MusicMaster Blog

Welcome to MusicMaster

GDA – Asse, Belgium; Triple A – Suffolk Park, Australia; Radio Total – Madrid, Spain; Radio Dash – Hollywood, CA; CFLY-FM  98.3, CKLC-FM 98.9 – Kingston, ON; CFBT-FM  94.5, CHQM-FM 103.5 – Vancouver, BC; CJPT-FM 103.7, CFJR-FM 104.9 – Brockville, ON;
WSJM, ROCK 107 WIRX, WYTZ 97.5 Y-Country, SuperHits 103.7 COSY-FM, 98.3 The Coast – Benton Harbor, MI;
Talk 820 WWLZ Horseheads, 100.9 The Wolf, Wingz 104.9, Wink 106.1 – Elmira, NY; The Huddle 1450 WHDL, 95.7 The Pig – Olean, NY;
Heritage Country Station 93.3 WBTU, Classic Rock WXKE 96.3, Hot 107.9 WJFX – Fort Wayne, IN;

Facebook Shout Out Contest

Radio stations have always run contests and given away prizes to lucky listeners. But who runs a contest for the radio stations? We do, with the MusicMaster Facebook Shout-Out challenge!

It’s simple and fun, and a great way to show off your awesome talents and accomplishments to thousands of music programmers all around the world. Just post a story about your station on the MusicMaster Facebook page along with a picture or video. Each month, we will select the one with the most Likes as the winner! The prizes vary from month-to-month, but there will always be something cool and unique.

Last month’s winner of a free copy of MusicMaster Personal Edition worth $295 was Andrew Charles Wilcox, the Program Director/Drive Home Host of 100.5 Cruz FM in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Congratulations Andrew, and thank you for being a loyal MusicMaster user!

This month we’re giving away a MusicMaster-branded gym bag that’s nice enough to show off anywhere you go. So get MusicMaster on your Speed Dial and be ready for your chance to win!

BroadcastAsia 2014

From June 17th to the 21st, MusicMaster Version 5 could be seen and tested at the BroadcastAsia Convention in Singapore. Again it was a huge show over 5 floors at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel (with the best Pool in Singapore!).

We had a great time at the booth of AVC, our reseller for Australia, New Zealand and India. Together with Greg Altena, Elliiot Stechman, Jesus Mantoo of AVC as well as Raoul Wedel of Wedel Software, Jim Hammond of Wide Orbit, and Cesco van Gool of Stirlitz Media, we had a great and a very busy time. We met old and new clients from all over Asia and the Pacific Rim, which was fantastic! We will be back there in 2015!

Rainer checking if the logo is placed right.

Before a show there are always discussions on how to set the booth up.

The guys from AVC are ready to go.

We had a great looking booth with very comfy chairs.

Senior Management Conference in Manila

Last month, Rainer Eichhorn (ON AIR DIGITAL), Paul Amos (Xtra research), and Cesco van Gool (Stirlitz Media) were invited to host the first Senior Management Conference in Manila.

On each of the two days there were two to three management personalities of up to 15 stations in the audience who would give a 360 degree view on programming a radio station. Starting with the right research methods, going through talent coaching, music programming, and scheduling to the end of the chain, which was the monitoring and evaluation of the work accomplished. The guys had a great time with all the radio professionals from all over the Philippines. The organizer of that outstanding meeting was Elizabeth Aguilar, who is representing MusicMaster in the Philippines.

We want to thank her and all the participants in the Philippines for making this conference a great experience for us. We are looking forward to the next conference which is already in the planning.

MusicMaster and Cox Media Group

MusicMaster’s Marianne Burkett joined Jason Singleterry from Wide Orbit to meet with Cox Media Group’s Florida engineers to go through the process of switching from Maestro to Wide Orbit.

MusicMaster European Get Together Tour – Part 2Recap

This past June we’ve finished the second leg of the MusicMaster Get Together Tour in Europe. We visited Cologne, Munich, Vienna, Zurich, Milano and Amsterdam meeting many, many friends and stations. It was pure fun with lots of laughing, talking and, of course, eating.

The European MusicMaster Get Together Tour 2014 – By Numbers and Names

During May 22 through June 10:

• We drove, flew, walked and went by train approx. 8414 Km/5228 Miles.
• We visited 11 Cities in 8 Countries.
• We met 230 People from over 99 Stations, Companies and Consultants.
• Joe Knapp and Melanie Ross had conversations in Dutch, French, German, Swiss German, Spanish and Italian. Wow!

We are very thankful for having met our friends from:

105’5 Spreeradio; 3Plus TV; 40TV; 40 Principales; 88.6 Der Musiksender; 94,3 RS2; 95.5 Charivari München; Antenne Bayern; Antenne Salzburg; Arabella Wien; Axel Technology; Bayerischer Rundfunk; BB Radio; Radio Teddy; Broadcast & Production (Newbay Media); Cadena 100; Cadena Dial; Catalunya Ràdio; Chello Multicanal; Class Editori; David Systems; Deutschlandfunk; Digitalradio; Domradio; Drechtstad Fm;  Emotion Experience; Europa Fm;  Flaix Fm; Flaix Bac; Fip Radio France; Fm Brussel; Grey Juice Lab; Groot Nieuws Radio; Gute Laune TV; Ilr  Digital Radio; Kiraka; Kiss Fm Madrid; Kiss TV Madrid; Kisskiss Network; Lackner Mediasystems; Life Radio; M80; Maxima Fm; Maxmedia Medienconsulting; MDR Sputnik; MTV Network; MTV Spain; Nostalgie; Notice Branded Media; NPO; Radio Ö3;  Omroep Flevoland; Optimaal Fm; Pinguin Radio; Radi Inblu; Radio 1 Zurich; Radio 10; Radio 538; Radio 8Fm & Puur Nl; Radio Access; Radio Arabella Radio B2; Radio Deejay; Sky Music Channels; Radio Fantasy; Radio Fm1; Radio Fm4; Radio Italia; Radio Max; Radio NRW; Radio Pilatus; Radio Research Europe; Radio Service Berlin; Radio Stephansdom; Radio Success Radio; Sunshine Radio; Top Radio; Radio Veronica; Radio X; Radio105; Radio24; Radiocorp 100% Nl; RBB; Regiocast; Rock Antenne; RTBF; RTL 102.5; RTL Berlin; RTL France; RTS – La Première; SRF; The Radio Group; WDR 1Live; WDR 2; WDR 3; WDR Funkhaus Europa; VRT.

We’d also like to thank our partners from ON AIR, Swiss Media Partners, Know Media, BVMedia and Top of Mind who did a wonderful job in organizing the exciting extravaganza.

Join ON AIR’s Team in Germany

ON AIR, as MusicMaster’s worldwide distributor, is looking for an additional Project Manager (m/f) with a focus on engineering and operations. As a digital native with a broadcasting background, you have the ability to juggle with scripting, programming, server and network administration in order to provide innovative and pragmatic solutions; as a project manager you always have an eye on the needs of our customers all with the necessary care in organization and documentation. Your tasks will range from handling MusicMaster support requests to complete planning and controlling of projects to rollout of MusicMaster and corresponding services.

More details here. Send your application today!

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.

• August 6-7: Texas Association of Broadcasters Convention & Tradeshow – Austin, TX
• September 9-11: PRPD Public Radio Programming 2014 Conference – Portland, OR
• September 10-12: 2014 Radio Show – Indianapolis, IN
• September 11-16: IBC2014 – Amsterdam, Netherlands
• September 25-28: Central Canada Broadcast Engineers Conference – Barrie, Ontario
• October 15-17: Broadcast India Show 2014 – Mumbai, India
• October 21-23: Wisconsin Broadcasters Clinic – Madison, WI
• October 26-28: WABE Convention – Edmonton, Alberta

Quick Tip: Special Sets on the Fly

You may do special sets (more than one song by the same artist) on a special day, like Two for Tuesday or Triple Play Thursday, but have you ever wanted to have that mini concert at random times?  In those situations, changing your clocks isn’t practical.  You can still make that special set quickly in the Editor.  MusicMaster has two different keystroke combinations that will let you make your special sets:

• CTL+2 – Match field value on previous song
• CTL+SHIFT+2 – Match field value on next song

If you’re trying to play multiple songs by the same artist, put your cursor in the Artist field.  Then, depending upon where you the pointer is, these combinations will match the song before or after the pointer to give you multiple songs by the same Artist.

Keep in mind, you may need to adjust the categories you look in or the test results flag so you can see these songs since they’ll violate your artist separation rules.

Recent Feature Articles From the MusicMaster Blog

The Biggest Loser
By Marianne Burkett

I just spent about 2 hours with a client that had reached the end of his tolerance rope in regard to scheduling music.  He’s been working in the software for a few years – but rarely visited the rule tree, or did any kind of library analysis.  He recently inherited a new format to program and was spending over an hour a day laying down categories and ensuring the flow was correct for each 24 hour period of music. (Read more.)

Dayparting by Partial Hours
By Paul Ziino

Dayparting is used to prevent a song from playing during a specific time.  To access Dayparting on a song, add the Dayparting field to your song card or grid view.  Now double-click in the field to open the Daypart Restrictions box.  Here you’ll see the 168 hours of the week.  To restrict a song from playing in a given hour, type a letter X in that hour’s box.  You can also click and drag across a number of boxes to select a group of hours, then type X and all those hours will be restricted.  Use the space bar on your keyboard to remove the X from an hour or group of hours, thus removing the restriction. (Read more.)

Music Master of the Month

Alero Eghagha
Head of Music
Cool FM, Wazobia FM, Nigeria Info
Lagos, Nigeria

“We run three networks broadcasting mostly nationwide. Our brands Cool FM, Wazobia FM, and Nigeria Info offer a straight CHR format, local African music and a News/Talk/Sports format mixed with some smooth Jazz. We have used the MusicMaster for over a decade and continue to do so. It is a sophisticated software. I’m excited about the possibilities it holds for the future as a product and as a user of the software.

“I like the neat tricks it has that make scheduling easy, like when you are searching for a song after you have scheduled a log–you just hit or use the direct field entry with no need to go to the library. The scalable Rule Tree makes it easy for me to try out new rules without getting too many unscheduled positions. You can always go back to undo the rules and try again till you get it right.”