MusicMaster Blog

Welcome to MusicMaster

RADIO STUDIO 5 – Atessa, Italy; 5+ TV – Zurich, Switzerland; NRJ Finland Oy, Radio Nostalgia Finland – Helsinki, Finland;
WMED-FM, WMEA-FM, WMEH-FM, WMEW-FM, WMEM-FM, WMEF-FM – Lewiston, ME; KUCB-FM – Unalaska, AK; CIXX-FM – London, ON; WEAA-FM – Baltimore, MD

PRPD Recap

Jill Sorenson and Aaron Taylor visited the great city of Portland, Oregon for the annual Public Radio Program Directors (PRPD) Conference at the beginning of September.  They had an opportunity to visit with many clients discussing how MusicMaster makes their scheduling a breeze.  They still squeezed in time to wander the city block known as Powell’s Bookstore and drool over Voodoo Dougnuts.  Really, click on the link if you’ve never seen a Voodoo doughnut!  Kudos to host organization Oregon Public Radio (a MusicMaster user) for their hospitality.  We look forward to visiting Pittsburgh where the 2015 conference will be held.  Until then, a few photos of our MusicMaster friends:

1 – Schnitzer Theatre
2 – The PRPD opened with the March Forth Marching Band
3 – Rik Malone (KFDC), Aaron Taylor, Bill Lueth (KUSC and PRPD Board Member)
4 – Aaron Taylor and  Cheryl Dring (WDPR)
5 – Matt Abramovitz (WNYC) and Jill Sorenson
6 – Aaron Taylor and Chris Wienk (WMHT)
7 – Suzanne Bona (Sunday Baroque) and Jill Sorenson

NAB Radio Show

Three days of MusicMaster education, entertainment and enlightenment enhanced the fall Radio Show at the Indiana Convention Center and Downtown Indy Marriott in the middle of September.

MusicMaster happily consorted with automation partners ENCO, OMT and Wide Orbit on the exhibit hall trade floor, and hosted a festive hospitality evening for clients and chums.

MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant Jerry Butler (below left) demonstrates Optimum Goal Scheduling to a potential radio programming partner.

MusicMaster Founder and President, Joe Knapp (below right) visits the ENCO booth and meets a fellow music enthusiast, Jerry Phillips (below left). Jerry is the owner of Big River Broadcasting in Florence, Alabama, and father to the lovely Halley-Phillips Yeager of Big River. Oh, and he’s also son of legendary Sun Records Founder Sam Phillips.

A stormy summer night in Indy couldn’t keep the revelers away from the jammed MusicMaster hospitality suite at the Downtown Indianapolis Marriott. The highlight was sharing some time with radio legend Scott Shannon of CBS-FM and Scott Shannon’s True Oldies (below center). Radio’s best friend Art Vuolo (below far right) had created a video montage of Scott’s long radio history.

This amazing moment, captured by MusicMaster VP/Media Laurie Knapp, includes (left to right) Sean Ross of Ross On Radio, Steve Resnik of RAMP, Shannon, MusicMaster Founder Joe Knapp, and Art Vuolo.

Heather Boethin, Local Sales Manager and Digital Resource Sales Manager of Cox Media, Tulsa (below left) shares a laugh with Scott Shannon of CBS-FM (below right).

Momentum – Christian Music Broadcasters

Christian music programmers, speakers and artists from around the world gathered in Central Florida’s “City Beautiful” for 3 solid days of connecting God’s Word with God’s people in early September in Orlando, Florida.

MusicMaster’s Marianne Burkett, Jerry Butler and Shane Finch joined hundreds of participants eager to engage the culture with positive music and a message of hope.

On Friday, September 5, MusicMaster Sales and Support Director Shane Finch (below) presented “The Artistry and Science of Music Scheduling” with Christian’s cutting edge music programmers.

“Momentum” presents many opportunities to socialize with old friends and MusicMaster clients. Pictured below left to right are MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant Jerry Butler, Actor and VSR Record Executive Terry Silverthorn, MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant Marianne Burkett, JOY-FM General Manager Jeff MacFarlane, MusicMaster Sales Director Shane Finch.

Christian music superstar David Crowder (below center) shares a “Momentum” moment with MusicMaster’s Shane Finch (below left) and wife Jana Finch (below right).

MusicMaster @ IBC in Amsterdam

IBC, the largest multimedia show in Europe, was held between September 12-17. MusicMaster could be seen at the different stands of our partners like Enco, Scisys, David Systems, AVC and Netia. Kevin Hopkins, Andreas Wissmeyer and Rainer Eichhorn of ON AIR Digital were there to show MusicMaster and meet a lot of  our existing clients. Also Jean Claude Frick, Mathieu Habegger and Michael Buholzer of Swiss Media Partners were also there to help on the MusicMaster side.

Like every year, it was a great event and we want to thank all our users and partners who helped and came to see us, shake hands and discuss the future of our industry. It was a pleasure! See y’all next year!

The lovely Marion Grabler of Bremmedia and Rainer Eichhorn at the David Systems booth

Rainer Eichhorn and Gene Novacek of Enco are happy about the deep integration with MusicMaster

The guys are all right: Michael Buholzer, Jean Claude Frick, Rainer Eichhorn, Greg Podsiadlo, Mathieu Habegger and Andi Wissmeyer at the end of a long day on the convention floor

The great looking MusicMaster direct search window inside the Netia system. This gives users perfect song replacement access with full Rule functionality from within the the play out software. Very cool!

MusicMaster in Boston

Paul Ziino was on site at WCRB and WGBH in Boston for two days of training and work with Jon Frank and Rani Schloss.  In addition to learning a bunch of MusicMaster tricks they also completed the full integration of MusicMaster with their Audio Vault.   Many happy people rejoiced during the staff meeting prior to Paul’s departure.

Below we see Rani, Jon, and Paul testing out the MusicMaster integration with Audio Vault.

September Genius Days

On September 15th the MusicMaster crew went on a three day trip visiting customers and hosting Genius Days.  President/CEO Joe Knapp, Marketing Director Melanie Ross, MusicMaster Support Coordinator Paul Ziino, and the Unconsultant Keith Hill visited with the team at Entercom-Milwaukee on September 15th.  They discussed advanced scheduling concepts with Brian Kelly, Jojo Martinez, Leigh McNabb, and other members of the team at WXSS and WMYX as well as David Moore from Entercom-Madison.

On the 16th it was a day-long visit with Midwest Communications in Green Bay, WI.  Program and Music Directors from every Midwest Communications market were on-hand for the extensive Q&A session.  We met with Duke Wright, Jeff McCarthy, Corey Carter, Dan Stone, Jason Hillery, Mark Fleischer, Craig Holgate, Scott Hanson, PJ Lacey, Derek Moran, Greg Atoms, Tom Gjerdrum, Andy Harris, Cade, Shawn Powers, Jeff Frieders, Jay Morris, Ken Lanphear, Shane Cox, Randy Chambers, Otis Day, Amber Lee, Doc Murphy, Steve Cannon, Mojo, Jonathan Hensler, JT, Karla Cantrell, Barbara Bridges, Ron Allen, Hurricane Shane, and Rusty James.  The day ended with a cocktail party and taco bar for all!

And September 18th the crew stopped in at Minnesota Public Radio to meet with folks from Classical 24, KSJN, and The Current including Doug Rowe, Rex Levang, David Safar, Jeff Esworthy, Lindsay Kimball, Suzanne Schaffer, and Steve Nelson.  Lots of good questions came up which stimulated several hours of discussion.  We learned a lot about how MPR does what they do and made some suggestions for how to improve it as well as some ideas on how to enhance MusicMaster.

After those three sessions the MusicMaster team went home with pages of notes and tons of new ideas.  Look for those and many other new features in upcoming service releases and versions of MusicMaster!

Brian Kelly, Paul Ziino and Joe Knapp at Entercom Genius Days.

Group shot at Entercom

Very interested in what Joe Knapp is saying

Keith Hill, Jeff McCarthy, Midwest Communications, Duke Wright, Midwest Communications and Joe Knapp, MusicMaster

Genius Day Group from Midwest Communications

Genius group at Midwest Communications listening to Joe Knapp, MusicMaster

Brian Kelly is a Genius MusicMaster User with Joe Knapp, MusicMaster

Minnesota Public Radio

Central Canada Broadcast Engineers

MusicMaster joined hundreds of enthusiastic professionals at the 63rd Annual Central Canadian Broadcast Engineers Career Development Conference, September 25 – 28 in Barrie, Ontario.

MusicMaster VP/CTO Scott Wirt shared the latest on the MusicMaster menu of scheduling
options. Our team joined Wide Orbit for two nights of spirited conversation and learning in our hospitality suite.

MusicMaster Canadian representative Malcolm Sinclair of Sinclair Media (pictured center) and MusicMaster Sales Coordinator Drew Bennett (pictured right) congratulate Bell Media/Toronto Engineer Wally Lennox (pictured left) on his Lifetime Achievement Award.

Friends and broadcast colleagues join the MusicMaster staff for casual conversation in our Wide Orbit hospitality suite.

MusicMaster Sales Coordinator (pictured right) provides personal consultation to a CCBE member.

Focus on Special Sets

You know October means harvest festivals and Halloween. You may even know it’s National Book Month. At MusicMaster, though, it’s Special Sets month. Check out our blog each Monday in October for a four-part series on Special Sets written by Paul Ziino. You’ll learn how to schedule a special set to make a two-fer, how to create and use kickoff categories, how to use special sets to auto-schedule artist and title IDS and how to schedule special sets based upon other special set positions. By the end of the month, you’ll be scaring the competition with what you can do in MusicMaster!

Sean Ross on MusicMaster

AC and Classic Hits

There was no intention to “push poll” my dentist. But I was seeing him for the second time in a few weeks, and the same song was playing on AC WLTW (Lite FM) New York, Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse.” So I asked, “What do you think about this song on Lite FM?”

“What do you mean?”

I tried to express it as neutrally as possible. “It’s not the kind of song they used to play.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said. (Read more.)

 Recognizing, Utilizing, And Escaping History

They were subtle, but when the early ‘70s airchecks of Dan Mason and Bob Pittman were played from the stage at Radio Show 2014 in Indianapolis earlier this month, you could hear differences in their influences. (Read more.)

Music Master of the Month

Peter Meerveld
Music Director
Radio Veronica
Netherlands

“Radio Veronica has worked with MusicMaster after a transition from RCS Selector in 2012. We were the first nationwide radio station in the Netherlands that used MusicMaster and we have no regrets. Instead of all kinds of workarounds that were necessary in Selector, MusicMaster can be completely customized to our needs. Previously, in the rule-tree, you could only give ‘penalty points’ to songs, so not always the best song was selected. The Optimum Goals in MusicMaster fixes that: songs can also have pluses. And we get better results: the distribution of the songs is better and the hard-to-schedule tracks now get the attention they deserve. Every day working with MusicMaster is a celebration. I always try to make the playlists even better and MusicMaster really helps in doing that!”

Quick Tip: Rule Group Clock Restrictions

Rule Groups allow you to configure rules by certain criteria.  Options include when the Rule Group is available for testing, dayparting and even specific songs or categories.  Did you know you can also have a Rule Group apply to specific clocks?  This can be quite handy for special shows to have a set of rules applied only when the clocks are used.  The Clock Restrictions option allows you to specify the individual clocks that will use the rules included in the Rule Group.  Of course, MusicMaster is so flexible, we’ll also give you an option to invert that meaning the clocks listed would not be tested. Either way, this option allows you to be very specific about when a Rule Group is applied.

Recent Feature Articles From the MusicMaster Blog

The Consultant Asks… Why MusicMaster?
By Marianne Burkett

I have many clients who also happen to be programming consultants… and the times, they are a changing. Now that MusicMaster is thoroughly saturating the Music Scheduling world – many consultants want to know what the advantages are and what are the differences between MusicMaster and the other Music schedulers on the market.

Just a few examples of major advantages of working with MusicMaster as a consultant. (Read more.)

Making Layout Changes in MusicMaster
By Drew Bennett

One of the most common phone calls we get is how to change a layout. Many times, our customers have been so conditioned to accept the layout they are given in a music scheduler like DOS or other Windows-based software that some of them don’t even know they have the choice of what fields to see or not see on the screen! (Read more.)

Industry Event Calendar

There are industry events and conventions every month around the world. We always appreciate meeting our customers and finding out how MusicMaster is working for them. If you’re planning on attending any of these events, let us know. We’d love to meet with you if possible.

• October 15-17: Broadcast India Show 2014 – Mumbai, India
• October 16-17: Alaska Broadcasters Association – Anchorage, AK
• October 21-23: Wisconsin Broadcasters Clinic – Madison, WI
• October 26-28: WABE Convention – Edmonton, Alberta

Tell us your MusicMaster story.