MusicMaster Blog

by Paul Ziino

Last week Marianne Burkett went over some of the things to consider when scheduling and looking at your rotations. Today, I’ll take a deeper dive into how you can use AutoBurn to assist with your rotations.

Imagine having perfect rotations all the time. Five songs in a category that is called for once per hour every hour of the broadcast week. You’d expect a nice rotation that looks like this.

But what happens if some hours don’t call for that category?

What can you do to fix this? The answer is Auto-Burn. In the Turnover Analysis grid, click the music note with the flame next to it.

This will open up the Auto-Burn editor which is a grid representing the 168 hours of the week. In each of those squares you can enter the number of songs you’d like to automatically burn when that hour is scheduled.

When the math works like five songs in a category playing one per hour, you can start by burning the number of missing plays in those hours where the category is not called for. This will help balance out the rotation. In our example we aren’t playing this A category in weekday morning drive nor on Saturday evenings. So we’ll burn one song in each of those hours.

When we click OK the AutoBurn screen will close and the Turnover Analysis will refresh showing you the new result of your AutoBurn adjustment.

We can still see there are hours where A is not called for, represented by the dashes in the grid. And we can see that despite the category not being used in those dashed hours, the rotation pattern is consistent.

Let’s take another stab at this. Same category of five songs. But some hours play two and others play one and a few have zero A category songs. We can see what hours contain plays of the category by clicking the music note for Format Clock Category Usage.

And it looks like this.

With no AutoBurn set up, we have a natural rotation that looks like this.

How do we fix this? This is where the AutoBurn Spreadsheet comes in handy. Click the AutoBurn icon, then check the box to “Display Burn Spreadsheet.” Note, the Burn Spreadsheet only works in categories with fewer than 26 songs, where AutoKick is not used, and Dayparting rules are not implemented.

When we look at this spreadsheet we are seeing where all the songs in the category are expected to plot based on the clock calls and number of songs in the category. In the upper left corner above 12A and to the left of the first day of the week is the letter A. Click here and it becomes a pulldown representing each song in the category. ABCDE for five songs in the category.

When you switch letters in that pulldown you will highlight the chosen letter in the grid. It defaults to the first song, A, in the category. In a perfect world we want to make sure we don’t repeat a song in the same hour during the week until all the others have plotted. Looking at the Midnight hour in the above graphic we see Mon plays the A, Tue is C, Wed is E, Thu is B, Fri is D, then A is repeated on Sat. So we’ve covered the entire list of songs in the Midnight hour. That’s great. We can also see at a quick glance that during the overnight hours A never plays in the same hour two days in a row. Nor does B, C, D, or E. Perfect overnight rotations.

Let’s scroll down later in the day and we’ll see Mon-Fri we have no song playing in the same hour in back to back days. That’s excellent!

But what we do see are songs stacking up between Fri/Sat, and between Sat/Sun. We’ll need to fix this. Let’s start by looking Friday to Saturday. We see in the 2pm hour the E stacks, and A stacks in the 3pm hour. That means we’ll want to AutoBurn in those hours to fix this rotation problem. Let’s burn two songs in the Sat 2pm hour to move the D and E out of that hour.

Now 2p and 3pm are ok, but we see the C playing in 5pm on Fri and Sat, and the E at 6pm both days. We’ll need to burn three more at 5pm on Sat to fix this.

So now we’ve fixed the problem of stacking between Friday and Saturday. But we have a new problem! Songs E and A are playing in back to back hours now at 4p and 5p on Saturday. What can we do to fix that problem? We’ll have to stagger our 3 burns so they don’t all happen at the same time. If instead we burn one song at 3p and two at 4p we get the desired result. No stacking between Fri and Sat, and no songs playing in back to back hours.

Now we have to clean up the stacking between Sat and Sun. Everything is looking okay until we get to Noon on Sun where we have song A stacking up, then B stacks in 1p, D in 3p, A again in 5p and B in 6p. AutoBurn to the rescue!

We’ll need to burn two songs at Noon on Sun to prevent stacking between Sat and Sun.

Click OK and MusicMaster will save those changes made to the AutoBurn spreadsheet and update your Turnover Analysis display.

Look at the bottom row of totals. Over two weeks the song is spread out pretty well all things considered. It doesn’t get many spins in the morning drive show since it’s only eligible to play there on weekends. We play two per hour during the week at Noon so the count is a little higher there. If we look at the total column on the right things are well balanced there.

AutoBurn can’t fix everything, but it can fix a lot of things. Just keep in mind when using AutoBurn that if your clocks change or your category count changes, your AutoBurns will likely need to change as well.

Need help with your rotations? Maybe you want to see if AutoBurn can help? Call your MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant. We’re happy to assist!

Are you “Hand Scheduling?”

Marianne Burkett

I speak with Programmers and Music Directors from around the US and Canada daily and some really feel like they must “hand schedule” their currents so they will lay down properly with perfect rotations. If this is you, there is an incredibly good chance you can schedule with the Automatic Scheduler, save yourself an enormous amount of time and get the same results.

Some have been conditioned to do hand scheduling because someone told them they “must” hand schedule to have good rotations. Some feel it’s better to hand schedule. More power to them for their firm convictions, but in today’s world, there are fewer bodies doing the work and less time to do it.

If you are hand scheduling and you are interested in trying to use the auto scheduler, the first thing you should do in Musicmaster is launch your Turnover Analysis icon for an honest evaluation of your natural turnovers. (Blue arrows in a circle).

Once Turnover Analysis launches you will see numerical information on the top side of the screen. It gives you actual data like average per hour, short, long, and average turnover times. The numbers are especially useful in determining “approximately” how long it takes to cycle through the categories.

The lower screen represents your “projected turnovers” based on a 1 search depth. Obviously… the patterns you see from category to category will vary depending on category size and clock calls per hour.

Consistency of your clock calls for any category is the fastest way to achieve what we call “perfect rotations”.

When I look at this category in my database, I know immediately I can scheduling using a 1 search depth and allow it to schedule without any rules at all. This is called my “Priority Category” because it will be the foundation that I build the remainder of the scheduled logs on. When teaching clients how to utilize these tools in the software, I use a lot of analogies like this: Building a log is much like building a house, you start with the foundation. The foundation is the first category that schedules. All the other categories are your brick and mortar.

As far as clock calls are concerned there is a very quick way to see how many “calls” you have during the week. Above the graph are a series of small icons. Click on the blue note.

There are 168 hours in the week and each hour has a 2 in it. I have 2 Powers in every hour.

For demonstration purposes I’m showing you the “ideal”. The no-fail way to perfect rotations. If I had random numbers per hour, or staggered the numbers, my projected turnovers would look pretty messy.

The result of uneven clock calls makes perfect rotations difficult. When reviewing somebody’s format, I take a look at projected turnovers and know, the clock calls are not consistent if I see a funky pattern like I do here:

If you don’t have time to hand schedule, I’d recommend you take a look at your clock calls. Are there wild swings from hour to hour? Ask yourself why. It may not be intentional and in about 95% of the cases I see, clients are unaware of mistakes made in the clocks themselves.

The other day I spoke with someone who said his consultant said the clocks should be different. Yes, perhaps the order in which the categories plot but probably not necessarily the calls per hour per category. There are other tools in Turnover Analysis like Auto Burn (blue note with fire) that can help you plot your priority category. There is a calculator icon that can help you plan what to do with your clocks depending on the outcome you’re seeking.

Come back next week for Paul Ziino’s article with an in-depth dive into Autoburn and how you can use it to assist with your rotations.

In the meantime, if you have any questions or need help, please contact your Music Scheduling Consultant at MusicMaster. We can help make the most of your time spent creating logs!

The Duplicate Dilemma

By Dave Tyler

As a Program Director we all have a lot of responsibilities. If scheduling music was the only thing you had to do then you would know every part of the program and be able to spend extensive amounts of time fine tuning every aspect and function in MusicMaster. The reality of it is you have a stack of production to cut, remotes to get scheduled or do, an air shift that isn’t going to do itself and a GM waiting on your next promotion to sell. You are busy. In the hustle of it all mistakes happen or polishing the sound ends up waiting until next time. One common issue that can get away from you is duplicates in your database. Having duplicates can cause all kinds of frustration long term including inaccurate histories.

Did you know that when you add a new item to your MusicMaster database, whether a liner or a song, that MusicMaster assigns it a “Song ID”? This is an “under the hood” number given to an item so MusicMaster can track it in your data. If you have two copies of the song, they will have different Song IDs. You’ll see how that can come into play with these examples.

I know some PD/MDs initially add songs, either manually or via Nexus, to a “New” category as a holding area before moving to the appropriate category for scheduling. I recently ran into a couple who would then make a copy of the song and move that copy to the category for scheduling. That’s two different Song IDs with the one in the “New” category having the lower number since it was added first. The thinking was that this allows the song to schedule while in their “New” category they maintain their entire library in one place. Sounds reasonable and in the end is fine if song play history is not important to you. These Programmers recently started reconciling their logs and found a problem: songs they know played because they were in their Powers were not showing any plays when they would open their History Graph. What went wrong?

Since they are playing a copy, all the histories are assigned to the original song, the one with the lowest Song ID. The good news? The play histories are there. The bad news? It’s on the wrong copy of the song. This was the case with one Programmer. The other was reporting that after reconciling they were looking at their logs in MusicMaster and seeing plays of the right song but from the wrong category. As a matter of fact, it was a category that wasn’t even scheduled. Somehow that song was playing in a specialty show every week even though Minimum Rest was set at over a month!

These are different examples all from the same problem. This PD had made a copy of a song he had in a “Hold” category and placed in it an “Acoustic” category that is only scheduled for an hour once a week. The lowest SongID was reconciled. In this case, that was the version in the “Hold” category.

There are a few ways you can address this. You could move the original song into the active category and delete the copy, you could link histories or even adjust your reconciliation.def to not look in specific categories.

If you’d like to link the histories, you’ll need an unused Keyword-Single field.  You can go to Library, Fields to see if you have one or create one there if needed.  Now that you have this new field, you can use it to “link” multiple copies together.  Much like you put the same Artist Keyword on songs by the same artist, you’ll put a common keyword on the songs you wish to link.

Here’s an example where we’ve put a link on an Aerosmith song.  Note that the History Link field has the same thing on both songs.  These songs are in two different categories.  They are now linked and you can see this by using the history graph and dropdown to show the “History Link” graph.  This now combines all the plays of both instances into one graph.

Learn more about history linking with our video on history linking

Having accurate histories is extremely important. You know it gives you the rotations you want but remember it also ensures any governmental Special History Reports you submit are correct. If you’ve run into this issue and need help addressing it, do not hesitate to contact your Music Scheduling Consultant.

Turnover Analysis Overview

By Marianne Burkett

The relationship between a format and its owner is often complex, like a marriage. If you ignore it long enough, the format may start misbehaving because of changes in the library or clocks or rules.

A good rule of thumb is to run Turnover Analysis once a month or run it after making clock changes. This doesn’t take long, but you might discover a myriad of issues or find nothing important has changed.

After a few bad experiences, like getting total vertical rotations on a search depth of one category, it is second nature for me to launch Turnover Analysis when a client calls saying: “I’m having an issue with my rotations”. In a nutshell, as a Music Scheduling Consultant – this is the #1 (with a bullet) reason people reach out to me.

A few important things become apparent when you launch Turnover Analysis. The top section gives you all kinds of analytical information like turnover info, suggested Minimum Rest, Average Spins a Day/Week etc.

When you right click on the header of this section, you’ll see all the analytics available.

The bottom part of Turnover Analysis is extremely powerful in giving you a graph of projected turnovers based on a search depth of one and no rules. This becomes especially important on your “Priority Categories”, ones with a search depth of one. For example, I have a five-song Power Current category with one per hour. This would give me that beautiful stairstep diagonal rotation we all dream of IF you’re running the clock for 24 hours. Then, someone comes into your office and suggests we play two Power Currents each hour during the midday to increase our cume. Okay. Let’s see what that looks like in the graph. (It isn’t pretty)

Based on a search depth of one and no rules and inconsistent clocks the pattern above would be what you can expect for turnovers.

At the top of this graph are a series of icons. On the right-hand side of the Red X is a music note. Clicking the note will give you accurate number of fixed positions in your clocks for whatever category you have clicked on in the top portion of Turnover Analysis. Sometimes this is shocking to my clients, to see the condition of their active clocks. It’s not something folks focus on in day-to-day radio operations, but it is important like breathing air and drinking water.

There are several ways to solve the issue, but the best way (IMO) is to be consistent with clock calls on priority categories. Being a programmer by nature, I say why not increase cume for the entire day and week and play two currents every single hour. Let’s see what that look like:

This graph makes me very happy. Not only are there two in each hour, they are in opposing sides of the hour. One in the second quarter hour and one in the fourth quarter hour (that’s what the colors indicate). I’ll go a step further and do an opposing clock in the first and third quarter hour. I want to give all quarter hours a fair shake.

These are the field of dreams rotations we all want. Five songs, two times per hour and exposing all four quarter hours!

I could write a book about Turnover Analysis in MusicMaster, but my advice is to click on the Analysis Icon and see what your turnovers look like and how many of each category are in any given hour.If you dig a little bit, you’ll be amazed what you can find out about your database and what you can do to make it even better.

Any questions? Please reach out to your Music Scheduling Consultant.

Don’t Wait To Automate

By Chris Malone

In today’s reality of radio, many programmers are looking around the office only to find there’s very little help to accomplish the important music maintenance tasks. Those necessary programming support positions no longer exist, yet time management is still very critical. Thanks to MusicMaster Scheduling, there’s a way to set things up to serve as your ‘right hand’ help. Here are three ways to leave your behind the scenes work to MusicMaster:

Auto Move:

Understanding Auto Move will assist your decision-making process by automatically changing the category of a song based on pre-determined criteria, which you can set up. For example, the song Post Malone- Circles is in my Power Current (A) category, but I’ve got it set to move to Secondary Current (B) when it reaches 135 spins. Goodbye music meetings, we can set these moves up on a song by song basis and let MusicMaster do the work. Learn more about Auto Move in this Walkthrough video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7jZcfx3IfY&list=PLQClZKdxvI1ze6tU8BPwFbeorYCNAz-8y

Auto Platoon:

The Auto Platoon feature allows you to move songs from one category to another based on either Move Date or Category Plays. In the example, we’ve set up Auto Platoon to move our Golds on a schedule. It’s great to use this feature if you want to keep your rotations sounding fresh or perhaps you want to increase the longevity of your latest music test. There’s more on Auto Platoon in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ3V2KzrwiI&feature=emb_logo

Auto Reconcile:

If your station has Log Reconciliation set up with a definition file, songs that were added, dropped, or replaced in the studio can be automatically reconciled into the schedule the next day to preserve song histories and provide accurate spin counts. This can also occur in real time, if you’re using Nexus. It’s important to note that standard log reconciliation needs to be set up using a definition file for the task and MusicMaster will need access to your “aired” logs folder for this to properly work. The days of manual reconciliation are over. Get a deeper look at log reconciliation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93in-m0xVEk&list=PLQClZKdxvI1ze6tU8BPwFbeorYCNAz-8y&index=81

Good luck automating these tasks for a smoother workflow. If you have any questions, please contact your Music Scheduling Consultant.

Keyword Maintenance: A Critical Task Made Easy

By Brian Wheeler

Keyword maintenance in MusicMaster is vitally important. Why? Because without uniform and accurate keywords, your artist separation rules will not function properly. Nearly every possible programming format uses artist separation of some sort and poor keyword coding is one of the main causes of failure of your artist separation rules. As the old saying goes, “garbage in, garbage out.” So how do you maintain your keywords quickly and easily? Here are my recommended steps.

First, call up a library query. Click on that large green note in your toolbar. You can also go to Dataset, Library, Library Maintenance. Select your music categories using the drop-down menu in your library query. That should bring up a list of your available library. You can use the sort keys at the bottom of the custom query box to pre-sort your library, or you can click on the artist header once you’ve created your list. Either way, having your library sorted by artist will be helpful in applying keyword corrections efficiently. For this exercise, I’ve modified the display to only include the artist and artist keyword field. All other fields are unnecessary.

It’s important to note that for the sake of artist separation, MusicMaster is not concerned with the contents of your artist field. That information is more for you, your jocks and the listeners with whom you are communicating. You can put what you want in the artist field. The important field for MusicMaster to identify artists is the artist keyword field. That’s how MusicMaster identifies artists that need spacing and protection from each other. This is where we’ll do our work.

Collaborations are extremely popular these days. It’s important to separate the artists in the keyword field when dealing with collaborations. In this case, 98 Degrees and Stevie Wonder are both in the artist field, and that’s fine. However, separating these two artists in the keyword field allow you to protect from the individual artists should they try to schedule near this collaborative song. We’ve clicked on the keyword field and isolated 98 Degrees on one line, and Stevie Wonder on the next line.

You should also make the effort to include solo artists who have worked in a band or group as well. If you want solo Phil Collins songs to be separated from Genesis songs on which Phil has sung, add the Phil Collins keyword to Genesis songs and vice versa. Here, we’ve added the Lionel Richie keyword to the Commodores. NOTE: If you do not require artist separation on a group vs. solo project because you’ve determined that the song doesn’t meet your criteria for requiring separation, that’s okay. Don’t apply the keyword in that case.

Make sure you’re fixing typos where you can. Again, artist fields have more tolerance. Keywords do not. A simple comma can make the difference between having artist separation and not. In this case, one Earth, Wind & Fire keyword is missing a comma. The keywords need to be uniform, so drop that comma in!

Once you think you’ve got your keywords where you want them in the library query, one more step will go a long way toward uniform and unique keywords. Go to Dataset, Library, Keywords. I’d not recommend taking this step until you’re satisfied that you’ve fixed AT LEAST your collaborations.

In the Keyword Maintenance screen, we can take yet another look to make sure any differences in punctuation, typos, etc. have been addressed. If they haven’t, they can be corrected in this screen. MusicMaster will recognize the changes you’ve made and will consolidate keywords for you. In this case, we realize that we’ve got four different versions of the Tom Petty Keyword. To be fair, some performances were just by Tom Petty. However, for the purposes of artist separation, it would be wise to consolidate these keywords regardless of Tom’s solo work or work with The Heartbreakers, or at the very least, apply both solo Tom Petty and the Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers keywords if you’d like. In this case, there are punctuation differences, too! Let’s get this cleaned up!

To do this, simply click into the line and make the changes. When you click OK, MusicMaster will recognize the keyword already exists. We’ll say YES to consolidating these keywords.

Here’s another one we’ve got to fix. Wham and Wham! was what we had. A quick addition of the exclamation mark and MusicMaster is on the case.

Keyword cleanup is a process I’d recommend to anyone. Even the best users need to take a moment to clean up keywords occasionally.

Here’s one more tip to help keep your keywords in sync: Go to Dataset, Library, Fields and find your artist keyword field on the list. In the properties on the right, look for AutoComplete and set this to Yes. What this will do is start to fill in the field as you add new songs. Once you see what you want, you can stop typing and press tab or enter to move to the next field. It’s just one more way to make sure your data entry is consistent.

As always, if you have questions or if you need assistance with any portion of this project, feel free to reach out to your MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant and we’d be happy to help.

Cloning Your Data
by Paul Ziino

Things are slow at the start of the new year. Now might be a good time to do some database maintenance and retooling. I’ve had a number of stations call me asking about making a copy of their data so they can do work without it taking effect on the air until they’re ready to roll with it. Here are a few easy steps to do this.

One. Close your database. You can’t make a copy of it when it’s open.

Two. Go to File/Open Dataset

Three. Click or highlight the dataset you wish to copy and click the Clone button.

Four. Give it a new name. Then click OK.

Five. The first thing I suggest you do in your clone is change the background color so that you have an obvious visual clue that this is not your regular database. To do this go to Tools/Options/Dataset Identification. In the center under Main Window Wallpaper change it up. Switch the color to something extreme or opposite of the usual. I like to set up Checker Board. I don’t use it on any other data, so if I open MusicMaster and see a checkerboard I know I’m not in my usual data!

Six. Get to work! Make all those changes. Create new categories. Delete your rules. Rebuild all your clocks. Recode your library. Delete the history. Run test schedules. Do it all! When you have the clone ready to roll…

Seven. Make it active! Reconcile the missing play history into your new database—assuming you even care about the missing play history. Then start scheduling your new logs going forward. Stop using the original data and go forth and conquer the new year!

If you need a hand with this or anything else, just give your Music Scheduling Consultant a call!

To our valued MusicMaster clients:

During this COVID-19 pandemic, broadcasters around the world are fulfilling the important role of providing news and companionship to worried communities. Radio is a 24/7/365 operation and we are right there with you. During this crisis, we remain committed to helping you meet any challenge, any time.

We are all facing a situation with unprecedented challenges. It has always been our mission to be more than just a software provider, but to be your partner. Today, more than ever, we encourage you to lean on us for that support.

As more companies are moving to remote operations, we’d like to remind you of some resources you can use to access MusicMaster from home.

CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION ON USING MUSICMASTER FROM HOME

As always, if you need any assistance, please Contact Support. Contact Support

Create A Safe List The Quick Way

By: Chris Malone

Certain formats such as Urban, Urban AC, CHR and Rhythmic CHR are known to do mix-shows. As many programmers know, it’s not a wise idea to turn your station over to a mix DJ for 30 minutes or an hour and let them execute free form without some sort of guidance.

Here’s a way to get your mixers a safe list using a Quick Print of songs that you approve based on several different criteria.

Here’s how:

Click Library from the drop-down menu, then Query the Library and select New Query.

You’ll then get a Library Query window and here you can set up your criteria.

Perhaps you use research scores in your database and only want scores at a certain percentage or higher to be in mix shows. You’d create a search filter to generate those specific songs. In the above example, we’re doing a Michael Jackson mix show. I only want my mixers to play songs from our library and certain power categories. I’ve created a search filter for Artist Keywords contains Michael Jackson. You can use any combination of criteria your database allows.

When you click OK, MusicMaster will open up the library of all of the songs that match your search using only the categories you want. You can sort this list any way you want by pressing the column title (this example is sorted by Category)

You will likely also need to hide columns in this view as well (for example – Cart Number, Sound Codes, Gender, Test Scores are not as important to your mixers). Right click on each unwanted field and hide column on each of those you want to remove from the report. The report above includes Category, Artist, Title, and Runtime. If this is a layout you can use for other purposes, click the Save Library Layout icon on the toolbar giving the layout an appropriate name.

Lastly, press the Quick Print icon (the printer with a lightning bolt) – it will create a PDF that you can save and distribute to your team.

Good luck with your safe list! If you have any questions, please contact your Music Scheduling Consultant.

By Marianne Burkett

Are you either switching formats completely, doing a major overhaul, perhaps starting up a new HD or streaming format? This task is overwhelming to many, plus it’s got to be done and within a week! Stop freaking out and start this simple step-by-step process.

Clone your current database in MusicMaster

Depending on which version of MusicMaster Pro you are running, the steps can be a little different to Clone. Here’s a way that will work no matter what version you use. With the program open, go to File/Close and then File/Open. This will bring to the Datafile Manager (where you can see any databases located in the database folder either on your local drive or on the network). Look to the right and you will see a “Clone” button. Put your cursor on the database you’d like to Clone and Click Clone!

When you do this, another window pops up where you can name your new database whatever you’d like:

Once the new database is created it will show up in the list along with your other databases. You can now open your new database and start the reworking process. We recommend going to Tools/Options/ Dataset Identification. Change the color so it’s really obvious you’re in the new clone.

Demolition of any database is pretty simple in MusicMaster. What do you need to do?

Delete all songs

Click on Group “Entire Library”. Make sure you’re in spreadsheet view and you REALLY want to discard everything. Some things like a voice track category or stopset category may help you complete your format flip quicker. If there is something you’d like to keep, do a custom search for songs from any category you’d like to delete. You can also just delete the category itself, IF you’re not going to use any existing clocks with categories of the same name. When you delete a “category” the songs all dump into the built-in category “Uncategorized Songs”. A deleted category also shows up in the clocks as “Invalid Category”, which cannot be mass changed in the clocks, so keep that in mind.

Once you are satisfied with the list of songs displayed, click the upper left-hand corner of the list to highlights all the cells.

You’ll see all the songs turn dark blue which means everything is “selected”.

From there, right click on the pointer column (where the blue arrow is) and Delete/Selected Songs.

You are done clearing the library.

Clear the History

While there may be no songs left, you may want to “clear all” histories from the database if you’re completely starting from scratch. Go to Dataset/Schedule/Purge History and “Clear All”. When you’re done you should see no Active or Archived History. When it’s done, just close that.

Clear the Rules

A new format and new categories mean you will need completely different rules. Enter the rule tree and put your cursor on the word “MusicMaster Rule Tree”. You’ll then see a BIG red X on the toolbar. Click on that and delete all the rules.

You can now begin to make any changes here.

Clear Clocks and Assignment Grids

Review the existing clocks by going to the clock icon on the main toolbar. You can select any clocks you’d like to delete or select all of them if you want to start from scratch. I like to keep a clock or two for syncs or stopsets. At least you’ll have somewhere to begin without starting at ground zero.

Next, select Assignment Grids. You can put check marks next to any assignment grid and then use the delete key.

New Coding Attributes

This step can be done now or perhaps it’s not needed, but something to think about. What Sound Codes will you be using? If you’re taking a Country database and turning it into a Rock database, you’ll likely need some different codes. Go to Dataset/Library/Attributes and delete unwanted codes and create some new codes.

Final Step is Tools/Purge. You’ve discarded songs, categories, clocks and rules so you want to flush any remnants away.

Once the new titles are in MusicMaster, here’s a list of things to do in order of importance:

1. Create Categories
2. Populate Categories
3. Code Songs in Active Categories
4. Create Clocks and Assignment Grids
5. Build Rules
6. Schedule Music and Launch your new format!

The beauty of creating a new database from a clone is that you retain your Export Design and Paper Log Design, all your custom searches and editor views and if you choose to retain your clocks and category codes/names, it makes that aspect a lot easier

Of course, if you need assistance with any of this, please contact your Music Scheduling Consultant!