Analytics & Reporting Manager (ARM) provides powerful tools that allow you to generate and filter SoundExchange reports.


In this article, we are going to cover:

SoundExchange

Analytics & Reporting Manager creates reports with detailed information about what sound recordings were performed on your stations and streams. This generated report data is in the format required by SoundExchange as of the time of publishing this article.


Once you click on SoundExchange from the left-hand menu, you have two options: Generate and Filters.


Generate creates a report, listing tracks for a specific station according to the date range and daypart. Once the report matches your expectations, it can be exported to a CSV file.


Note: Using Generate report feature will allow you to generate reports for only up to 5 stations at a time. If you try selecting more than 5 stations, the visual interface will tell you to select one single station to generate a report. However, we recommend using Email Reports for more than one station. By getting 5 reports at once, you risk waiting there longer to load.


The Filters function allows you to exclude some items from your SoundExchange reports. The most common examples of items not needing to be included in these reports are station IDs and jingles, as well as any talk shows, weather, or news segments. 


Filter patterns can include the exact track metadata titles of the files you wish to exclude. Filter patterns use regular expression syntax, and we've provided some examples below. This pattern-matching works for both track titles and artist names. Optionally, you may choose to filter out all files that include a certain word or snippet in their name. 

Keep in mind that Filters are case-sensitive!


To exclude all tracks that contain “News Report” in their name, this can be done as follows:



The regular expression pattern for filtering out tracks that include a certain snippet is:  

.*Word1 Word2.*

This pattern will not exclude tracks containing Word1 or Word2 in their name but rather exclude all tracks containing these two words in a sequence.


If it's needed to only filter through track titles, the following snippet should be added: 

^ - .*News Report.*

Only for the artist, the next snippet will be used: 

.*News Report.* - ^


We recommend against using filters that are too generic, such as simply “News” or “Midnight”. Although rare, music tracks that include these words as part of their song title or artist name do exist. If the filter is too generic, it might end up excluding tracks that actually do need to be reported to SoundExchange.


After creating the filter and generating the new SoundExchange report for your station(s), if the targeted tracks appear on a full red background, as seen in the image below, this means the filter is working properly.


When exporting the SoundExchange report to a CSV file, these tracks will not appear at all, which is basically the entire purpose of applying these filters.


Email reports

This feature allows for creating reports and then sending them to an email address. This makes it so that you don't have to wait for report generation to complete.


Note: It is recommended to utilize Email Reports when creating a report that includes multiple markets.


The Email reports screen can be used to get also detailed reports for station and podcast stats. Reports can be filtered by date, time, station, country, state, city, platform, or device. Other filters can be set by the amount of TLH, total and active sessions, ATSL, bounce rate, and unique users. 


Another benefit of this feature is the ability to be able to choose a specific Transmission Category, which is the single-letter code that describes your service as defined by SoundExchange. Has also the ability to generate reports from multiple stations.


Export to CSV file

The SoundExchange report can be exported as CSV file in two ways. You can select Generate from the left side menu, and press the Export to CSV button. You also have the option of using Email Reports. If you choose to generate the reports, you will be able to select the transmission category (the single-letter code that describes your service as defined by SoundExchange), and the country.


The CSV report includes the following data for each track played:

  • NAME OF SERVICE - Name of the SoundStack station
  • TRANSMISSION CATEGORY - The transmission category for the station
  • FEATURED ARTIST - Name of the artist
  • SOUND RECORDING TITLE - Name of the track
  • PLAY FREQUENCY - How many times that song was played during the month by the station
  • ACTUAL TOTAL PERFORMANCES - How many people were listening to the station while that song was playing. For example, if the station played a song multiple times, this count would include both the 10 people who listened the first time, and the 20 who were tuned in the second time.


Note: The country refers to the location from which the listener connects and not to the place where the radio station is located.


Additional Tools - Station Library

Further down the sidebar is the Tools menu. An important additional tool is the Station Library. This feature provides a solution for broadcasters seeking more fields for their SoundExchange reports, such as Album Name, Marketing Label, or ISRC number.


After you login to your Analytics & Reporting Manager (ARM) account and select a specific station, navigate to Station Library from the left-side menu.


Click the Upload button in the top right corner.


Download the sample .csv file to your computer. This file includes all the required columns in the correct format: Artist, Song_Title, Album_Name, Marketing_Label and ISRC.


Using your favorite CSV editor like Excel or Google Sheets, modify the file and add your songs and their details to each column. Make sure to remove duplicates, there should be only one entry for each song.


Save the file in .CSV format. If your editor asks for encryption type, select UTF-8.


Upload the new .CSV file.


If there are no issues with the file, the Station Library should populate with the entries from the CSV file.


The Analytics & Reporting Manager will parse your Station Library CSV uploaded with the needed track details and then automatically update the SoundExchange report with additional information.



If you have any further questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact our Support Team through the ticket submission form or by emailing us at support@soundstack.com.