MusicMaster Blog

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!

Handling Contributing Artists in MusicMaster
by Joe Knapp

Think about a song like “Side By Side” by Ariana Grande featuring Nicki Minaj. Of course, you would want to separate this song from other songs by Ariana Grande but what about Nicki Minaj? She’s not the “primary artist” on this song, but a “contributing artist” instead.  Nicki is the primary artist on “Seeing Green” featuring Drake and Lil Wayne. On that song, Drake and Lil Wayne are the contributing artists. On the song “What’s Next,” Drake is the primary artist and there are no contributing artists. What’s the best way to deal with songs like this in MusicMaster?

We suggest you create two Multiple Keyword fields, one called Primary Artist and the other called Contributing or Guest Artist. The Primary Artist would contain only the main artist and would separate songs by that artist by a larger amount of time. The Guest field would contain the primary artist and the contributing artists with a much smaller fixed time separation setting.

So, on “Side By Side,” your Artist keyword would simply be Ariana Grande. Your Guest keywords would be Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj.

On “Seeing Green,” your Artist keyword would simply be Nicki Minaj. Your Guest keywords would be Nicki Minaj, Drake and Lil Wayne.

On “What’s Next,” your Artist and Guest keywords would both contain just Drake.

Now in the Rule Tree for the Guest keyword field, you’d set up a time separation rule of, say, ten minutes.

Just for this discussion, let’s assume you set up a fixed time separation rule of 1:10 on your Artist Keyword field. Of course, you can set up custom settings for each artist or allow MusicMaster’s Optimum Goal Scheduling to automatically try to give you the greatest possible separation for each Artist Keyword.

When you play “Side By Side” by Ariana Grande, another Ariana Grande song cannot play again for at least an hour and ten minutes. But you’d only have to wait ten minutes before hearing “Seeing Green” by Nicki Minaj.

After playing “Seeing Green” you’d have to wait an hour and ten minutes before hearing another song where Nicki Minaj is the primary artist but you could hear “What’s Next” by Drake just ten minutes later.

Using custom separation settings for your Guest Artist Keywords, you can also adjust the reduced separation time for certain contributing artists, if you like.

It’s important that you include the primary artist’s keyword in the Guest field so that songs where the primary artist is merely a guest will have the smaller separation. Even if you know that the primary artist doesn’t contribute to any other songs, you never know if they’ll end up dropping in on someone else’s song later.

If you have any questions, reach out to your Music Scheduling Consultant.

Got The Slow Morning Blues?

By Dave Tyler

I have been a Morning Man most of my 36+ year radio career and yes I was that guy going into my PD/MDs office saying “Dude please schedule something with tempo in the mornings…..it’s a dirge-fest in here!”. I think listeners feel the same way for the most part. Please don’t misunderstand me I LOVE ballads! I’m a Country guy and when Garth had “The Dance” out listeners demanded it and we sure played the wheels off it! However, if overall you really just want medium to fast tempos tunes to play there is a very easy way to do it in MusicMaster.

It’s going to require a Rule Group but don’t fret this process can all be done in literally five minutes assuming your songs are already coded for Tempo. Let’s get started. First, we need to make a rule group. Open your Rule Tree and under Special Rule Tree items you will find Rule Group. Drag it into your All Category Unbreakable folder like the pic below.

The Rule Group box will pop up and there are several things to do in here. 1) In the Description box enter the name of the Rule Group. 2) Click Create/Modify button. 3) Place “X”s in the hours for your morning show. 4) Click the Save Icon, this will allow you to name this particular restriction. In my example it is “NoSlow Morning”. TIP: Adding the time frame into the name will remind you what it’s for so you don’t inadvertently change it. 5) Click Apply. This will bring you back to the original screen.

Now 1) Click on the “Categories” button and 2) place a check mark in each of the Music categories you want affected by this rule group then 3) Click OK. 4) Now click the button for “Match”. This means the categories you selected will have the NoSlow applied to them during this time period. 5) Finally bubble the “Restricted” and then 6) OK.

Guess what??? We’re almost done! Open your Attribute Field Rules and drag your 1-Slow & 2-Slow/Medium tempo “Not Allowed” rules into this folder. Save your Rule Tree and you’re done. No more Slow Morning Blues for you!!!!

If you have any questions just contact your dedicated Music Scheduling Consultant.

If You Do THIS Today, Future You Will Thank You!

By Brian Wheeler

Some would say it is a wee bit early to get ready for the holiday season. With the temperatures rising and people itching to get out and enjoy some sun, the last thing anyone should be thinking about is Christmas, right? Not so fast! Phil Thompson and Bill MacNeil of Coast 89.7 CKOA have been busily preparing for a season that’s months away. Are they crazy? Like a fox. Here is what they’re doing and what YOU can do, too!

Phil wanted a tiered Christmas calendar. When he introduces Christmas music, his first several days he plans to just dip a toe in the water using one Christmas song per day. What he does next is the difference maker. He clones his one-song-per-hour grid using the grid copy feature in the Format Clock Maintenance screen, creating a three-song-per-hour version of the same grid.

He even renames the clocks to begin with the number 3. That way, he knows immediately which clocks are his ‘3 Christmas song’ clocks. Once cloned, he goes into the grid, modifies each clock to now contain three Christmas songs instead of one. Then, he takes it a step further. He clones the grid containing the three-song-per-hour clocks, creating an even more Christmas-saturated clock (75% Christmas). He’s already got three songs per hour in each clock, so he only has to add a handful more each clock. Now he’s got three grids created with minimal work.

Finally, he creates an all-Christmas grid for the last few days leading up to and including Christmas. He creates clocks containing wall-to-wall Christmas music, which are already heavily populated from the 75% Christmas grid. He now has four Christmas grids total and he is all set for the ramp-up to Christmas.

Here’s the best part: He doesn’t have to wait to put these grids in action. Phil will use the Format Scheduler (see arrow pointing in the picture above) to apply these grids to the calendar in November/December. He can have this all planned out months in advance, as can you! You can click here for a brief and informative video on using the Format Scheduler: https://youtu.be/ylVgnC0U4pc

Sssshhh! Secret bonus tip for those who are still reading! Phil said I can share a cool secret with you. I thought this was great idea! For the days following Christmas (Boxing Day through the end of the year), Phil cloned the one-song-an-hour clock and applied a format clock filter (check this video out to learn more about format clock filters! https://youtu.be/D76hqFv8nzc ) so only seasonal songs (i.e. Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Or Winter Wonderland) played in that position. What a great way to wind down the holiday season and not just abruptly end the festive feel of your playlist!

As always, if you should have any questions you can reach out to your friendly neighborhood MusicMaster MSC. We’ll be happy to answer any questions and help you take these steps to streamlining your holiday programming.

Why Stay Current?

By Dave Tyler

Quite often I get calls from Programmers asking about the different versions and releases of MusicMaster and what those differences mean. After nearly 40 years of development there have been many versions of MusicMaster all the way back to our DOS version. The majority of users are on our latest version, PRO 7.0, which is amazing!

In addition to there being various versions over our timeline like 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 and now 7.0 there are also “service releases” within those versions that include functionality improvements, feature and performance additions, report updates and fixes.

Does Everyone Need To Be On The Same Version?

The answer to this is “Yes” if we are talking about working in a single database (Station). If you, your PD and MD all work for radio station W*** then you all need to be on the same version (5.0, 6.0 7.0 etc) because once a database is open in a newer version of MusicMaster it can no longer be opened by the earlier version. I always recommend if you are moving up a version (example: Updating from 6.0 to 7.0) that you make a backup of your 6.0 data and put it somewhere safe and then move on. It is important if one user wants to update to the latest version that everyone is on the same page and ready to do the same. Remember if I update to 7.0 and open the database and my two colleagues do not update, they will not be able to open and work in the data any longer until they also update to 7.0. Updating your version to our latest greatest is as easy as opening MusicMaster then going to Help/Check for Update or you can download the full version by registering and downloading it from our website Support Center.

Does Everyone Need To Be On The Latest Service Release?

Although it is always recommended that everyone be on the latest version to get the most out of this powerful software, it is not necessary for users working in the same database to be on the same service release. In other words if the PD is on 7.0.02, the MD is on 7.0.5 and the OM is on 7.0.10 there will be no issues and everyone can continue just fine. This is what I mean by “service releases”. The “7” is the major version release number. The “.0.0x” is the service release number. Everyone just needs to be on “7”. The only concern with my example would be that a user on 7.0.10 might have a new feature that the users on 7.0.2 or 7.0.5 don’t have.

One of the more obvious examples of that has to do with our work with various reporting agencies like ASCAP/BMI, Sound Exchange and CRTC. Their requirements can change from time to time. Since we work with these organizations to make sure the reports are accurate, staying on the latest version and service release means your reports are in line with what the organizations have requested. Of course, that also means you will always have the most powerful, productive and high performing version of MusicMaster software at your fingertips.

We understand that updating software is not something you do often, so if you’d like any assistance checking your version and updating to a newer release, do not hesitate to contact your Music Scheduling Consultant.

Music Scheduling Therapy

By Chris Malone

If you have had the privilege of sitting in a therapy session, you are aware of the benefits of having someone look at your life’s configuration and help recommend ways to get back on track. Did you know in MusicMaster, you have a built-in music scheduling therapist at your disposal too? One of the overlooked features in your Rule Tree is the Rule Wizard that gives you a list of recommendations to make to your rule tree based upon your last scheduling session.

This feature helps determine rotations miscalculations and rules that may be off-base due to the lack of available inventory in your actively scheduled music and non-music categories. The Rule Wizard can pinpoint problems with rest settings, hour rotation rules, and indicate how your attribute rules affected the scheduling session. If you notice an abundance of unscheduled positions in your most recent scheduling session, you may want to review this list and see what your MusicMaster therapist recommends.

Additionally, you can benefit from learning how to read your scheduler recap report (Dataset, Schedule, Recap Report). In this recap report, you can sort the pass percentage column by descending order, which shows me the rules that had lowest percentage of songs that pass any given active rule (both breakable and unbreakable). Watch out for unbreakable rules that have a low pass percentage, it indicates problems with that category’s ability to tolerate the current rule setup. Remember, this is a picture of the last scheduling session. You may wish to make some notes over the course of a week before making any changes to rules or other settings.

(For even more info on the Scheduler Recap report, check out this other blog article on the topic.)

You can lean on your built-in MusicMaster scheduling therapist or you can call your MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant, have a seat on the couch and tell us your problems.

Level Up!

By Dave Tyler

As a Music Scheduling Consultant for MusicMaster and a 35+ year radio veteran, I have used just about all the scheduling software programs available over the years. I see time and time again how intuitive and powerful MusicMaster is. If you want to do it, if you can hear it in your head, MusicMaster can make it happen. There is so much horsepower under the hood and so many tools in the trunk it will blow your mind.

Recently I had a top-notch programmer, who is very detailed oriented and knows everything about his database, contact me with any interesting question. He was running a “Quiet Storm” type program on Saturday nights and in keeping with that style it was all slow songs. His issue was that he knew he had to increase his search depth but when he did that he did not like how it affected his regular week rotations and asked if there was a solution.

It was my pleasure to say “YES!!!”. During the week he wanted his A category to only dig 1 deep and other categories no more than 50% however on Saturday nights he needed to dig deeper because he had clock filters in place calling for only Tempo 1 and 2 (Slow and Slow Medium) songs. Looking at his Schedule Properties window for his normal week (Dataset/Schedule/Schedule Properties) it looked similar to my example below:You can see in the top left corner that in “Level 1” his setting are consistent with what I mentioned above. This is the search depth settings for the entire week. Keep in mind though he wants these search depths to increase for one 5-hour period each week. To do this we need to level up! By pressing the little calendar icon to the left of where it says “Level 1” we will launch the “Show/Hide the Level Assignment Grid” and we see that it is all 1s across the week.

So let’s change the grid so Saturday night from 7p-Midnight now reflects a level setting of 2. Once we do that the drop down box displaying the level will also change to 2. We change our search depth settings to 100% and then click Save and we are done.

Now the client has accomplished the goal of increasing search depth during a certain time period automatically. This takes very little setup and is such a powerful tool!

For more information on how to do this or any other question you may have please contact your dedicated Music Scheduling Consultant. Our goal is for that great radio station you hear in your head to be coming out of the speakers of every radio in your market. Let’s make it happen!