MusicMaster Blog

By Brian Wheeler

Are you taking advantage of our log reconciliation feature?

There are several benefits to reconciling logs. Your actual music histories are updated according to what happened on-air. If you dropped a song, the history is removed from that song for that play. If you added a song, the history is added. If a song was moved within an hour, your aired time now reflects the true time the song played. Not only is this handy for future scheduling sessions, but when your reporting agencies like ASCAP, BMI, SoundExchange, and the CRTC come knocking for reports, you can provide the reports with confidence and ease.

So how does it work? First of all, if you’re using one of the automation systems that has an enhanced Nexus interface with MusicMaster, you may already have automatic real-time reconciliation between MusicMaster and your playout system. To learn more about Nexus-enhanced systems and features, click here (Link: https://www.musicmaster.com/nexus.php).

However, even if you are using a system that doesn’t have Nexus integration, the process is still very simple. When you run Reconciliation in MusicMaster, you get an easy-to-read report that shows you exactly what was added, deleted or changed in the schedule dates you choose to reconcile.

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Make Your List & Check It Twice

By Dave Tyler

It’s funny how nearly every year Christmas sneaks up on me. At some point in Mid-October I start counting how many paydays are between now and December 25^th! It also hits me in November that I have to get my Christmas programming in line.

These days we all wear so many hats in the radio station we forget to put on our Santa cap. Often as Programmers we find ourselves just getting through the holidays and doing a lot of work manually for a month or so.

In truth if you plan on sticking around your station a while, you should do yourself the favor of getting your categories set up and your Christmas clocks and grids created ahead of time. Not only will it give you more time to enjoy the season this year but each year after because you already did the heavy lifting. No more putting together the 1,000 piece playhouse the night before. Here is a little checklist of reminders for the season and yes, check it twice.

Categorize your songs – Do you have a category for Traditional tunes like the Bing Crosby and Andy Williams stuff? How about a contemporary category for traditional songs by current artists like Katy Perry’s White Christmas. Maybe you want a “Religious” category for your “Away In The Manger” and “Silent Night” versions. I also actively search for original Christmas songs that artists release each year. Not all of them earn a spot on the air but finding these gems adds some real freshness to your sound.

Coding – Seriously consider Title Keywords for your songs. Not only will this keep each version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” from itself, it can also help if the song is a medley of songs. List each song in the Title Keyword field to maintain your separation. If you don’t think this is important, keep reading for the problems this may cause. Should you just have one category for ALL of your Christmas music, then coding Traditional, Religious, Contemporary, Novelty, New Originals would be an important thing to do so you can then control those sounds with rules.

Rules – Your Christmas music is very different from your normal library and those rules you use the other 11 months of the year are likely not very applicable to your holiday programming. I recommend bypassing your All Category Unbreakable rules for your Christmas categories. To do this open your Rule Tree then right click at the top where it says MusicMaster Rule Tree in bold and choose Rule Tree Properties. You can now put an X in the box for your Christmas categories and then just add the rules you want in those categories. Title Separation becomes the biggie!

Before wrapping up (yep…pun totally intended!) please double check those Title Keywords. Remember something as small as a comma “,” makes it a different keyword. Look at this example:

The song “Let It Snow” in this library could potentially play all five back-to-back. If you look at the numbered Title Keywords each one is slightly different from the other. How would I remedy this? Simple they all get the “Let It Snow” keyword.

It doesn’t matter if at maximum you only play one Christmas song per hour right on through the season or if you increase the amount week to week from Thanksgiving and then go all Christmas. Taking a little time and getting it set up is totally worth it. It will be a better listening experience and it will save you time next year and the year after.

If you have any questions, reach out to your Music Scheduling Consultant. We’re always on the nice list!

Sharing is Caring

By Chris Malone

There’s a true power in having a global network of MusicMaster users from large media corporations, medium size broadcasters and even webcasters. Regardless of the size of your operation, if you have a colleague or sister station using MusicMaster there are a number of things that can be shared among users to make music scheduling easier than ever.

Here are three of the most common shareable items inside your database that can be imported or exported to another MusicMaster database.

1. Clock Export/Import

Inside Format Clocks Maintenance, you can select one or multiple clocks to export to another MusicMaster user. Ideally, the receiving database will have the same categories as the sender. If not, the categories will be created when the clocks are imported. Of course, since the categories were just created, they will contain no songs This function is helpful for new stations looking for startup clocks or holiday clocks, where categories can be matched across both databases. Keep in mind forced elements will not import properly as they are database specific elements. The exporting station will be prompted to save the clock(s) to a .mmdex file that can be imported within the other database. In this example, I’m exporting all 14 of my Nipsey Hustle clocks.

On the importing station, the user will save the .mmdex file sent from the other station and import those clocks. Inside Format Clock Maintenance, select Import and then you’ll be given the option to load the source file path (the location of the .mmdex file you downloaded) and you’ll also have the option to create new clock codes or overwrite existing clock codes that share the same code. Below, I’m importing all 14 Nipsey Hustle clocks and creating new clock codes for each of those clocks.

2. Export to Affiliate/ Import from Network

There are occasions where station groups or network syndicated programs will send a time frame or multiple time frame to an affiliate station directly through MusicMaster. As the ‘network’ station database, which is the station sending schedule data, a user can setup the time period along with any music/non-music data that needs to be included in the export to affiliates by going to Dataset, Schedule, Export, Export to Affiliates. In this example, I’m exporting 7pm to midnight and I’m sending out artist and artist keyword data on the elements that will be imported on the affiliate level.

When the export is setup is complete, the ‘network’ database will create a .mmdfx file that can be sent to the affiliate to load by using Import from Network.

On the affiliate side of things, to import go to Dataset, Schedule, Import From Network. The .mmdfx file from ‘network’ needs to be saved to your local computer and indicated in the Network Import Wizard.

If there are songs included in the export, you’ll be able to match those with existing songs in your local database or import entirely new song entries to a dedicated category within MusicMaster. After you’ve completed a successful import, the schedule editor will reflect your imported schedule data in the selected time frames.

3. Export Design

Another added perk of having a global community of MusicMaster users to turn to in the event you need to ‘borrow’ elements to help build you database is the fact that other users may have your exact automation system. Most automation systems use the same schedule export design parameters so can be shared among users. To export your automation system export design, open the MMExportDesignEditor that’s located in your MusicMaster application folder.

To export this schedule export design, go to File and Export, which will produce an .xml file to send to another user exporting from MusicMaster.

On the importing side, you would open your MMExportDesignEditor and create a new export design, name the design what you’d like, in my case “Wide Orbit:”. This will create a blank export design. You can then go to File, Import and import the .xml file sent to you from your partner station.

These are just a few example of how you can share items across databases, around the globe. Whether you’re friends with someone currently using MusicMaster or inviting a new user to MusicMaster, just remember sharing is caring.

If you need help setting up any of these features, please reach out to your MusicMaster Music Scheduling Consultant.

PRO 7.0.13 is now available in Help, Check for Updates. We’ve improved the use of deleting and cloning in Library Maintenance so if you happen to include a field that you can’t edit like Add Date or Song ID, the line will still process and just ignore those fields. We’ve also improved how the Hour/Day Analysis looks in the Schedule Editor so you shouldn’t need to scroll to see all of the hours. Should you wish, you can also now prevent someone from installing a new major version of the software. Tools, Options, Additional Properties has a new VersionLock setting. When engaged, a user will receive a message that the database is locked preventing the upgrade. This can be useful in large organizations where there is a planned rollout of a new major version. These things and more are all listed in the Release Notes on the Help menu.

“Nothing Matters”: Matching blank values with Special Sets

By Laurie Knapp

You can do a lot with Special Sets in MusicMaster and one powerful use is to match songs with specific imaging. For example, you can use them to drop artist intros ahead of songs by that artist or tease upcoming music with hook promos. We have some great blog articles on how to do this here:

Blog: Using Special Sets to Schedule Artist and Title Intros

https://musicmaster.com/?p=4905

Video: Adding Hook Promos for Upcoming Songs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GsYii4l7rs

In this article, we’re going to look at one specific case of using Special Sets to match promos to songs and why a setting called “Special Set Blanks” comes in handy.

Remember, a Special Set matches data from one field in a song to data from that same field in another. You can match things like tempo, theme, artist or title keywords; or, create special fields that you use for the purpose of matching.

Some people may have a mix of generic and specific imaging in a single category. Or they may have one category of specific imaging and a separate category of generic imaging. In either case, they might want to play a specific piece of imaging with a certain song or otherwise play a generic piece.

For example, let’s say you have a series of Station Promos that feature multiple song hooks. In your clock, you have a Promo position ahead of a music position. You’d like one of these special hooks promos to play when the song in the next music position was featured in the promo.

Of course, you can’t match by something like the song title field because you’re dealing with a single Promo piece with its own unique name and four separate song titles. So, you’ll want to create a separate field you can use to do the match.

In this example, I’ve created a Keyword-Multiple field (Dataset > Library > Fields – “Add Field button”). I’ve named it Hooks. I’ll use it store all the song titles that were featured in each promo.

For each of my hooks promos, I’ll store all four song titles that were featured as keywords, like this.

Then, I’ll go to each one of those songs in my library and also pair them with their matching keyword, as shown in the image below.

Now I can set up my Special Set. In my clock, I’ll insert a Special Set position. I want it to come from my N – Imaging category, which contains both generic and specific promos. I will indicate I want it to match Any of the keywords from my Hooks field and it’ll look at the next song.

Note: If my generic and specific promos had been in two separate categories, I could still add both of them to the list in order of preference (Specific first). In that case, if MusicMaster couldn’t find a matching promo from the Specific category, it would have looked in the Generic category next to find a match. Either method works, but you might want to use distinct categories if you want to apply different rules to each type of promo.

Back in my clock, I’ll insert a music position after the Special Set. Since my featured hook songs can come from either my A or B category, I’ll insert a proportional position that has an equal ratio of both. This isn’t necessary, but I just want more opportunities to play a song in this position that has an associated hook promo.

Now, if MusicMaster schedules one of my featured songs in that music position (#10), it’ll schedule the matching hooks promo ahead of it. You can see an example below:

Here you can see that when Foreplay/Long Time was scheduled to play at 3:26pm, MusicMaster placed the promo featuring that song as a hook ahead of it.

It’s important to note that the song is what’s being scheduled first and the piece of imaging is scheduled second to match. In this case, it doesn’t work the other way around. Playing a promo that features a hook of the song “All Right Now” doesn’t force MusicMaster to play “All Right Now” in the next position.

Now the question is, what about all of the songs that aren’t featured in a hooks promo? If MusicMaster picks one of those songs, it won’t be able to find a matching promo. So rather than leave something unscheduled, I’d like MusicMaster to insert one of my generic imaging pieces there.

Remember, the Special Set is looking for a match in the Hooks field. So you may be thinking that means you have to add something there, even if it’s just a “Generic” keyword you put on everything else. That way a “Generic” promo will match a “Generic” song – problem solved.

Adding that keyword would be a quick process using the Mass Changer but I’d rather just leave the Hooks field blank in both my generic imaging and my non-featured songs. That way when I add new music, I don’t need to remember to fill in the Generic keyword in the Hooks field.

Which leads us to the question: Does “blank” match “blank”?

Fortunately, as of PRO 7, the answer can be Yes. There’s a setting you can use to make “blank” match “blank” when it comes to Special Sets. To activate it, go to the Tools > Options > Additional Properties, and in the Schedule section near the bottom, find SpecialSetBlanks. Set this property to 1.

Now, when a featured song happens to fall in the position after your special set, its respective hook promo will play but with any other song, a generic piece of imaging will play.

A few final thoughts: make sure that your Special Sets are scheduling after your music categories. In this case, we’ve just set up the first Special Sets pass (you can have three separate passes). Go to Dataset > Schedule > Schedule Properties and move Special Sets 1 so it schedules after your music categories.

There are so many more things you can do with Special Sets, this just scrapes the surface. In addition to the articles linked above, you can check out our recent webinar on Special Sets:

Webinar Video: Winning Between the Songs With Special Sets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUCyFR3V3Dk

You can also get in touch with your MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant for some training. We’d be happy to help!

The Power Of Breakable Rules

By Dave Tyler

Since we were kids “The rules are the rules” right? You don’t break rules you follow rules. If there was a rule that was breakable then it would not seem to be much of a rule at all would it? Well you’ve come to the right place to discuss this seemingly paradoxical topic of the “Breakable Rule”.

In MusicMaster, Rules are how we nudge, manipulate, control and cajole our library to sound on the air the way we hear it in our heads. Rules are the “line in the sand” telling our library what it can and cannot do. However, sometimes we would LIKE it to do something but we do not need to REQUIRE it to do something. It would just be really nice if it could pull it off. If it can’t, well that’s okay too. Here is where Breakable rules come in to play.

Let me explain by example. In my example below I have my Artist Separation set at 1:10 in my All Category Unbreakable folder. This is line in the sand stuff. During scheduling a song is available only if that artist keyword has not played for an hour and ten minutes. With that said I would love it if I can find one that has not played for a full 90 minutes and I would be over the moon if I could get one that hasn’t played for two hours!!!! We call this scaling the rules.

Here’s how it works (see illustration below): MusicMaster is always looking for the perfect song, the song that breaks no rules. When it finds one, game over, song scheduled. If there is no song that meets all the rules, then it starts with your Unbreakable rules and makes sure it has a pool of songs that meet those rules. Then it’s on to the Breakable rules. The idea here is to push the program to find the best song, so you scale the rule by putting it in more than once with increasingly difficult settings.

If the song has an artist keyword time of 90 minutes, it passes that test and looks at Tempo Segue Protection. If it passes that, then it will go to the artist keyword time of two hours. If it passes, the song would schedule and the largest keyword rest setting will be achieved. If it doesn’t it will look for other songs that might meet the rule based upon the search depth for the category. Should it not find one, the song that passed the 90 minute separation and Tempo Segue Protection would schedule, still achieving more than the absolute minimum of 70 minutes allowed.

It is important to note that there is indeed a hierarchy to Breakable rules. You want the most important and/or lenient ones at the top and then build to more strict ones if you are scaling. If you put the most strict ones at the top then if MusicMaster can’t satisfy that it stops looking.

If you have any questions or if I made this clear as mud just let myself or any of the other Music Scheduling Consultants know and we’d be happy to chat about it.

Makers of Memories

By Brian Wheeler

“The words I’d say
Don’t seem to sound as real
The songs they play
That’s how I really feel

So, listen to the radio”

Listen To The Radio – Don Williams

Some of my most profound memories stem from experiences with my early radio listening. Long before I cracked a mic, took tower readings, or spliced tape, I listened to countless hours of radio programming.

My first clear recollection of radio listening was as a 4-year-old child in Lawton, Oklahoma. It was a very hot summer. The cicadas were deafening. The summer swelter was nearly unbearable. We’d listen to the radio when the heat inevitably brought on powerful summer storms, huddling near and listening for tornado warnings. My family was affected by two tornadoes in one summer. One of them blew the windows right out of our house. We received warning of that tornado minutes earlier on the radio. That was when I first experienced the power of radio.

I also remember the comforting voice of the announcer. I remember the familiar artists of the day; Glen Campbell, Waylon and Wille, Conway Twitty, Tammy Wynette, Ronnie Milsap, Merle Haggard, Freddy Fender. The list was long and strong. Radio had a grip on me very early.

I was given an old tube radio by my uncle when I moved back to Minnesota. The warm glow emanating from the radio as I tuned in stations near and far made me feel part of something bigger than myself. I spent most evenings listening to baseball games, countdown shows, and hilarious radio bits that sounded spontaneous and chaotic. I still have dozens of cassette tapes recorded from the radio. They are my personal time capsule.

Hearing songs for the first time was one of my favorite experiences. I remember having my mind blown hearing Mr. Roboto for the first time. I remember the first time I heard Sir Duke and how that song demanded that I dance, or at least smile. Sometimes I’d wonder how the artist was able to make such wonderful noises? Sometimes I wondered how the artist knew exactly how I felt. I remember hearing Weird Al Yankovic and shortly thereafter discovered Dr. Demento. Through it all, the voice coming from the radio guided me on my journey. These and countless other experiences are indelibly etched in my mind. They are precious to me and have had a hand in shaping who I am.

So the next time you schedule a log, prepare a break, or craft a bit, keep in mind that you’re creating memories and shaping your listeners. Young or old, what you do on the radio is having an impact in people’s lives. It’s not rocket science. It’s not brain surgery. But it IS important.

Creating and Managing Diverse and Inclusive Playlists with MusicMaster
FREE WEBINAR

October 6, 2021

While programmers have good intentions and are working towards crafting more inclusive playlists, too many are paralyzed by how to implement. We can’t and shouldn’t rely on „gut“ to create playlists that mine the full range of genius and excellence in music programming. This is not hard to create or maintain.

You already use MusicMaster to plan and implement consistently rich and diverse programming in a methodical, intentional way that can be measured. This session will demonstrate how to optimize MusicMaster to effect tangible change, transform your playlists and serve your listeners more meaningfully.

Join Suzanne Bona, host of Sunday Baroque, the nationally syndicated weekly program distributed by WSHU Public Radio, and Jill Sorenson, the MusicMaster W.I.Z.A.R.D. as they share a case study with strategies and implementation models to give you ideas for grooming your station’s database more effectively.

The tools shared are applicable to any music format. Anyone on your staff is welcome to attend this free session, including those in development and management who might have use of reports demonstrating accountability for crafting diverse playlists and submitting to funders, boards and licensees.

October 6, 2021 – 11am CDT

RSVP here:  https://shindig.com/login/event/sundaybaroque

Approximately one hour before the session, you can also use this link to connect if you do not RSVP.

Think like a MusicMaster Pro

By: Chris Malone

There’s no other scheduler that takes you deep into the scheduled log thinking process like MusicMaster. If you’re wondering why a position has been left unscheduled or why a certain song is often looked over in the schedule process, then the Thinking File is a great tool to see what’s going on under the hood.

To get to this file, you want to ensure that you are saving your thinking process to your data folder upon running your Automatic Scheduler. In order to activate this feature, in your Automatic Scheduler, you want to click the Options tab and place a check mark next to Save Thinking Process To Disk.

MusicMaster remembers this option and will produce this thinking output file every time you run your Automatic Scheduler. The file overwrites each time you schedule, so keep that in mind when reviewing this. After your usual scheduling process is complete, you can access the Thinking File of the last scheduled day, you can find this on the Schedule, Recap Report. There is a Thinking tab that will open the file. If you prefer, you can also go to Help, About MusicMaster, Data Folder and find the file that way. It will be named after your station with “_thinking” in the filename.

The Thinking File breaks everything down to a line by line, slot by slot for deep analysis. You’ll see why songs were either perfect for consideration or skipped from consideration based on your scheduling parameters and the rules you have setup. In this example, you’ll see the beginning of the schedule process that first thinks through your over-arching parameters like Clock Elements, Gold Recycling periods, then proceeds to think through your categories. You can follow along and see Auto Burn ‘tossed’ two songs out of consideration before it found the best available song for this position on the log which was “34+35” by Ariana Grande.

This is the type of deep analysis you can expect to see in your Thinking File. In another example, you can see exactly how a song was left unscheduled in the schedule editor because the other songs up for consideration violated the unbreakable Artist Keyword Time Separation rule, leaving MusicMaster with no other option for this position on the scheduled log.

The Thinking File is a core breakdown of every position on your most recently scheduled music log. Think of it as a breakdown of the scheduling process to its most literal form.

If you need help accessing or reading your Thinking File, please reach out to your MusicMaster Music Scheduling Consultant.

Rest Assured with “Check the Log”

By Laurie Knapp

Do you ever worry that changes you’ve made to your log might have inadvertently caused important rule violations elsewhere in the schedule? Or do you worry that you might not have noticed rule violations that really matter to you?

Good news, the Check the Log tool has got your back! After editing your log, you can use Check to Log to quickly see if you’ve missed any unbreakable or breakable rule violations, or for that matter, whether any of your song swaps, changes or deletions caused new rule violations. This is a quicker alternative to going back after you’ve finished editing and reviewing new rule violations one-by-one.

For example, if you’ve removed a couple of songs from your hour, this may have affected the time separation between keywords before and after that position. Check the Log will show you where those violations are so you can decide if and how to fix them.

Traditionally, after editing, you may have decided to go back to the top of the log and use the “Jump to Next Failure” button to find any unbreakable rule violations left in the log.

With Check the Log, you will get a handy report that shows you where all these violations are. You can also tailor the report to only include certain categories, rules, or rule folders. For example, you may know that you break certain rules on purpose when editing or have certain rules and categories for which you’re less concerned about violations. By turning these items off, you won’t see them in the Check the Log, and you can instead zero in on unexpected or more critical problems.

How to Use Check the Log

You can access Check the Log from either Dataset > Schedule > Check the Log or through its icon on the Schedule Calendar.

When the set-up box opens, you can choose from several options: including the date/time to check, as well as which categories should be checked, and which rules or rule folders to include.

Rule Folders allows you to determine which folders will be included in the Check. The Rules to Include option shows the list of all rules available in MusicMaster. Click the checkbox for those that you wish to examine.

You only need to check on those rules that you want to be considered, not necessarily all the rules you currently have in your Rule Tree. For instance, you might be primarily concerned with daypart and artist separation violations, so you would only check off those two rules to make sure you don’t have any violations there.

You can watch the progress of the report in the lower right corner. Once completed, you will either get a message indicating there are no violations or a report will display showing you the violations. This report will list the rules you checked that were violated and what the current rule setting is.

As always, if you have any questions about Check the Log, please contact your MusicMaster Consultant for assistance!