Licences Advice

This page aims to put the various licences that URY follows into simple key points. It includes hard rules as well as tips and notes to make being legal easier.

Ofcom Licence

This is the first one most people think of when "radio" and "licence" come to mind, but believe it or not, now we have a licence (It's a Community LPAM one, if you're interested), it's pretty straight forward. Once a year, we pay a licence fee, every 5 years we renew the agreement, and the only fixed legal requirements are that:

• We broadcast across campus on 1350AM within reasonable technical standards (i.e. we don't interfere with maritime broadcasts, as we once did a few decades ago.... whoops)
• We don't mention that on air that we can be potentially be heard elsewhere depending on various complicated science things
• We broadcast the station frequency (1350AM) and callsign (VERSITY or URY) once an hour
  • Yes, playing the news in jingle or saying "Online at ury.org.uk and across campus on 1350AM, this is URY news" is a legal requirement!
• Our output is targetted for students and staff at the University of York
• Our transmitter is only on for 30 weeks a year, but is always on during this time (unless we suffer a prolonged power outage or an attack by terrorists or the Queen's enemies)

You were expecting more? That's all the legal bits. You thought swearing was against Ofcom rules? It's not. Everything else you hear about is in fact based on Ofcom guidelines. Thick, boring documents giving you examples of what is good and bad and cases where broadcasters have done it right/wrong in the past. Our presenter contract is a conservative way of meeting all this while not boring presenters with detail. So if you want to know more about what content a show can have, it's useful to look at the Ofcom Guidance pages for more information.

PRS/PPL Licencing

This is where it gets... fun. The big problem with radio is copyright - if we just played music on air and online we're being very very naughty. We have to pay the artists, publishers, distributors and so on their share every time you click "Play" in the studio. For this, we pay licences to two separate companies - PRS and PPL, each of which handle part of those payments.

PRS Webcaster Licence

This one's simple - we're small and non-profit so other than a licence fee every year we don't have to do anything.

PPL Webcaster Standard Licence

I've lost large parts of my life to these guys. Once a quarter, we have to send them a report of every track we've played, including the record label and distributor, as well as some complicated statistics involving listener-hours and performances by territory. The main thing you can do to help with this is do what your contract says - only play music via BAPS. In addition to this, there's lots of other annoying little requirements:

• During any 3 hour period:
  • We can play no more than 3 tracks from any album (and no more than 2 consecutively).
  • We can play no more than 4 tracks from any particular artist or compilation (and no more than 3 consecutively).
    • The Campus Jukebox does some magic to make sure it follows this, but for presenters, it's up to you to be aware of this!
• A Track may only be played once in any 1-hour period.
• We have to show what song we are playing on the website (and over AM if it ever becomes reasonable for us to financially) as we are playing them, and after we've played them but never before.
  • For presenters, this just means using BAPS or manually Tracklisting as you go. Computing manage the rest.
  • In addition, you cannot mention "We have Gaga coming up in 10 minutes". You can use vague things like "in the show". This is so people don't know what time to record our web stream if they still pirate music like that.
• We can store up to 20,000 Dubbed Tracks in our central filestore at any time.
  • Computing manage this for you, too.
• Each show can only be advertised up to 4 times in a 2 week period.
  • This clause is vague. We should clarify this, because I'm pretty sure we don't follow this sometimes.
• We can't knowingly make it sound like we're affiliated with any artist, copyright holder of product.
  • Don't do that. This also includes playing tracks in a way that could "denigrate" artistic integrity.
• We have to take reasonable steps to prevent our listeners from pirating music play
  • There's not much we can do, although talking or playing jingles of intros helps with this.
  • Computing have to add DRM somehow if requested. Evil stuff.
• We can't play music that's pirated or we don't own.
  • Yes, that includes that song you just downloaded from mp3skull or loaded up on YouTube.
• We can't edit or remix songs.
• We can't let members or (anyone) take copies of any of the data in our library.
• We can't use tracks as an intro to or during advertising, features or as a trademark or brand.
  • This includes using them as beds for show adverts or consistently in features.

Additional Technical Restrictions

• We can't provide a customised stream on a per-user basis.
• We can't add skip/pause/back functionality or the ability to let listeners record our service.
• We can only Dub entire Tracks, not partial ones.
• Tracks must be of a reasonable technical standard that the quality is reasonably preserved.
• Ensure the Central Database is as secured as possible, including providing reports on this to PPL if requested.
• Our web stream must only be accessible to the countries listed in the PPL Qualifying Territories document.
• The Central Database cannot be removed from URY's premises (the Station and Stores) for any reason. Whether this includes backups is unclear.
• We cannot delete any archive Tracklisting data. PPL may ask for this data at any time.