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Broadcast Reports

Broadcast Reports

Centova Cast’s track broadcast reports are downloadable (CSV-format) spreadsheets generated on a monthly basis which provide detailed information about each and every song that was played on your stream during a reporting month. These reports are commonly used to submit performance reports to royalty music licensing authorities. CSV files are compatible with most common spreadsheet applications, including Microsoft Office and LibreOffice Calc, and are also convenient for advanced users who may wish to perform more advanced report processing using other custom software.

Reports are generated for the preceding month on the first day of each calendar month, and may be found on the Tracks tab of the Statistics page. Each report contains two spreadsheets: a playback report, which reports every track played during the reporting period, and a performance report, which reports aggregate playback information for each unique song played during the reporting period.


Playback Report

The playback report contains a comprehensive listing of every track played during the reporting period. The columns in this spreadsheet include:

  • Artist name – the name of the artist for the track played, if available
  • Album name – the name of the album for the track played, if available
  • Track title – the title of the track played
  • ISRC – the ISRC code for the track played, if the track was played by the autoDJ and the ISRC value was set in the ID3 tags for the track’s MP3 file
  • Start time – the date and time at which the track began playing (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format, UTC/GMT time zone)
  • End time – the date and time at which the track finished playing (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format, UTC/GMT time zone)
  • Listeners – the number of listeners who heard any portion of the track
  • Duration – the length of the track, in seconds
  • TLH – the total listening hours for the track played
  • Type – indicates how Centova Cast identified the details for this track; see Track Identification below
  • Other – reserved for future use

Performance Report

The performance report contains aggregate playback and listener information for each unique track played during the reporting period. The columns in this spreadsheet include:

  • Artist name – the name of the artist for the track played, if available
  • Album name – the name of the album for the track played, if available
  • Track title – the title of the track played
  • ISRC – the ISRC code for the track played, if the track was played by the autoDJ and the ISRC value was set in the ID3 tags for the track’s MP3 file
  • Duration – the length of the track, in seconds
  • Frequency – the number of times the track was played during the reporting period
  • Performances – the number of listeners who heard any portion of the track play during the reporting period (essentially, the sum of the number of listeners who were connected any time the track was played)
  • TLH – the total listening hours for this track during the reporting period
  • Type – indicates how Centova Cast identified the details for this track; see Track Identification below
  • Other – reserved for future use

Track Identification

Streaming servers do not record precise information about each track that was played; instead, they simply record a metadata string which commonly (but not always) indicates the artist and title of the track. In order to correlate that metadata string with a distinct track in the stream’s media library, Centova Cast may use one of three approaches, each of of which varies in its accuracy.

As the accuracy of the track identification may be be of concern in cases such as royalty reporting, it is included in the Type field in each report. The Type field may specify one of the following three numeric values, in decreasing order of accuracy:

1 – Song Title Code Match

Indicates that song title codes were enabled and that a valid code was found in the metadata. This means that the track was played by the autoDJ and was definitively identified from the media library. The artist, album, title, ISRC, and duration should precisely match the values for the correct track in your media library.

2 – Heuristic Media Library Match

Indicates that song title codes were disabled (or that no valid code was found in the metadata) but that Centova Cast was able to find a track in the media library that seemed to match the artist and title from the metadata with a high degree of accuracy. The artist, album, title, ISRC, and duration will precisely match the values of a track in your media library, but there is a slight possibility that it could be the wrong track (particularly if you have multiple editions of the same track, such as a live edition and a studio edition, which share the same artist and title).

3 – No Media Library Match

Indicates that no matching track could be found in the media library, so the metadata was simply parsed as-is from the streaming server, and a best-effort approach was taken to identify the artist, album, and title. The ISRC value will be empty, and the duration will reflect the actual time for which the track played. If the track was played by a live source (rather than by the autoDJ) it will not exist in the media library, and thus it will be recorded as Type 3.

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