SoundExchange Reporting Blog

As you hopefully know by now, Public Interactive (PI) currently collects music playlists from a number of syndicated programs for the purpose of integrating them into quarterly SoundExchange reports for stations that stream those shows. PI does this to help make SoundExchange (SX) reporting compliance easier for stations that have chosen to be covered by the CPB-SX webcasting performance agreement.

Until now, we’ve gotten playlists mainly (though not exclusively) from those programs syndicated through the “big three” networks (NPR, PRI, APM). However, we know that there are lots and lots of other syndicated shows out there, and we’d like to pull as many of those shows into the SoundExchange reporting fold as possible.

To that end, I’ll be hosting a webinar on Thursday, September 16 at 2:00 PM EDT to talk about SoundExchange reporting for syndicated shows. In the webinar we’ll discuss the terms of the recent CPB-SX webcasting performance agreement and what data syndicated show producers need to provide to ensure that stations streaming their shows are in compliance with the terms of this agreement. We’ll discuss the required reporting data, as well the format and method in which the data should be reported to PI. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session, and a representative from the CPB will join us to help answer questions.

Why is this important? Because producers who do not provide the required song data for SoundExchange reporting are putting the stations that stream their shows at risk of being in violation of copyright laws! If you, or someone you know, offers a program for syndication to public radio broadcasters, please plan on attending or passing along the invitation.

Here are more details, including registration information, on the webinar:

Title:         SoundExchange Reporting for Syndicated Show Producers
Date:        Thursday, September 16, 2010
Time:        2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT

Reserve your seat now at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/796174776

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements

PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

We hope to see (er, hear) you there! Yes – YOU!

Once again, thanks to lots of hard work by lots of folks – in particular YOU fine folks at so many stations – quarterly reports have been generated and delivered by Public Interactive to SoundExchange, this time for Q2 2010! The totals for this quarter’s reports:

Stations reporting: 288, a 9% increase over Q1 2010

Content streams reported on: 431, a 16% increase over Q1

Total Music Aggregate Tuning Hours (MATH) covered by the reports: 11,752,233, a 2.5% increase over Q1

That there is a lot of data, folks. Well done, everyone! Give yourself a pat on the back.

OK, that’s enough celebrating; time to get to work on Q3 2010 reporting! We are now accepting your reporting data for Q3 via Composer Basic and Composer Pro. The due date for data from the current quarter (July 1 – September 30) is Friday, October 8, 2010.

Once again, I urge one and all to get us your data as soon as your reporting weeks are over. Don’t wait until October! The sooner you do it, the more time there is to fix any problems and get us any missing data, and the sooner you will have SoundExchange peace of mind, which, really, is priceless.

Please, no matter what, contact me as soon as you upload your data. Do not just upload and assume all is fine! Check with me, please please pretty please. I really can’t emphasize this enough.

Anyway, thanks so much to all of you who submitted data for Q2. We appreciate it, the CPB appreciates it and the artists whose music you stream no doubt appreciate it.

The deadline for submitting your Q2 SoundExchange reporting data to Public Interactive has come and gone! Thanks to the many of you who got us your data on time and in the proper format and such!

For you stragglers, we can still try to squeeze you in, but you’d have to get us your data ASAP, and even then there are no promises, though we will do our best. Contact me if you do slip your data under my door in the next couple of days to let me know.

In the meantime, we’ve just posted a good reminder on the main Public Interactive blog about how to properly enter syndicated programming into your schedule grid, so that we can  integrate any playlists we get for your syndicated programs into your SoundExchange reports. Please take a few minutes to read and make sure your syndicated programs are entered properly into your schedule grid(s) in Composer Pro or Basic.

Anyway, thanks again to you stations that submitted Q2 data. Now, all we have to do is process it all…

It’s official: Q2 2010 is now over – which means, if you haven’t already, it is time to submit your SoundExchange reporting data to Public Interactive.

As you should know by now, the due date to get us your data is Friday, July 9, 2010.  It’s like the night before the big school project is due: there’s no more putting it off.

The basic reporting steps are detailed here.

Two important reminders for everyone:

1. Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE – even you PI streaming and Composer Pro clients – that is reporting on a 14-day sample (rather than the whole quarter) MUST set your reporting dates in Composer Pro or Composer Basic!!!

Emailing your reporting dates to me or otherwise noting them in filenames or files is not adequate! If you don’t set your dates in Composer Basic or Pro then we will tell SoundExchange that you have chosen to report on the whole quarter. If you only give us two weeks worth of compliant reporting data, but SoundExchange thinks you are reporting on the whole quarter, that means your reports are understating the amount of music you streamed. Not good.

To specify your reporting dates in Composer Basic or Pro, navigate to the Select Report Dates screen using the global What do you want to do? navigation drop down at the top of each screen, then enter the two start dates of your chosen reporting weeks; not the start and end date of your two weeks, but the start dates of each week. We do it this way because stations are free to report on non-consecutive weeks.

If you have more than one content stream to report on, be sure to set these dates for each of your content streams, navigating between them using the drop-down toggle at the upper right hand corner of the screen.

2. If you have entered, uploaded or otherwise submitted your Q2 data to us and you have not yet verified with me that we have what we need, contact me now! Do not assume that no news is good news. It isn’t. Is it ever?

That is all. Thanks, everyone!

It’s probably not something worth blowing a vuvuzela over but, for better or worse, the deadline for submitting your station’s Q2 2010 SoundExchange reporting data to Public Interactive is quickly approaching: Friday July 9, 2010.

For those who are new to this process, or for those who don’t have it down pat yet, here are the basic SoundExchange reporting steps for this quarter:

1. Choose your 14-day reporting period for Q2 2010, which must be two 7-day-consecutive periods completely contained between April 1 – June 30
2. Create properly formatted playlist logs or, for Composer Pro clients, enter playlists with required reporting data directly into Composer Pro
3. Obtain streaming access logs from your stream host for your chosen reporting period (not required for PI streaming clients)
4. Upload playlist and streaming log files to Public Interactive using Composer Basic or Composer Pro
5. Update/enter the guide information for each of your content streams in Composer Basic or Composer Pro, so that we can integrate playlists for those syndicated shows that you stream
6. Specify the start dates of your two chosen reporting weeks using Composer Basic/Pro
7. Contact me to let me know you’ve uploaded your data, updated your guide(s) and specified your reporting dates
8. Have a beverage of your choosing to celebrate!

OK, let’s get this set of reports over with ASAP so we can all enjoy the summer!

Apparently there’s some confusion among a few stations regarding when they must begin reporting to SoundExchange (SX). Some stations are under the impression that reporting isn’t required until 2011. This is most definitely not true; any stations streaming copyrighted sound recordings on-line must report to SoundExchange now. Failure to do so puts your station at risk of being found in violation of copyright law.

This applies to all stations which are under the CPB-SX agreement. CPB is paying the royalties but your station must file the reports. Stations covered by the CPB agreement have the benefit of not paying royalties, but they must report now.  The rules and laws about royalty payments and reporting of musical performances over the Internet have been in place since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into law in 1998. Many stations were apparently either not aware of these obligations or chose to ignore them. While the announcement last year of the agreement between the CPB and SoundExchange may have brought these obligations to light for some stations, they did not delay the requirement to begin providing reports.

The bottom line is, if your station is not already providing reports for SoundExchange, it should begin doing so immediately. Each quarter, Public Interactive (PI) sends SoundExchange a list of all stations that have opted to be covered under the CPB-SX agreement, along with the data from those who have reported. As you might imagine, it would be fairly easy for SoundExchange to figure out which stations are not reporting. And stations which aren’t reporting could be in violation of copyright law. CPB selected Public Interactive to help stations comply with the reporting requirements in order to avoid any such repercussions. PI is not involved in the disbursement of payments to artists or in deciding whether stations are, or are not, in compliance. We have tools and recommendations to make reporting easier.

So, if you’re not already reporting, don’t wait any longer! Please contact us today to get started.

This week there was a small, but not insignificant, bit of news for you classical music folks: NPR has secured an agreement from Naxos, one of the world’s largest classical music labels, to waive the performance complement of the DMCA. This waiver applies to all public radio stations covered by the CPB-SoundExchange agreement and eliminates the need to abide by the performance complement for any classical music whose rights are held by Naxos.

So – good news! Couple of things to bear in mind here:

1. This does not affect the reporting of classical music to SoundExchange via Public Interactive; that is, the same reporting rules continue to apply (e.g. report each track separately, include album titles, etc.).

2. This only applies to stations covered by the CPB-SoundExchange agreement. If your station has not explicitly opted-in to be covered by the deal, then the waiver does not apply to you.

3. The waiver only applies to the playing of recordings owned by Naxos.

NPR views this as, hopefully, the beginning of a process of approaching other labels as well. Let’s all cross our fingers. It’s the little things…

Slowly but surely, Q2 2010 SoundExchange reporting data is starting to dribble in to us here at Public Interactive. Thanks to you early birds for getting us your data already!

For the rest of you, please please PLEASE don’t wait until the deadline to get us your Q2 data. I encourage you to submit your reporting data as soon as your reporting weeks are over! If you wait until the last minute, problems can arise (not to mention other important business like, say, pledge drives). The earlier you get us your data, the more time we have to work together to fix any data problems and ensure that PI can generate and submit reports on your station’s behalf.

Q2 2010 SoundExchange Reporting Steps:

1. Choose your 14-day reporting period, which must be two 7-day-consecutive periods completely contained between  April 1 – June 30
2. Create properly formatted playlist logs and obtain streaming access logs from your stream host for your chosen reporting period
3. Submit playlist and streaming log files to Public Interactive using Composer Basic or Composer Pro
4. Update/enter the guide (schedule) information for each of your content streams in Composer Basic or Composer Pro, so that we can integrate playlists for those syndicated shows that you stream
5. Specify the start dates of your two chosen reporting weeks using Composer Basic/Pro
6. Contact me to let me know you’ve uploaded your data, updated your guide(s) and specified your reporting dates
7. Complete all of these steps by Friday, July 9, 2010
8. Rinse, lather, repeat in Q3…

Of course, there are some exceptions to the above. For example, some stations (they know who they are) must report for the entire quarter. Also, Composer Pro clients that enter playlist data using that tool don’t need to upload playlist files, and PI streaming clients don’t need to upload streaming logs, etc. But, otherwise, them’s the rules.

Oh yes, if you produce a syndicated program and are not yet providing us with playlists, please review this page on what data we need from you, then contact me so we can start collecting your show’s data.

Last week Public Interactive officially generated and submitted Q1 2010 reports to SoundExchange on behalf of 265 stations. The reports covered 373 content streams and 11.5 million Music Aggregate Tuning Hours, a nice increase from the Q4 2009 reports. Big thanks to all of you who submitted data for Q1!

Of course, there are still a number of you who didn’t submit data for Q1, and so are not in compliance with the terms of the CPB-SoundExchange agreement. If you have not been reporting, there’s no better time than the present to get in compliance before the stream police come a-knockin’. You’ve been warned.

Anyway, time now to get cracking on Q2 reports, which cover data from April 1 through June 30. The official deadline to get us your Q2 2010 reporting data will be Friday July 9, 2010.

If you have questions about how this all works, what data you need to give us and such, then please review this page on the basics of SoundExchange reporting through Public Interactive.

A few reminders for this next round of reporting:

1. Your chosen reporting weeks must be fully contained within Q2, (April 1 – June 30).

2. In addition to playlist and streaming log data, please be sure to fill out or update the guide for each of your content streams in Composer Basic or Pro so that we may integrate playlists for syndicated shows that you stream. The full list of syndicated shows for which we’re gathering playlists (which continues to grow) is here. If you produce a syndicated program and are not yet providing us with playlists, please review this page on what data we need from you and how to get it to us.

3. When submitting data to us, make sure to specify the start dates of your two chosen reporting weeks using Composer Basic/Pro (unless you are one of the lucky few that have to do full quarter reporting).

Oh yeah, and one more thing: AFTER SUBMITTING YOUR DATA PLEASE CONTACT ME to let me know that you have and to double check that we have what we need!!!!! We’re still tweaking the reporting system on our end to ensure no data falls through the cracks, but there are still some holes. Don’t assume that no news is good news!

Onward!

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…