MusicMaster Blog

By Jerry Butler

MusicMaster has always given you the ability to customize your views and show or hide items as you please. With version 7, we give you even more options to control your view and screen real estate.

Many programmers take advantage of using the results bar in the schedule editor. With the release of version 7, you can now adjust the size of the results bar. To show the results bar, click on the arrow on the right side of the schedule editor toolbar and select results bar.

The default location of the results bar will be at the bottom of your schedule editor window, but you can move the results bar and many of the other windows in MusicMaster by clicking on the dotted line on the side of the element and dragging the window to the desired location. Many stations use a second screen for windows like this or the history graph (F6).

Once your results bar is displayed, you can right click on the bar and customize.

This gives you the ability to select what panels will be displayed. New to version 7, you can drag the panel size slider to shrink or enlarge the panels.

Smaller:

Bigger:

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

Happy Scheduling.

By Brian Wheeler

Cover songs: Love ‘em or loathe them, they are a part of virtually every format. There’s even a Sirius/XM channel devoted completely to cover songs! But what do you do when you’ve got cover songs in your format and you need to prevent them from scheduling too close to each other, particularly when one is a current?

Lana Del Rey released “Doin’ Time”, a track originally recorded by Sublime. If you’re playing the Lana tune, there’s a fairly good chance you’ve got the original version in your gold category. Now that Lana will be marching up the charts with her version, how will you protect from these two versions of the same song?

The ideal protection to use is Title Keyword protection. Much like Artist Keyword protection, Title Keyword protection allows you to separate songs that are alike.

Apply the Title Keyword “Doin’ Time” to the title keyword field on each song, as shown:

Next, enforce the Title Keyword separation rules in your rule tree by dropping the Title Keyword Separation in your All Categories folder.

That should prevent the gold version from scheduling too closely to the new version. Don’t worry if you’re bypassing your current categories from the All Category rules. If your gold is scheduling after your currents, The Lana Del Rey version will plot in your schedule as you’d expect, and the gold version will have to steer clear of any current plays. Perfect!

As far as the separation time is concerned, that is up to you. Something to take into consideration is your average listener’s actual listening time. If your station is focused toward cume, a big separation time may not be necessary since your listeners tend to check in and out throughout the day. Adjust your separation times accordingly. This can be applied to the individual Title Keyword under Dataset, Library, Keywords. Make sure to select the Title Keywords in the dropdown menu and apply a separation time by typing in your desired separation.

You should be all set! Incidentally, this is also how you would best protect against the several versions of all the Christmas tunes you’ll be playing later this year. Is it too soon to be thinking about that? Probably. Let’s enjoy the summer first.

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

By Dave Tyler

Some people just like things the way they like them and don’t want them to ever change. I am one of them. I remember kicking and screaming my way into digital audio editing when our last reel-to-reel machine was on its last leg and then doing it again when we went from SAW to CoolEdit Pro! I am one of those who would still use Windows XP if I could!

MusicMaster 7.0 is our latest and by far greatest version of MusicMaster. It is powerful, robust and cutting edge. Simply put there is no other product in its class. Over the years MusicMaster users would upgrade and hit the ground running because the Icons and Buttons remained mostly the same. However with the release of 7.0 those icons got a lot slicker. After all when you move from an automobile to a rocket ship you expect a little more flash right? I do! But again as someone who shuns change, I loved my old icons. No worries my friend our Development Team feels your pain and if you are ready to move to 7 but love your old buttons, you can still have them! Just go to Tools/Options/Theme-Display Options and choose “Previous Style” (pic below). Click Apply then OK and voila’ you are back to being old school! Also be sure to check out the other various and cool themes there too. You can also read about our new themes in this blog article.

As always, contact your Music Scheduling Consultant if you have any questions.

By Jerry Butler

Talking with programmers daily and attending numerous MusicMaster Genius Days, I often find that programmers would like additional training, but don’t know that it is available. MusicMaster offers FREE online training with your MusicMaster subscription. If you are looking for MusicMaster 101 training for a new employee, new student team for your college station, or you want more advanced training for a seasoned vet, we can help you out. Our Music Scheduling Consultants can login and use your stations database for training, so everything looks familiar to your team. Contact your Music Scheduling Consultant today to schedule your MusicMaster training.

In addition, you can review hundreds of videos and blogs by clicking on the learn tab on our website. Check out blogs, short-form and long-form videos for the topics of your choice.

And don’t forget the Help feature in your MusicMaster software. Click Help and search for the topics that you have questions about.

Thank you again for using MusicMaster.

By Marianne Burkett

As someone with many years of MusicMaster under my belt, I’ve often found myself painstakingly going down a vast list of categories and one by one picking custom colors for each category. It got to the point where I would just begin the process at the far left or right of the color spectrum and go in either direction. I can always spot a database which has categories I’ve custom colored. What’s my trademark? All non-music is colored Gray.

In MusicMaster Pro Version 7 we have a new feature that will save you time coloring Categories. Go to Dataset/Library/Category Editor. You’ll see a brand-new button on the right called “Colors”.

Click on Colors and you’ll see Color Palette’s listed on the left. Select your preference and click OK.

As you can see here I did not apply this to the Non-Music categories as I prefer the use of vivid colors on music and something muted or grey in non-music to break things up. This helps me visually when editing logs or the clocks.

You may find a palette that works for you in “Colors” and this is a great optional feature for those of you in a pinch for time. It’s also great if you just want to change up the colors for something different. I’m more inclined to D-I-Y my colors as I have a degree in design from “Cracker Jack” himself. Whichever way you chose, you can make your categories as colorful as you’d like.

Any questions? Call your Music Scheduling Consultant or the Support line.

By Paul Ziino

Head to Dataset/Analysis/Turnover Analysis. Once it loads in the upper half of the screen you’ll see all your categories and a number of columns. You can add and subtract columns by right-clicking in that upper half and checking additional columns. The column we’re discussing today is “Hour Exposure.”

Hour Exposure is the percent of hours a song from that category will play in before repeating in an hour. The highest number you will see is 95.83% which indicates a song is predicted to play in all hours before repeating in one of them. The lower the percent, the fewer the hours the song will hit before repeating in an hour.

If you have a category that doesn’t play 24/7 its Hour Exposure percent will drop. If category X only plays from 6pm-6am, that eliminates 50% of the hours, so the highest score you’ll see is 45.83%. If the category is only played in 6 hours of the 24 hour broadcast day, the highest hour exposure possible will be 20.83%.

When we are using Turnover Analysis to look at predicted rotations, we’re looking to maximize the Hour Exposure, without causing stacking in the predicted play rotation. Looking at Category A we have a 45.83% hour exposure. We do see some stacking in the predicted play history.

If we adjust the slot count up and down we can see how this will change not only the Hour Exposure, but also the predicted rotation.

In this example, not only is the Hour Exposure lower, but the predicted rotation is pretty rotten, too.

Following is an example where we get that stairstep but still have a low Hour Exposure. That’s because the rotation is predicted to hit the same six hours over and over.

Add three more songs to the category and your Hour Exposure jumps to the perfect 95.83%.

As always, if you have any questions, please follow up with your MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant.

By Jesus Rodriguez

This blog on how to clone a log is for MusicMaster Verison 7 and later. If you are not currently using version 7, we invite you to go to help and check for update or contact a MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant for information on how to upgrade. However, have no fear if, for some reason out of your control you are not allowed to upgrade to version 7 by your superiors, you can still clone your logs. I must admit it just takes a few more steps to accomplish. If you are using an older version of MusicMaster, here is a blog article on how to clone.

You can easily clone a log or portion of a log by using the menu to access this option (DATASET-SCHEDULE-CLONE HOURS):

You then will select the start and end hour to copy from, and the start hour to copy to.

One side note, if there are any locked elements in the copy from or to part of this operation, the process will not continue and will indicate:

If you haven’t upgraded to version 7.0 the following may convince you to do so. Why you ask? Well thanks for asking, we have added some additional options as show in the image below.

Now in Version 7 and above there are almost endless possibilities of combinations of what you can clone or not clone. The first option is obvious and what it was since the feature was created to replace the hours with an exact copy of the hours you are cloning. Here comes the cool part: the ability to only clone specific items. Let’s say you replay a countdown show as an example that airs on Saturday morning and it airs again on Sunday afternoon. Well now you can select to only copy the Music Library Elements over should you have a different on-air personality hosting the second airing. This allows you to schedule the non-music elements on the second log specific to the second jocks needs.

The second and third options for only cloning non music and break note elements. How would that be useful? Well, what if you have a show that is voice tracked that also airs on multiple days but maybe you don’t want the same music airing around those cuts. Now you can clone just the break note, non-music library elements, or both to the rebroadcasted hours then schedule a different set of music around them. This is great for talk shows that you may rebroadcast but may want to use different bumper music than what you scheduled for the first broadcast.

Yes, that’s not all there’s more! With the two final options you can also append extra elements to the end of the hour and remove extra elements from the end of the target hour.

With these variations, you have the tools to copy your log exactly as needed.

Please call your Music Scheduling Consultant if you have any questions.

The latest service release for PRO 7 is now available with various issues resolved and many new features.  New options include the ALT-F5 option in the Schedule Editor to swap songs without the clock elements that they were scheduled in; new Schedule Editor Key Mapping options to Toggle Display to adjust your element mask; menu options to find and hide the open floating panels now also applies to Schedule Editor panels; there is a new design property available when printing or exporting logs that allows you to count the Unscheduled elements using estimated run times like you see in the Editor; the history graph printed report for play and shift history now includes the category; and, there are several new and adjusted Special History Reports including Italy SIAE 2019, GEMA\GVL and ICASA.  While still a work in progress, there is also updated Help in both Spanish (Mexican) and French.  Go to Help, Check for Updates to get this new version.

There is also a new service release for PRO 6.  This contains the Special History Report updates mentioned above.

By Malcolm Sinclair

How is your Broadcast Week?  No, we’re not talking about Numeris or PPM’s or Diary’s.  We’re talking about keeping yourself on the straight and narrow with the CRTC and your reporting.

If you allow multiple people to access your data and you do not have any security in place, sometimes it’s a good idea to go and check some critical settings inside MusicMaster.

Many stations have different conditions of licenses (COL) depending on CanCon requirements, Cat2 and Cat 3, Hit Non-Hit etc.  That said, one thing we all have in common for Canadian Radio is the Broadcast Week.

When you have a moment, open MusicMaster, go to Tools/Options and look for Broadcast Week and make sure it is set to Sunday starting at Midnight. This will make sure that any CRTC reporting you run will be accurate.  That’s for Radio only!!

If you are one of our Canadian TV users, set it to Monday at 6am.