Support Music Reproduction License (MRL) reporting with CCLI
closed
B
Brendon Costa
As the admin who manages our churches CCLI License reports, I'd find it useful if downloads of PDF sheet music from Elvanto could be tracked uniquely per user as this would permit us to use Elevanto to manage our churches sheet music.
Without a feature like this (or something else that supports this work flow), we are unable to legally use Elvanto to manage our music despite the ability to upload files.
Elvanto currently has support for CCLI CCL reporting but not CCLI MRL reporting. The MRL license details can be found:
A useful way to manage this is to count "unique user downloads" for each file and compare those to a stored value optionally entered by the CCLI administrator of the number of purchased copies. A report can then be generated ordered by the difference of "purchased copies - unique downloads" showing a list of PDF's for songs that have more unique downloads than purchased copies.
An example use case is given below.
If Bob, Fred and George all download a PDF of the sheet music for 10,000 reasons when they play it the first week in their band. Bob and Fred both print this PDF to use but George reads it on his iPad. The next week George downloads the same PDF again to view on his iPad again. There have been 4 total downloads of this file but 3 unique user downloads.
I the CCLI reporter can report 3 unique copies of this PDF against the song 10,000 reasons in the Music Reproduction License as I see there are 3 unique downloads but 0 purchased copies.
The next week Alice joins the band and also downloads 10,000 reasons. The unique user downloads count will increase to 4. I the CCLI reporter can now request a MRL report which shows the PDF for 10,000 reasons have 4 unique downloads but only 3 purchased copies. I will report this extra copy to CCLI using their online tool and then set the purchased copies to 4.
I saw one other feature request similar to this one with a slightly different interface this requires more responsibility on the part of the musicians downloading the file to report the correct information:
Sabrina Sherman
closed
A
Andy Bleach
Hi - I think there's a way the 'file downloads' column of the Elvanto 'CCLI report' can be used to work out how many copies of sheet music stored in Elvanto have been downloaded in the reporting period selected. However there are some caveats that I've found as below...
Every time a file (of any type) is downloaded from a song in Elvanto I believe this 'file downloads' count increases by 1. So, as long as you only store music that counts towards your MRL under the 'files' section of Elvnato, the CCLI report should be correct for the period over which you run the CCLI report.
From my understanding (in Australia) you need to report reproductions as here - https://au.ccli.com/reporting/ and note this quote 'Report whenever you photocopy, scan or file-share sheet music for the songs you’ve reproduced'. So we store lead sheets (and vocal / scores) as files in Elvanto. And then run the CCLI report to report both Lyrics and MRL.
I'm not sure where chord charts sit, but they are not sheet music, so maybe we should be treating them as lyrics for reporting (hence the lyrics and chords tab in Elvanto?)?
However Elvanto team, it would be handy to have more granularity on the data in the CCLI report - for example I just saved a file as 'chart' to see how the 'file downloads' reporting works and that chard download counts towards the 'file downloads' (so I assume any file type download will count for the counter). It would be handy to separate the different file types out in the CCLI report. To do this you could split up the file downloads part of the report into each type of file you can attach. And please add a 'Lead sheet / score' category to the file types as this is what we need to report under our MRL (or just call it 'MRL files' or something like that).
Thanks,
Andy
B
Brendon Costa
If implementing this is too big, maybe relevant information could be exposed in the API. I could easily write an external tool that does this if it has a log of downloads per file. This would require adding ability to query a few things to the API:
* Query list of files per song/arrangement/key
* Query list of downloads per file
** The download should include at a minimum an ID of the user that downloaded the file. Probably also a date it was downloaded would be useful
Stewart Polley
Hey Brendon,
I'm a little confused about this.
Does this not fall under the "Print" section of the reporting that we currently offer?
Following from your report, it has this link: https://au.ccli.com/reporting/
This describes "Print" as the following:
The reproduction (i.e. printing, copying or handwriting) of songs in service/song sheets, transparencies, slides and similar forms intended for one-time or recurrent usage; and the creation and reproduction of custom musical arrangements of songs (for instruments and/or voices exclusively for use in church worship services and only where no published version is available).
B
Brendon Costa
Yeah it is very confusing, and honestly not written down very clearly by CCLI. You can email them for clarification I have found they are very responsive to questions.
Unfortunately the "print" category does not cover this from my understanding of the CCLI rules. I would love to be shown wrong.
I have understood it basically to be lyrics and arrangements of songs written by yourself are covered under the CCL license and direct copies of sheet music from somewhere else are covered by the MRL.
I
think
the key distinction is whether it is a exact duplicate of something typeset by someone else or not. With lyrics, someone is probably using text pasted into the bulletin, projector, lyric sheets and not something with the exact same font, size, layout as the original. This is covered by the CCL. However if they photocopy the lyrics from a songbook from my reading it needs to be reported on MRL instead. See the FAQ:
Can I photocopy the words of songs under my Church/School Copyright Licence?No. You would require the additional cover of the Music Reproduction Licence to make a photocopy of a typeset page from a publication, as a separate copyright exists in typography.
The "print" section does cover the lyrics used for the song cases where they are not "exact copies" from a typeset book, and any sheet music written by you for a custom arrangement in some circumstances. But not copying typeset sheet music created by someone else. That is covered by the different MRL license.
In our church we have basically said lyrics are covered by CCL and sheet music by MRL to make it easier for people to understand and I think follows the rules in all cases we have (We don't photocopy lyrics from books).
If you look at the wording of what the MRL license says, it specifically mentions sheet music:
Where the CCL only mentions "songs".
I believe this is the reason that Planning Center Online also changed to add support for the MRL in their download report. They had the CCL "print" category a long time ago but added the other feature more recently.
Stewart Polley
I know that you specifically need that license to do the photocopying, but I can't find anywhere where you would record this separately to the CCLI report.
In relations to PCO's report, I can not see any mention of MRL in their reports either.
B
Brendon Costa
When someone reports to CCLI at: https://olr.ccli.com
There is a question when you report a song: Did You Make Copies of Sheet Music?
If you click yes to that it asks you for:
* How many copies
* Where did the sheet music come from
This is how we report for the MRL. It is in addition to the other Print, Digital, Record, Translation fields.
This where we currently use planning center to track music for the MRL using the feature described at this link:
You are right planning center don't specifically mention MRL. But that feature mentioned above works for the MRL and also all other additional licences not necessarily covered by MRL or CCL. Elvanto currently doesn't help us track this information.
If you look at the CCLI FAQ, it specifically mentions MRL for downloaded copies:
Can we use DropBox or similar file-sharing websites to distribute sheet music copies to our musicians?
You can use file-sharing websites to distribute sheet music provided you have a Music Reproduction Licence and the shared folders are password protected with access is only granted to members of your church. However, whenever a sheet music file is downloaded from a shared storage site, a new copy has been made which would then need to be reported under the Music Reproduction Licence.