Digital Music News - SoundExchange Royalty Processing Problems Entering 'Crisis Mode...'

SoundExchange Royalty Processing Problems Entering 'Crisis Mode...'

Thursday, January 05, 2012
by paul

SoundExchange is now grappling with emergency-level performance problems related to its royalty processing system, according to meeting notes leaked to Digital Music News. In a November meeting of the SoundExchange Board, an agenda item labeled "SERENA System Performance Issues" detailed a number of urgent performance problems, and pointed to 'crisis mode' treatment and emergency-level 'triage' on the system.

'SERENA' is SoundExchange's royalty processing and distribution system. "SERENA performance continues to be a significant problem," the meeting notes explain. "We have reached crisis mode where end users experience daily system slow-downs and queued jobs fail to execute. We believe the root of the problems are based on dramatic data growth, increased user load, and a database design that has not been modified or configured to scale."

The meeting notes were also accidentally published on SoundExchange's site over the holidays, but quickly removed following the publication of this article.

The notes continue to describe an unstable system, and urgent remedies that appear to include an entire system replacement. "We remain extremely concerned about the operational capacity of SERENA as we place more load upon the system, and we will place high priority in the coming months to triaging this operational problem in order to keep SERENA functional until she is replaced."

The notes were from November, leaving at least several weeks and the holidays for emergency fixes. After multiple inquiries, SoundExchange offered this statement to Digital Music News:

"We’ve been fortunate to have seen tremendous success as both the organization and digital music services continue to grow. We have made very clear that this is also one of our greatest challenges, and not uncommon to a lot of growing companies. We strive to improve our methods for distributing payments from over a thousand services to even more artists and labels in a timely manner, which is why we continue to make the updating of our systems a high priority."

The statement continues here. And, here are screenshots of what was accidentally posted on SoundExchange's site:

Comments Closed

Comments (7)

LouisXIV Thursday, January 05, 2012

I'm willing to bet most of those guys are still on holiday.

Visitor Thursday, January 05, 2012

My band has lots of songs rotating in most streaming stations of our genre in North America.

Want to know what we have received from SoundExchange?

$0.0

Want to know what SoundExchange says every time we ask?

"it's the stations' fault, they don't submit playlists to us"

OK, so why isn't it obligatory to receive playlists in order to give them a license?

And if a station fails to submit playlists (WTF, you can't be bothered to e-mail a playlist every month but you got time to post nonsense on Facebook/Twitter every 4 minutes), then they automatically lose their license.

Or pay a fine.

Or call them and ask for the fucking playlist, or else.

"[no reply]"

mdti Friday, January 06, 2012

looks like it is the same problem with most copyright management everywhere.... the "unplaylisted" payments are then dispatched amongst the top sellers, or to funds for various projects... completely abnormal...

it should be compulsory to send playlists, and compulsory for agencies to employ people to treat them.

radio stations don't care! Friday, January 06, 2012

Actually, over here in Europe it is compulsory for all radio stations to submit playlists. The reality is that they don't bother submitting them. Noone cares to remind them that their broadcasting licenses are directly connected to this very important legal detail.

There is no technical excuse. All radio station software suites have a playlist export tool, as a standard feature.

mdti Friday, January 06, 2012

(Like) :-)

CurlyJoe Friday, January 06, 2012

I don't understand what the big deal is. It seems like these guys are all over the problem and are working hard to fix it. Many companies have to upgrade their systems as they grow. So SX needs to upgrade its systems b/c they are collecting and distributing more $ to artists than ever. That is a good thing. Why are people trying to make this into a "got'cha" thing?

Arthur J. Owens Monday, January 09, 2012

As an attorney for a pureplay station, I can assure you that SoundExchange requires stations to submit playlists. Music stations also have to submit playlists to BMI & ASCAP, the only difference is the SX playlist has far more detailed & difficult requirements. If there's a bottleneck, it may be because radio stations do not submit the playlist in the exact format dictated by SX, and SX offers no assistance beyond a handbook that would facilitate submissions in the proper format.

OUR SPONSORS