.

In other matters, last week in Cleveland I took part in an excellent panel discussion (with lengthy Q&A) on SoundExchange reporting at the PRPD conference. You can access the presentation slides and handouts here. I’ll be participating in a similar session at the upcoming WSPR conference in Portland, OR on Wednesday November 4. If you’re going to be there, be sure to drop by and introduce yourself.

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or when you are ready to send us your data files.

Well, we had a great (at least in my opinion) session earlier today at the PRPD conference here in Cleveland. Big thanks to Arthur Cohen and the PRPD folks for giving us the time, as well as to my fellow panelists John Crigler, Jeff Luchsinger, PI’s own Debra May Hughes and, of course, thanks to all of you attendees who asked a whole lot of great questions. Hopefully, you all found it as informative as I did.

For those who missed it, and for those who were there, you can download the various materials related to the session below:

John Crigler’s slides on music licensing

John’s handout on streaming copyright basics

John’s most excellent chart comparing the various SoundExchange agreements

My slides on SX reporting through PI

My handout on SX reporting for Q3

Thanks again to all who participated! Cleveland really does rock!

Slight correction to an earlier post about our SoundExchange Reporting session at the PRPD conference next week in Cleveland. Originally, we were scheduled for 11:00am on Wednesday, 9/16. However, the session is officially booked for later that day, from 4:00-5:30pm on Wednesday 9/16 in Grand Ballroom A.

Don’t be fooled by the location; there will be no ballroom dancing going on. At least not by me.

You can download the Agenda at a Glance here, and the complete listing of the conference sessions and events here.

Hopefully I’ll see you in Cleveland. They say it rocks, you know.