Best Practice Conglomeration Rules
DDEX has agreed the following best practices for a digital music service provider (DSP) to “conglomerate” data it has received from multiple sources, about the same entity, before this data is sent to a musical work licensor as part of a message formatted in accordance with the DDEX Digital Sales Reporting Message Suite standard. These best practice rules are as follows:
Avoidance of blending of data
Metadata contained in any AS/MW Record of a Sales/Usage Report created in accordance with the Digital Sales Reporting Message Suite, should not be a "blend" of bits of data combined together from different sources of that data. It is therefore usually better to keep a cell of such a Record empty rather than populate it with data that is from a different data source from the data populating the rest of the cells in that Record. This applies to the data relating to the sound recording being reported in the Record as well as the musical work.
Order of data “conglomeration”
Therefore, it is best practice for a DSP that is populating an AS01/MW01/AS02 Record within a Sales/Usage Report, to populate the various cells in those Records with data from different sources in accordance with the following order of preference:
(a) Firstly, data received directly from the record company that is active in the territory of sale and/or usage and that uploaded the sound recording to the DSP’s system (e.g. using an ERN message), should be used.
If the active record company changes, then the data used should be that which comes from the “new” active record company.
(The term “record company” is used here to also encompass distributors used by a record company to deliver its release information to a DSP on its behalf. The term “active” is denoting a record company that is currently, based on the information available, scheduled to receive royalty payment(s) for the use of the sound recording or music video.)
(b) Where there are two or more active record companies, the data initially received by the DSP should be used for populating the AS01/MW01/AS02 Records regardless of whether the two or more record companies’ claims in respect of the relevant sound recording or music video are in conflict or not.
(Technically, some of these record companies would no longer be “active” as they may not be scheduled to receive any payments from the DSP for the sound recording or music video in question until the conflict is resolved.)
(c) Cells in the Record not populated by virtue of the rules set out in (a) and (b) above may then be populated with data received from the DSP from another record company that is active in a different territory from the territory that is the subject of the sales and/or usage. The sound recording and musical work data from such a secondary source may only be used in a specific circumstance. That is that, the data from the two sources may only be used if the data that identifies the sound recording or music video is deemed by the DSP to not be in conflict. In this context the two sources are, (i) the active record company in the territory of sale and/or usage and (ii) the record company that is active in a different territory from the territory of the sales and/or usage.
(d) The text in (c) has one side effect for Sales/Usage Reports that contain sales and/or usage data for one territory only.
Because the text in (c) above requires that data received by the DSP in respect of a different territory from the one that is the subject of the sales and/or usage is used to populate the AS01/MW01/AS02 Records, the Sales/Usage Report may contain data that is not listed in the “raw” LC Records of the Report. This can be avoided if the licensee and licensor agree that any "raw" data used in completing the AS01/MW01/AS02 must also be included in the LC records. This, of course, will increase the size of such Sales/Usage Report.
(e) The same rules for prioritising the data to be used to populate the cells of a AS01/MW01/AS02 Record as set out in (a) and (b) above should also be applied when determining which data should be used to populate cells of a AS01/MW01/AS02 Record in the circumstances set out in (c) and (d) above. To supplement this approach, if multiple sets of data are available, the DSP should prioritise using data from a record company source from a market that is, in the opinion of the DSP, “similar to” the territory that is the subject of the sales and/or usage. For example, in a Sales/Usage Report for Sweden the DSP should prioritise data from Denmark, Norway, Iceland or Finland over data from China or South Korea.
(f) Cells of an AS01/MW01/AS02 Record not populated by following the texts of (a), (b), (c) or (d) above may be populated with data from other record companies or other data providers. Data from such sources that is actually going to be used to populate the remaining cells of an AS01/MW01/AS02 Record may only be used if the record companies that have provided sound recording or music video data in the Record in accordance with the texts of (a), (b), (c) or (d) above, do not, in the opinion of the DSP, have a conflicting claim in the relevant sound recording or music video. The same approach to prioritisation of data for cells to be populated by virtue of the text of (c) and (d) above should apply also to cells to be popluated by virtue of the text in this section (f).
(g) If there are two sources of equal “rank”, for example, two sources neither of which meet the condition defined in the text of (a) and (b) above, but that do meet the condition defined in the text of (c) and (d) above, the DSP should use the data received originally.
(h) For the purpose of the above, the data used to populate the following grouped cells must come from the same source:
ISRC,TitleandSubTitle;DisplayArtistNameandDisplayArtistPartyId; andISWC,ComposerAuthor,ComposerAuthorPartyId,Arranger,ArrangerPartyId,MusicPublisher,MusicPublisherPartyId,WorkContributorandWorkContributorName.
This means, for example, that a DSP may not mix the Title from one data source and the SubTitle from another data source.
(i) The AS01/AS02 Record containing the sound recording and musical work information that is deemed, by the DSP, to be subject to an ownership conflict shall be marked as such in the AS01/AS02 cell once DDEX has added such a flag to the relevant records.
(j) All other record companies’ data shall be placed into the LC01 Records, with the Records from an "active" record company marked as such in the LC01 cell once DDEX has added such a flag to the relevant records .