MusicMaster Blog

By Dave Tyler

Let’s face it, radio stations have two very different departments:  Sales and Programming. General Managers and Owners are famous for believing that the Sales Department makes the money and the Programming Department spends it. While there is certainly some fundamental truth to it the real fact is great programming will make your sales team better and everyone will make more money!

MusicMaster can easily pay for itself many times over by using one simple piece of programming, the Themed Weekend! When PDs and MDs hear Themed weekend they immediately try to schedule a dentists appointed so life will be less painful but the fact is MusicMaster makes Themed Weekends a piece of cake.  Imagine going to your GM or GSM and saying “I have a way we get a bunch of new money every week!”.  After making sure you haven’t been drinking the good stuff you explain that each weekend (perhaps over the Summer or all year long) you are going to present themed weekends on the air and they can either sell one title sponsor or multiple sponsors.  They’re going to love you.  Here’s how it works.

I like taking my weekend clock(s) and then adding in a “Saved List” position wherever I want a “Themed” song to play and I prefer the setting for “Use Session List”.  I will explain why below.

You can add these positions wherever you want one of your themed songs to play in the hour.  This might be just after the top and bottom of the hour IDs or perhaps out of stopsets after the sponsors imaging. Once you choose the Saved List position in your clock, the dialog box will pop up and give you a chance to choose some options. As previously mentioned I prefer the “Use Session List” options because then I can make my weekend clocks once and use them for whatever Theme I want without having to change the clocks each week. Once you have these positions made and saved in your clocks you need to create those “Saved Lists”. In my example I am suing a Classic Rock database so I am going to go to Dataset/Library/Song List Editor.

This will pop up the Song List Editor and allow you to search for specific kinds of songs based on your criteria. In my example I am going to click Library Search and in the Query I am going to search for songs that have the word “Rock” in the Title. You can base you searches on Attributes like Mood or Energy too or Artists, etc.  If you can search for what you want in your data, you can make a Song List.

When I click OK I get a list of all of the songs with the word “Rock”! Awesome! Now I generally click the Add All Songs icon but the icon next to it will add just unique titles so in the event you have duplicate titles you will only get one of them. The danger there of course is you may have 2 different songs with the same title (example: You & Me by Alice Cooper and You & Me by Lifehouse). Now that those songs have been added you can look them over and remove any you do not want. You can also drag them around to arrange them manually or click the “Arrange Songs” icon to shuffle based on your preferences.

Once you are happy with the list and its schedule order give it a Title and click the Save icon because now it is time to schedule.

Open your Automatic Scheduler and select your weekend dates. Using the dropdown at the bottom of the editor select the session list you want. In my example I want use the one we just created called “Rock Songs”. Click OK and like MusicMaster magic you have scheduled a themed weekend.

Remember you can create lists based on all sorts of different things. You could Title themed weekends like I did here (Other title weekends could be songs with Highway or Driving or Summer or Hot in the Title) or you can create lists based on attribute codes you use on songs for British Invasion weekends or American Guitar Rock. Country stations can do Beer Drinkin’, Bro Country, Huntin’ n Fishin’ and Lost Love weekends if their songs are coded as such. It is fun to make the lists.  When you schedule each weekend, just pick a different list and start counting the cash being thrown at you by sponsors.  Heck a Sales person might even be so happy they’ll buy you lunch…ok…don’t count on that one!

Reach out to your Music Scheduling Consultant if you have any questions about the setup.