DDEX Bulletin -- April 2009
Document: Plenary-0355
Issued on: 6th April 2009
This DDEX Bulletin provides an overview of the major decisions taken at the 11th DDEX Plenary.
On 9th-11th March 2009, DDEX held its 11th Plenary meeting hosted by Telefónica Servicios de Música S.A.U. in Madrid, Spain.
At this meeting, DDEX made significant progress towards its goal of developing standards and documentation that will improve operational quality and efficiency, improve data quality, reduce transaction management and communication costs, and reduce the time it takes to market digital media products.
The main outcome of the Plenary meeting was an update to the Digital Sales Reporting Message Suite Standards (DSR) to enable the reporting of sales of audio-visual products such as short and long form music videos, television programmes and feature films. To support such reporting, the new DSR standards will allow the communication of "cue sheets" and the series/season/episode hierarchy so important for television series. The updated standards - Version 3.1 of the DSR Main Profile and Version 1.2 of the DSR Simple Profile - are expected to be published after a final consultation phase in May 2009.
A major part of the Plenary meeting was taken up discussing matters arising from various members' implementation activities. During these discussions a series of additions to the Message Handbooks were collected. It became also apparent that a considerably larger number of implementations than previously thought are either active or under development. As a consequence, DDEX will collate and issue a register of all known implementations in the next few weeks.
In order to aid the update of its standards, DDEX will be concentrating, over the spring and summer 2009, on raising its profile and on supporting implementation activities. As part of this activity, DDEX has already held three workshops - one in Madrid, Spain, one in Hamburg, Germany and a "webinar" for companies in Sydney, Australia - and expects to hold more in the near future. If you are interested in hosting such an event, please contact the DDEX Secretariat via the contact form on ddex.net.
At the 11th Plenary meeting DDEX also agreed a work plan for its future standardisation activities. They include adding the capability of declaring audio-visual products to the Electronic Release Notification and Musical Work Licensing Message Suite Standards and the handling of "hybrid releases" (i.e. products that have a physical component such as a t-shirt or a "drop card" and an electronic component such as a download). Finally, DDEX agreed to start working on mechanisms to automate the exchange of messages amongst business partners. This work includes the ability to automatically acknowledge the receipt of messages or, for instance, to inform a business partner that a specific action has been taken as a consequence of receiving a DDEX message. One example for this would be that a DSP could confirm to a record company that they have not only received information about a new Release but that they have already made it available to consumers through their music store.
About DDEX
The Digital Data Exchange, LLC ("DDEX") is a standards development organisation incorporated in 2006 to design (for voluntary adoption) standardised XML message formats for the exchange of metadata across the digital content value chain, develop common protocols for the automated communication and management of messages and to originate material to promote its standards and assist companies in their implementations. The end result of implementing DDEX standards for digital content businesses is faster time to market, improved operational quality and efficiency, improved data quality, reduced transaction management costs, reduced communication costs and reduced development costs.
DDEX is a membership organisation, incorporated as a limited liability company operating under the laws of Delaware. DDEX is governed by a Board of Directors the members of which are representatives of the Charter Members of DDEX. Membership of DDEX is open to any organization with an interest in the legal distribution of digital content.
Further information on DDEX can be found on ddex.net.
DDEX is a registered trademark and the DDEX logo is a service mark of Digital Data Exchange, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Contact
To contact DDEX, please use the contact form on ddex.net.
