Digital Sales Reporting Message Suite

The text of the Digital Sales Reporting Message Suite (DSR) standard with detailed explanations and advise about how to go about an implementation is available on the knowledge base.

The DSR standard messages, which is a flat-file format, enable the communication of metadata about sales and usage generated on a digital music service provider (DSP). The messages are usually sent by the DSP to the relevant rights owner.

The DSR standard has several parts to it. Some of these parts describe elements of the standard that are common to all implementations of the DSR standard. These are:

  • Part 1 – Architecture
  • Part 8 – Record Type Definitions

Others describe the way in which messages are formatted to convey sales and usage metadata in specific business circumstances. These are known as DSR profiles, so very often, implementers only need to implement the one profile that is relevant to their business circumstances. Most of the profiles have been designed with the reporting of sales and usage in respect of musical works. However, there are two profiles that enable the reporting of sales and usage to the owners or administrators of rights in sound recordings or audio-visual works. The profiles are:

  • Part 3 – Basic Audio Profile
  • Part 4 – User Generated Content Profile
  • Part 5 – Audio-visual Profile
  • Part 6 – Royalty Reporting Profile
  • Part 7 – Radio Broadcast Profile
  • Part 9 – Financial Reporting to Record Companies Profile
  • Part 10 – Masterlist Profile
  • Part 11 – Basic Audio Profile for The Mechanical Licensing Collective

DSR messages may also be sent or received by companies who are neither digital music retailers or rights owners or administrators but they send or receive such messages on behalf of such organisations.

A slide presentation overview about the DSR standard is available here.

You do not have to be a member of DDEX to implement the standards. Anyone can implement any of them once they have taken out a DDEX Implementation Licence. Information about the Licence is available here and the application form is available here.

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