Partial Win as the CRB Announces New Reporting Requirements for webcasters

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) issued a decision that updated the recordkeeping and reporting requirements for webcasters.  The results are a partial win for CBI members.  The CRB started the process of updating the rules with a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on December 30, 2008, while most college stations were on break.   The CRB refused to extend the comment deadline, even though CBI and WHRB requested more time for educational stations to file comments because of the winter break.

The NPRM issued by the CRB proposed requiring all webcasters, including college stations that use music to switch from the current required two week per quarter sample reports to full “census” (24/7/365) reports, to stop reporting its audience size in the aggregate to reporting the number of listeners to any portion of each and every song and to report the data on a monthly basis.

At the urging of CBI a number of stations, in addition to CBI filed comments in response to the NPRM asking the CRB to not enact the proposed changes for minimum fee paying services.  Due to the number of comments in this proceeding, the CRB issued a Notice of Inquiry (NOI), which asked for more information in order to make a decision.  Again a number of comments were filed by CBI and others. In the CBI filing, we noted that SoundExchange, which collects the royalties and reports of use and urged the full adoption of the proposed rules, stated that the aggregate numbers (ATH) reported by minimum fee paying stations was useless.  Further they proposed the implementation of a proxy fee in lieu of any data from certain stations.  In CBI’s comments in response to the NOI, we asked the CRB to allow minimum fee paying educational stations to only report song data because most stations could not report ATH or the more complicated per song, per listener data.  We also supported the option of paying a proxy fee.

The final rule issued by the CRB provided some relief to the proposed rule changes and new requirements.

• Broadcasters which webcast and only pay the minimum fee will be allowed to file reports of use on a sample basis (2 7-day periods per calendar quarter), however, webcast only stations will be required to submit census data.
• Quarterly reports still require stations to calculate ATH, even though the data will not be used by SoundExchange.
• Census reports require per-song listener data.
• Reports now have a deadline.  Until now, the regulations did not require stations to submit reports by any specific date.  It appears that some stations have used the lack of a deadline in order to not file reports.  Other stations were not aware of the requirements.  Either way the stations were not submitting reports and SoundExchange had no way to enforce the requirement to submit reports because there was no deadline.  Now there are deadlines!  For those required to submit census data, reports are due 45 days after the last day of each month.  For those required to submit quarterly sample reports, the deadline is 45 days after the close of the calendar quarter. CBI had argued that Educational Stations should be provided 60 days due to the academic calendar, but the CRB never addressed this argument.  This is an important development as SoundExchange now has a means to enforce reporting.

Educational Stations (those at schools and primarily operated by students) have options to the newly created rules.  The CBI settlement with SoundExchange allows stations to pay a proxy fee, provide quarterly reports without audience data or census reporting without audience data, depending on the size of the audience.  See our comments on the settlement here or a copy of the settlement here.

If you need more information about these issues, they will be discussed in detail at the CBI Fall convention.  CBI is also available to help stations individually.  Stations with questions should call 713-348-2935.