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On the SoundExchange "Reports of Use Delivery Specifications"
Chapter 5: The SoundExchange reporting specs
SoundExchange has provided extensive reporting format specifications at: http://www.soundexchange.com/licensee/documents/Reports_of_Use_Delivery_Spec.pdf.
The document states that they are SoundExchange's own understanding of the Copyright Royalty Board's regulations for the delivery of reports of use. The intent is to 'help Services in the reporting of data to SoundExchange' and indeed they are an excellent technical resource for anyone trying to create these reports.
In the course of our implementing the Reports of Use, we ran into a couple of glitches and questions, documented here to save others the same experience:
Issue #1: Minor Ambiguity with the filename naming convention
In sections 2.2.2, the report file naming conventions are specified, in the form of
ServiceNameSTARTDATE-ENDDATE_(transmission category abbreviation).txt.. for example ..
KFAKE20070115_20070121_H.txtSection 2.2.3 then notes
Each report of use should be compressed ... The zipped file should follow the same naming convention described above. However, instead of the ".txt" file extension, the file extension should be one of the three described immediately above' (.zip, .Z, or .gz)This raises the question - should the resulting filename that is submitted to SoundExchange appear as:
KFAKE20070115_20070121_H.txt.gz... or ...
KFAKE20070115_20070121_H.gzBecause the default file naming behavior differs according to compression utility, operating system and platform ....
Issue #2: Contradiction in preferred artist names and sample data in 'Report Data Format'
From section 4.2.2:
All featured performers that are individuals (other than single-named artists such as STING), shall be reported as First_Name Last_Name, where the name of the featured performer is the name of an individual... Abbreviations are never permitted. All data shall be reported as the data appears on the physical or electronic product from which the Service obtains the sound recording, and not in any colloquial manner (e.g., "THE BEATLES" and "EAGLES" are the correct names for these two well-known artists, not "BEATLES" and "THE EAGLES"). SoundExchange prefers to receive all text fields in UPPER CASE.
The PDF 'File and Reports of
Use Delivery Specifications Examples' provided by SoundExchange and linked to in the following section (4.3.1)
begins with a reference to "THE EAGLES" - an incorrect, colloquial name, according to section 4.2.2.
Issue #3: Error in report samples PDF
In section 4.3.1, the sample PDF mentioned above, 'File and Reports of
Use Delivery Specifications Examples', contains several errors in the first example.
As shown in the image to the right, the Featured Artist and Sound Recording Title are swapped in the 2nd through 5th rows.
As you can see, there's nothing totally critical, but there were certainly a few places we found ourselves scratching our heads - so we thought we'd point them out here.
Continue to Part 6: Conclusions
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Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Key concepts and issues Part 3: Decisions, decisions Part 4: Aggregate Tuning Hours Part 5: Part 6: Conclusions |