Pubcasters Struggle with Music Streaming Reporting Requirements

KAXE Northern Community Radio in Grand Rapids, Minn., embraced streaming early -- in the mid-1990s, estimates chief engineer Dan Houg. Though the tiny station averages maybe 100 listeners, the Web streams translate into good CD sales for visiting musicians, who are often surprised by the reception they get in “small, podunk rural Minnesota,” Houg said. The station plays small, independent artists and depends on a flock of community volunteers -- who might come in once a week, once a month, or three times a year -- to DJ, either by bringing in their own CDs or using the station library. And that’s where the reporting gets complicated. It seems that the station will have to ask its volunteers to type in the required information -- recording title, featured artist, album, label, start time and end time -- either as they go along or before or after a shift. The station is willing to do that, Houg said, but it would be nice if there were an additional benefit for listeners -- for example, playlists and “now playing” information that would post to the Web site.

“There’s not an integrated solution yet that will suit all of our needs as a small, rural station,” Houg said. If the station uses Public Interactive’s Composer, he said, it would be able to use the service free but wouldn’t get any playlists. Composer would report to Public Interactive, which is acting as a collection agent for public radio stations, but that’s it. The station could sign up for Spinitron, which would post a playlist. But the playlist would be on Spinitron’s Web site, not the station’s, and it wouldn’t have capability to send “now playing” information to HD Radio. And Spinitron would charge about $50 a month, which Houg said is “not unreasonable,” but it does give the station something to think about. Between the staff time, additional responsibilities for volunteers, a new $50 per month fee and the cost of the Internet connection, “you start saying, ‘is it worth it to stream music?'” Houg said. The station may use both services -- Composer because it’s free and would take care of the reporting requirements, and Spinitron because it could give information to listeners. But that’s a frustrating prospect, Houg said. The two options are so close to delivering what the station needs, he said, yet they still fall short.

In Spindale, N.C., WNCW faces similar problems. There, the station licensed to Isothermal Community College has been using a streaming service from the University of North Carolina that’s been “virtually free.” Unfortunately, that streaming service doesn’t produce the data that WNCW now finds it needs to comply with the SoundExchange agreement, General Manager Dana Whitehair said. He said he’s been acting as go-between among UNC, CPB and Public Interactive, trying to learn by e-mail what level of detail is possible on the one end and acceptable on the other. He’s also hoping the university streaming service can find a way to provide the station with more detailed information about listeners, so it can market its service better and comply with SoundExchange requirements. The service now can provide the number of connections at any given hour, he said, but he must extrapolate how many listeners he has. Public Interactive is asking stations to report the IP addresses, connection time and duration of listeners, so it can discount non-U.S. listeners, who don’t count for royalty purposes. At the same time, WNCW is expecting the state to zero out its funding, meaning the loss of $201,000. Though not unexpected, the move adds to the station’s financial challenges as it seeks to comply with the new requirements.

Small stations aren’t the only ones with questions. Dick Cassidy, IT director for WAMU and general manager for the station’s Bluegrass Country channel, said the channel’s combination of local live programming and delayed playback culled from producers around the world “is a real dilemma for us.” All of the programs have playlists, but they're not consistent from program to program and don’t necessarily provide all the information that SoundExchange needs, he said. For example, one of the channel’s shows is produced in Australia. At best, the Australian producer can provide relative start times of each song, but there would still need to be some software -- or person -- to translate the relative start time into the actual hour the song began to play. The compromise he doesn’t want to make is dropping all the programs that originate elsewhere, Cassidy said. But he’s hopeful that the best minds in public radio can get together and come up with a solution. There’s an upcoming forum with SoundExchange, he said, which he hopes will highlight the best thinking and perhaps get an action plan started that will benefit all pubcasters. Stations also have some time to figure everything out. Though they must begin reporting now, they're not expected to be fully compliant until 2011, according to Public Interactive.

In fact, there is at least one solution out there whose user believes it complies with all SoundExchange requirements. KBCS, licensed to Bellevue Community College in Washington, began working on a system five years ago because there wasn’t any tool that would let it post playlists and a “now playing” scroll. The station worked with a local software developer to create its program, which it deployed in January 2008. General Manager Steve Ramsey described how simply the program now works: The DJ pops the CD in the player, clicks on an icon on the computer, and the system accesses the Gracenote database and fills in the information. If the DJ is playing vinyl or something not in Gracenote, that information can be manually entered. As easy as that sounds, it took a long time for the station to prepare its database and its people for the system, Ramsey said. The station spent about $25,000 over five years -- quite a bit for a community station -- to develop the system, he said. But he’s hopeful that once licensing with the developer is worked out, the station will be able to make the software available to other stations that are members of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters.

Ginny Berson, vice president and director of federation services for NFCB, thinks the reporting should get easier as the confusion dies down and the “million questions” that people have are answered. But it will still be a challenge for small stations, most of whom rely on volunteers as KAXE does, she said. The biggest roadblock for stations isn’t the reporting itself, she said. It’s skepticism about SoundExchange. “It would make a huge difference if stations had confidence that artists, the musicians, are actually getting royalties,” she said.