MusicMaster Blog

By Marianne Burkett

Today I’d like to dive into something new in Version 7, Song Merge.  What exactly is it?

Let’s say you identify a few duplicate songs in your station.  You can A: delete one of them; or, B: Merge the two or more duplicate songs into one; or, C: hoard all your duplicates!!   We don’t recommend A because you’ll likely lose information, like play history.  We recommend B using the new feature in Version 7, Song Merge.  The benefit of this feature is that it looks in many places to consolidate information.  That means you’ll have all your play history and trivia combined.  Things like forced instances in a clock, listings in a song list and play/library counters are all updated.  Song Merge combines all of that while deleting the duplicates.  Nothing is lost and you’ll end up with one song card that combines all the important information you want.

The first thing you’ll do is select all the duplicate songs.  Right click on the pointer column (blue arrow in the left column) and select the songs.  Right-click to open the context menu and select “Merge” then pick Selected Songs.  There are other options here and depending on how you made your list, you can pick the right one.

Here’s a capture of three different instances of Gerry Rafferty “Baker Street”.  The first column shows the song as played in its original category followed by two other instances.  Notice each instance has a different WO Number.  One new instance is longer and the other is a radio edit.  Okay, now decision time!  I think I’ll start using the radio edit rather than the full six-minute version.   How to do this?  Click on the fields you’d like to retain.  The boxes will turn blue. Be sure you scroll all the way down the list to see all the fields.

After I click OK I’m keeping/merging the song in the first column (note Save as the column header), adding any play history, trivia from the songs on the right (note Delete as the column header) and replacing the data I want to replace with the information in the blue boxes.  I can click any cell to make it blue so its information is saved.

Click OK and you’ll get a verification pop up:

Once I’ve completed the operation, the duplicates disappear and only one “Baker Street”, the radio edit, will be in my library.

If you have a reason to keep your duplicates, be sure you have something in place to help you at least combine the histories, like putting a Title Keyword in place or a History Link.

As always, if you have any questions about any feature in MusicMaster, please contact your Music Scheduling Consultant.