MusicMaster Blog

by Paul Ziino

A query in MusicMaster is the equivalency of a library search. You can save queries in the database that can be used in the library as well as in the schedule editor. Today we discuss a few of the options available to you in queries. (more…)

by Aaron Taylor

So here (in no particular order) are the top five questions I am asked about MusicMaster. (more…)

What can “Packeting” songs do for you?

Packeting can be used to group songs together, which will have the effect of slowing down the rotation of the individual songs. A great example of the use of packeting might be to group the studio, acoustic, or live versions of a particular song together in a packet so they are not rotating independently. I also like to suggest to clients that they may want to consider packeting the “one hit wonders” or very tertiary songs in a category together in packets, so that you can potentially avoid music sets clustered with a seeming stack of these marginal songs. It is also a common desire to packet non music elements together, like jingles, liners, or sweepers.

The packeting utility in MusicMaster will also allow you (if desired) to “weight” a packet, so that particular cuts in the packet will play X number of times before moving onto the next song in the packet order.

You can group any number of songs (as part of the same category) into as many packets as you wish.

To access the Packet editor in MusicMaster, there are several routes. You can either:

1. Right-click on a song and go to Packet
2. Select Dataset, Library, Packets – which will open the Packet Editor window
3. Or, if you add the Packet field to your Library Maintenance grid, you can click that field for the song you wish to create or add to a packet.

Below is a view of the Packet Editor window.

PACKET EDITOR OVERVIEW

On the left hand side you see a list of all the packets in the program, showing their name and which category they are in. The drop-down box in the upper-left lets you choose which category you look at. This information is repeated in the Description and Category boxes in the center of the screen. By clicking on any packet name, the main center box will show you the songs in that packet. Other options/information available here include:

• Description – The name given to the packet. You may change it by clicking into this box.

• Category – Indicates what category the packet is contained in. If desired, you can use the drop-down box to move the packet to a different category.

• Keep Packet Together – With this box checked, if you move a song that is within a packet to another category, all songs in the packet will be moved. If this is not checked off and a song is moved, that song will be removed from the packet and sent to the category specified. The remaining songs will still be in the packet. It is important to remember if you decide to set this for the future, as we’ll get calls from time to time from clients wondering why seemingly “groups” of songs moved, when only one was targeted for a move. You forgot the song was packeted, and the “keep packet together” setting was selected!

• Packet Type – There are three types of packets: standard, diggable and weighted. Here is an explanation of each type:

A standard packet keeps track of the next song that should be considered. When the packet comes up, that song is tested. No other songs in the packet will be tested.

When a diggable packet comes up for consideration, songs in the packet will be tested up to the search depth that has been set to see if the song passes the rules tested on the category.

A weighted packet allows you to determine how many times a song in a packet plays before moving to the next song in the packet. As an example, if you have a two-song packet and you want one of the songs to play twice as much as the other, you would want to place a two in the Weight column that will be displayed when you choose this option.

CREATE A NEW PACKET 

Select Create and confirm. Name the packet in the Description field, then select ADD. This will open the standard Database Query box where you will be able to pick categories, filter and sort the list to narrow down the songs you view. When the list comes up, you can choose as many songs as you’d like. To select more than one at a time, hold down the Control key. When you have selected all the songs, click on Add. This will bring the titles into the packet creation window. When you click Close, the packeting process will complete.

Other options at the top of the screen include Delete, AutoPacket and Unpacket. While Delete and Unpacket are fairly self explanatory, the AutoPacket feature deserves a bit of explanation. This utility allows for you to select criteria that will be utilized to create a packet. You will pick the categories you want to include, the minimum number of songs there must be for the creation of a packet, the maximum number of songs in a packet, and the packet name. The standard Song Filter box is used to create the filter.

A FEW OTHER NOTES ABOUT PACKETS AND PACKETING

As mentioned above, you can add the Packet field to your Library Maintenance view. This will allow you to see the name of the packet and any daypart restrictions on it. If you move the cursor over the Packet field with your mouse, it will tell you the number of songs in the packet and the number of restricted hours for dayparts.

To see a combined history graph showing all plays of the songs in a packet, use the drop-down arrow and select Packet. If you have the packet field showing, you can click [SHIFT F6] in the field do to this as well.

Packeting will slow down the rotation of individual songs in a category. This is reflected in Analysis-Turnover.

When using a standard packet and sorting a song list by rest, the packet history will be used to calculate the rest time for each song. The rest time will be the same for all songs in the packet.

In the Schedule Editor, this means the way the list is displayed in the replacement window may show some individual song rest times that are higher than the songs around it. Make sure to pay special attention to whether packets are in use for the category you are viewing. You should be able to spot the song from the packet that is being used to calculate the rest.

If you have any questions about how to best utilize this functionality in MusicMaster for your particular situation, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with your Music Scheduling Consultant!

By Marianne Burkett

Depending on your “normal” habits of adding music to your MusicMaster library, you may not be aware of a convenient feature that is available: the CD Ripper . (more…)

By Marianne Burkett

The holidays are approaching fast, so here’s a summary of the things you need to be thinking about as you get ready to add Christmas music to your rotations. (more…)

Exactly what is “Auto Kick”?

As a review, the Auto Kick rule property is used to prevent a song from playing at the same time on consecutive days. You can adjust the windows size, which is the amount of time around a play yesterday that you would like to protect. (more…)

by Paul Ziino

When you open your Rule Tree (Dataset/Rule Tree or click the Lightning Bolt icon on your Toolbar), you open a world full of possibilities. Today we look at a couple rules found under each code within your “Attribute Field Rules”. (more…)

We get calls and emails fairly often from clients asking us how to create a specific type of report. Perhaps it’s a report that the General Manager or consultant has asked for, or maybe it’s a report you need for reporting purposes to a record label, regulatory agencies, or just internal programming department research or verification.

Our intention in this article is to give a brief “roadmap” as to where in MusicMaster you can locate many of these frequently requested reports, and a brief overview of the options available.

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Library Analysis

Need to get a quick overview of the number of “5” tempo songs in your active categories, or the percentage of “Pop” coded songs you have in a selected category?

Use the Library Analysis feature. Here’s how to do it:

Open Library Maintenance and click into the field you wish to analyze. Right-click on the field and select Library Analysis. A box will pop up with the Analysis. For instance, if you wanted to review the gender codes in your data, you could right-click on that field and after selecting Library Analysis, a data box will appear.

The drop-down box on the left-hand side of the display allows you to pick a different field from the one you are currently looking at. A drop-down on the right-side allows you to determine the way the information is displayed. The number of unique values for the field currently being viewed will be listed at the bottom of the box.

Depending upon what field you are in, you may not get the option for Individual Codes and Code Groups. For instance, this option is not available when analyzing the Artist field. The first option in the drop-down box is List Statistics. This can be useful to determine how many songs are included, are the songs from music or non-music categories, what is the total running time of the songs included on the list, and what is the average run time of the songs on the list.

If you would like a printed report of the analysis, you can use the toolbar option to do so or if you’d like to copy this list to a spreadsheet, select the copy option.

We get calls/emails on a regular basis from clients who report they are getting more unscheduled positions than they’d like. Perhaps they’ve just updated the library, changed format clocks (or programming formats completely), have created the database from scratch, or (frequently) they’ve “inherited” the database from a PD or MD that is no longer part of the organization. Here is a checklist of sorts to help you attempt to figure out why you are getting these unscheduled positions and what you may be able to do to reduce their numbers.

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