SoundExchange Reporting Blog

Happy 2010 everyone! Let’s start off the year with some legal housekeeping.

As a condition of the Webcasting Performance Agreement between CPB and SoundExchange we are required to notify all entities covered by the agreement of the following:

As of January 1, 2011, Covered Entities must comply with the reporting requirements applicable to Web Site Performances under 37 C.F.R. Part 370 and other regulations, as well as comply with their other obligations under Sections 112 and 114 of the Copyright Act. Covered Entities should begin diligent efforts to prepare to do so in advance of January 1, 2011. A failure to comply with such reporting requirements may cause Web Site Performances on or after January 1, 2011 to infringe the copyright in any Sound Recordings performed.

We’ll be emailing this reminder to you covered stations in the next few days also.

Before 2009 waltzes out of our lives, allow us here at Public Interactive to say thanks to everyone for their efforts in the realm of SoundExchange reporting this year! We appreciate all the hard work by stations that have submitted data to us for reporting back to SoundExchange. We appreciate it, the CPB appreciates it and, believe it or not, SoundExchange appreciates it! Honest.

Before everyone disappears to drink egg nog and whatnot I wanted to remind folks about a few key things to keep in mind for submitting your Q4 data for SoundExchange reporting to us .

By now, everybody who has opted to be covered by the CPB-SoundExchange agreement and registered with Public Interactive for SoundExchange reporting should have access to the tools we have developed to make data submission easier. This includes both Composer Pro clients of ours, as well as Composer Basic users. If your station is not a PI Composer Pro client and has not yet received a login to Composer Basic, please contact me and I’ll get you set up.

Lots of detail on Composer Basic is available here, so I won’t rehash it all in this post. Here are some important things for everyone to keep in mind:

1. Data for Q4 reports must come from with October 1 – December 31, 2009 (i.e. the fourth calendar quarter). Basic information on the reporting data that you need to provide to us is available here.

2. Composer Pro clients don’t need to submit playlist logs to us (assuming they actually put playlist data into Composer Pro); however, if your streams are not hosted by Public Interactive you will still need to upload your streaming access logs to us. Composer Pro documentation is available here.

3. Composer Basic users will need accept the Terms of Service before we can officially accept your data and generate reports. You will then need to upload playlist log files to us, in addition to streaming access logs. Composer Basic documentation is available here; in addition a Composer Basic Quick Start Guide is available here.

4. Everyone, whether you are a Composer Pro or Basic client, must specify their chosen reporting dates using the SoundExchange Dashboard in Composer Pro/Basic. If you don’t we’ll assume that you are supplying us with a full quarter’s worth of data and will generate reports based on that assumption. To set your reporting dates in Composer Pro or Basic, go to View Reports, then click on Edit Report Dates for Q4 for each of your streams. Then uncheck the Disregard dates and use full quarter instead check box and use the date drop downs to specify the starting date of both of your chosen reporting weeks. Make sure to do that for all of your streams for which you are supplying reporting data.

5. Stations that stream Classical 24 – again whether you are a Composer Pro or Basic user – must  update the guide information for each of your streams in Composer to properly reflect when you streamed C24 during your reporting period. This is so we can integrate C24 playlists into your your station’s reports. In the future will be collecting and integrating playlists for other syndicated shows. IMPORTANT NOTE: When adding the Classical 24 program in your guide, be sure to set the Program Format to Classical: C24.

All of this (file uploads, setting reporting dates, accepting TOS, etc.) needs to be done by the deadline of Friday, January 15, 2010 in order for us to guarantee that we’ll be able to generate and submit Q4 reports on your station’s behalf.

That’s it for now! I’ll be out of the office starting Christmas day and will be back on Monday, January 4, 2010. In the meantime, feel free to submit your data to us using Composer Pro or Basic. Let me know that you have and I’ll review it – or answer any questions – when I get back.

Thanks again and Happy New Year to all and to all a good night – or day, you know, depending on when you read this.

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.

As we all try and recover from the insanity that was Q3 SoundExchange reporting (well, some of us aren’t done with it yet – so recovery will have to wait), I would like call everybody’s attention to this recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board.

The gist of it is that the CRB has decreed that most digital music services must now do census reporting! That means full-quarter, 24×7 reporting of what music you stream, not sample, 14-days-per-quarter reporting that most stations covered by the CPB-SoundExchange deal must do.

The good news for stations covered by the CPB-SX deal is that this decision does not apply to you and you get to keep doing sample reporting through the end of 2015.

After that, well, we’ll just have to see.

So, see – it could be worse. Like six-times-the-amount-of-work-worse.

A few other things to note:

• The article reiterates the data fields that must be reported for each song streamed: Title, Artist, Album and Label.
• You’ll see mention there also of reporting the number of performances (or actual total performances – ATP) of each song, which is the number of people who actually heard the song. Stations covered by the CPB-SX agreement reporting through Public Interactive don’t have to calculate this number. We do it for you for reporting back to SoundExchange, but in order to do so we need the start and end times of each song play (or the start time and duration), as well as your streaming access logs.
• One statistic not mentioned in the article but that stations also have to calculate and report are total Aggregate Tuning Hours (ATH), for all programming. Stations reporting under the CPB-SX agreement instead report their Music Aggregate Tuning Hours (MATH) – or the ATH for just music programming – which, again, Public Interactive calculates on behalf of stations, using the start and end time of each song play and the streaming access logs.

So, to summarize, if the CPB-SX agreement were not in place (and had the CPB not hired Public Interactive to help with reporting), most public broadcasters would have to:

1. Still collect all of the same data about songs streamed, not just for two weeks a quarter, but for every song streamed, all day, every day.
2. Use the raw data to calculate the required SoundExchange statistics (ATP and ATH), or pay for software or a service that will do these calculations, instead of having PI do it for free.
3. Pay performance royalties to SoundExchange, instead of having the CPB pay the royalties.

Feel better now?

Finally, I draw your attention to the last two sentences in the article:

In recent meetings, SoundExchange has indicated that it is going to emphasize reporting requirements, and potentially take action against webcasters who ignore their obligations.  Don’t become an example.

If you are not doing so already, I urge you to begin complying completely with the reporting requirements.

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!

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.

Last week a number of us from Public Interactive, NPR and the CPB were interviewed by Karen Everhart of Current about the CPB-SoundExchange agreement and some of the issues this has raised with stations. The resulting article that Karen wrote was published this week and is pretty good. I encourage you to read it, if you haven’t already.

Karen did a good job of getting the facts straight; I only noticed one error in the article. The following comment is not right:

Under the current contract, some 270 stations, or 60 percent of the 450 that are eligible, are required to begin reporting this year.

The agreement is actually to report on 60% of music ATH in the system by the end of 2009 (and 80% by the end of 2010), not 60% of the covered entities. Just for the record, your honor.

I am pleased to announce that our friends at the Public Radio Program Directors Association (this means you Arthur!) have given us a slot at their upcoming conference in Cleveland to discuss – what else? – SoundExchange reporting! The SX session at the PRPD conference will be on Wednesday, September 16th at 11:00am. Here’s the skinny on the session:

Eliminate SoundExchange Stress with Dr. Phil and Friends

Are you suffering from online music reporting stress? Join this roundtable discussion on music rights and SoundExchange (SX) reporting for public broadcasters. Phil Johnson (aka:  Dr. Phil) will give a brief report card on how the system is doing, review reporting requirements, provide an exclusive first look at reporting tools coming to your station, and will reveal what you need to know about the upcoming Q3 deadline.  Panelists will provide history and details behind the agreement and a primer on internet music rights and royalties. After a brief presentation we will open the session to answer your questions on the complicated and evolving world of music rights and responsibilities in the realm of new media. Don’t miss this chance to alleviate reporting stress and ask questions about what is and is not permitted forstreaming.

In addition to myself (yes, Dr. Phil), the panelists will include my boss Debra May Hughes, who runs PI, as well as Jeff Luchsinger from the CPB, and John Crigler from the law firm of Garvey Schubert Barer. Both Jeff and John were involved in crafting of the deal between the CPB and SoundExchange. As the session blurb says, we’ll use the time to give you an update on SoundExchange reporting through Public Interactive, including the development of tools to help stations get us their data. Jeff and John will be able to help answer your larger questions on the CPB-SX agreement and music rights and licensing in the digital era.

Let me use this opportunity to refer you back to an excellent webinar about music licensing that John participated in last month for NFCB stations. If you haven’t already watched the video of the webinar, I would encourage you to do so when you have a spare hour. It’s worth your time.

I look forward to meeting many of you in person at the conference. Even if you can’t make the session, please be sure to swing by the Public Interactive booth on Wednesday afternoon and say hello! I’ll only be there on Wednesday, but our crack sales manager Joe Orlando will be there all week to answer any question you may have about PI’s products and services.

I expect that Cleveland will be rocking that week!