PPL Reporting (UK Stream Licensing) and TTSL – Total Time Spent Listening

21 Jul 2008 | 1 Comment | posted by James M | in Industry Insider

Dear Webcaster,

Sorry that we haven’t updated this blog for a little while, but we thought we’d inform you as to one of our most recent features, which is vital if you’re using PPL and PRS/MCPS for music licensing and royalties in the UK with your SHOUTcast server.

As you may know, it is a requirement from PPL (Phonographic Performance Limited) that all of their customers report quarterly listening hours as part of their Small Webcasting Licence agreement.

The ‘TTSL’ or Total Time Spent Listening is a new feature that we are now providing free of charge to ALL SHOUTcast customers, to use for general information and for music licensing reporting purposes. This is calculated based on your listening figures, which are checked every 5 minutes.

For example, if you have a stream with a 25 listener max and for most of a 24 hour period, around 25  people are connected, you would expect around 600 hours listening time each day.  This is a very simple calculation (24 hours * 25 listeners = 600). Obviously, no stream is at the same level throughout each day, which is why we have created a complicated system to accurately monitor your listener figures every 5 minutes and calculate the TTSL at the end of each day. This figure is then logged and the data is made available via Wavepanel.

An example set of data of a 25 listener stream, which is close to being full 24 hours a day as follows:

09/07/2008: 578.5 hours
10/07/2008: 579.83 hours
11/07/2008: 579.42 hours
12/07/2008: 588.67 hours
13/07/2008: 589.25 hours
14/07/2008: 591.58 hours
15/07/2008: 589.58 hours
16/07/2008: 582.33 hours
17/07/2008: 586.08 hours
18/07/2008: 581.75 hours
19/07/2008: 584.92 hours
20/07/2008: 580.5 hours

As mentioned, most streams are not full 24/7 so its likely your data will vary from day to day, depending on listener figures. Data has been collected across all clients since 9th July. You can access it via the ‘Advanced’ section of your SHOUTcast server(s) from within Wavepanel.

This is just one of our ongoing development projects which we are working on over the summer. Making your legal reporting obligations simple and effective. To our knowledge, no one else doing streaming media can offer anything as easy and convenient.

More soon!