Nielsen Entertainment and SOCAN, The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, have announced a new Data and Information Services Agreement. Effective immediately, Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems (Nielsen BDS) data has been integrated into SOCAN’s performance analysis system to enhance the scope of SOCAN’s radio airplay royalty distributions. Nielsen BDS census data will serve to enhance SOCAN’s efficiency in copyright administration.
SOCAN is an organization that administers the right to communicate to the public and publicly perform musical works in Canada. It collects license fees and distributes these fees as royalties to its members as well as affiliated performing rights organizations (PROs) worldwide. The new data from Nielsen BDS will provide SOCAN with more detailed airplay information.
“SOCAN is excited about this new agreement with Nielsen BDS,” says Michael Lewin, Director of Distributions Operations for SOCAN. “It will allow SOCAN to provide its members and those affiliated with foreign PROs, through cutting edge technology, with a more complete record of musical performances occurring on Canadian radio.”
“We’re pleased that SOCAN has selected Nielsen BDS to provide census level performance data to enhance its analysis system," said Rob Sisco, President, Nielsen Music. “Nielsen BDS data and technology will provide a broad new level of information giving SOCAN a leadership position in global copyright administration."
ABOUT SOCAN
At SOCAN, we understand that the Canadian music industry is only as strong as the sum of its parts. We are proud to play a leading role, working with other organizations to ensure the long-term health of our members’ livelihoods and the Canadian music industry as a whole. SOCAN is the Canadian copyright collective for the right to communicate to the public and publicly perform musical works. We administer these rights on behalf of our members (composers, lyricists, songwriters and their publishers) and those of affiliated international organizations by licensing this use of their music in Canada. The fees collected are distributed as royalties to our members and to affiliated organizations throughout the world. We also distribute royalties received from those organizations to our members for the use of their music worldwide. SOCAN has offices in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton and Dartmouth.
ABOUT NIELSEN
Nielsen BDS provides data to determine airplay charts in both of the music industry’s most influential publications, Billboard and Radio & Records. USA Today publishes a national radio airplay chart weekly, compiled from Arbitron and Nielsen BDS data. The entertainment and advertising industries utilize Nielsen BDS data to monitor airplay and determine requisite marketing, strength, and viability of indicative campaigns. In the past 12 months, Nielsen BDS’ proprietary technology processed in excess of 142 million song detections and generated more than 3 million reports for its clients.
Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems (BDS), a division of Nielsen Entertainment, has been providing radio airplay data to record companies since 1989 and is regarded as the standard music monitoring service utilized by the music industry. Nielsen BDS is present in more than 179 markets and monitors more than 1540 radio stations as well as monitors music video channels BET, CMT, Fuse, Great American Country, MTV, M2, MTV Tr3?s, MTV Hits, VH1, VH1 Country, VH1 Soul, and seven Canadian MUCH video channels, as well as 16 Sirius and 23 XM Satellite Radio channels, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and detects more than 1 million songs weekly. Nielsen BDS currently houses one of the largest music libraries in the world recognizing more than 400,000 songs. In addition, Billboard and Radio & Records magazines use Nielsen BDS data in the determination of their airplay charts.
Nielsen Entertainment is comprised of the following businesses: National Research Group (NRG), EDI and EDI International, Television Services, SoundScan, Broadcast Data Systems (BDS), RingScan, Music Control, VideoScan, Market Navigator, BookScan, BookData, and Interactive Entertainment, and utilizes the full portfolio of sister companies including Nielsen Media Research (television ratings) and Nielsen Net Ratings (Internet usage) to deliver a whole media point of view.
