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.

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.

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.

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!

I gave another webinar on SoundExchange reporting under the CPB-SX agreement this past Monday to the Public Radio Program Directors Association (PRPD). It was the best attended webinar yet (80+ people) and lots of questions were asked and (hopefully) answered. Thanks to Arthur Cohen for setting it up, MCing it and also recording the event.

Here are my slides from the presentation.

You can downloaded the video of the recording right here (Windows Media file).

I also did another webinar for NPR stations yesterday, the third of three. Here are the slides from that webinar, which are almost identical to those used for PRPD. That webinar, unfortunately, was not recorded.

I’ll be doing one more of these introductory webinars (whew!) for IMA member stations next Tuesday, 7/28, at 3:00pm ET – then that’s it!