MusicMaster Blog

Library Maintenance Time Savers

By Chris Malone

There are many ways to save time and cut corners when working on your library, but here are my top three ways to short cut library maintenance projects when you right click on any field in your database.

Mass Changer

This tool comes in handy for a variety of tasks such as: add/remove specific attributes or keywords, search and replace certain words or phrases or even assign sequential values to numerical fields. You can apply Mass Changer to other fields in your library maintenance (such as attribute and keyword fields).

I want to convert the Upper-Case titles to Mixed Case.

Warning: We recommend to ALWAYS take a backup before attempting to do any mass changer work in MusicMaster, these changes irreversible unless you have a current backup to restore.

Library Analysis

There is no need to pull out paper and pencil to figure out what’s going in a category or category group. You can run a Library Analysis to give you a view of what your inventory looks like with any given attribute or keyword. In this example, I opened our ‘Rotated Music’ category group and ran a library analysis on the Gender. This gives me a way to review my coding to better gauge if the station’s music selection is aligned with the overall strategy.

Find Matching Values

This tool allows you to find matching values across any given field in your library. In my example, I’m looking to add a ‘Slow Jams’ hour, so I conducted a Find Matching Values on the Tempo attribute field for the attribute code of 1 (which equals slow in this database). Now that I have the matching songs together, I can proceed to create a Save List that I can later use to build a Saved List clock with all ‘Slow Jams’.

You may already have a few ideas on how you can instantly get creative with our library maintenance tools to make life easier.

If you need any assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your MusicMaster Music Scheduling Consultant.

Daylight Saving Time – Hope Springs Eternal

By Brian Wheeler

I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready for Spring to arrive! It seems a lot of people have endured more than their fair share of Winter and it is time for things to thaw out a bit. With that change also comes a slight time shift for many of us. Here in the U.S. and Canada, we will ‘spring forward’ one hour on March 14, 2021. MusicMaster will skip an hour at 2 a.m. to account for this change.

There’s not much you’ll need to do for this. MusicMaster will take the settings from your computer operating system for how you’ll handle DST in your area, but you can check to see if your settings are correct in MusicMaster by going to Help, System information. That will bring up the following box:

As you can see, it states that Daylight Saving will be recognized on the second Sunday in March at 2 a.m., and the fallback will occur the first Sunday in November, also at 2 a.m.

To confirm that your copy of MusicMaster is set up to recognize Daylight Saving Time, go to Tools, Options, Additional Options. A zero in the Ignore DST column will ensure that normal Daylight Saving adjustments will occur. If you do not wish for MusicMaster to adjust for DST, you would place a 1 in the column.

NOTE:  If you are using MusicMaster CS, please go to Enterprise, Stations and pick your station.  Then go to the Misc. section to find the Ignore DST setting.

There will be a slight impact on your rotations on the morning of March 14^th because you are skipping an hour on the overnight. The good news is, the adjustment is happening in an hour on the overnight, and it’s a Sunday. Most programmers agree that listenership is a little different on the weekends, so by the time Monday rolls around your rotations will be back to normal and it should have little to no impact on your rotations for the week. To show you the difference, here is a normal five song, one song per hour current rotation:

Ahh…a nice stairstep pattern. Now here’s the same song after DST adjustment:

There is still a nice stair step pattern but if you look closely, the play On March 14 in the first capture is at 2am. In the capture above, you will see that it’s in the 3am hour. That gap is due to the extra hour being skipped. Again, after a day with these new rotations, the new pattern is fully established by Monday.

If you have any further questions regarding Daylight Saving adjustments, feel free to reach out to your MusicMaster Scheduling consultant and they can help get the spring back in your step.

And the winner of the MusicMaster User Tips Contest is…

by Brian Wheeler

Thank you to everyone who participated in our contest! We asked you, our faithful and ever-knowledgeable MusicMaster users to send us your Pro Tips for using MusicMaster. We received responses from all over the map. Our panel of judges have convened, and these are our three finalists:

Matt Pelishek, PD at 99.3 Life FM in Bakersfield says:

“My best tip that has saved me a ton of time is this – just call MusicMaster and let them figure it out, and then I take the credit at the station.”

That’s some pretty good advice, Matt! If you’re stuck and not quite sure how to do something, there’s no point in languishing any longer. Give MusicMaster a call and we can help!

Shawn Sullivan of Happy Trucker Productions sent along this gem:

“When I need to time out an hour, I set up a query to drop in at the end of my hour. I drag the query into the schedule editor, enter the time I am looking for, and MusicMaster gives me a list of songs with that exact runtime. Queries are a great way of getting what you’re looking for without a lot of hassle.”

Great suggestion, Shawn! That’s using your noggin for something more than a hat rack for that Happy Trucker Hat you’re sporting. By the way, how does a guy get one of those?

Our grand prize winner comes from The Great White North. Laurent Boulet from CJMF/FM93 in Quebec City, Quebec sent us these words of wisdom:

“My tip would only be 3 words

TAKE A BACKUP !

At the end  (or beginning) of each day   TAKE A BACKUP !

Before doing special operations like unscheduling  TAKE A BACKUP !

Before changing clocks  TAKE A BACKUP !

Before any kind of mass changes  TAKE A BACKUP !

Just for the fun of it  TAKE A BACKUP !

When there’s nothing good on TV  TAKE A BACKUP !

When you have no idea what to eat for dinner !   TAKE A BACKUP !

They literally take 3 seconds and you have no idea the amount of time they will save you when you lose something or do something wrong, or are not especially concentrated like that particular Thursday PM just before Christmas.

So   TAKE A BACKUP !”

Wiser words were never spoken, Laurent. We’ll be reaching out to Laurent to get him set up with a fabulous prize out of the prize closet. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Rule Tree Basics – The use of “Rule Groups”

By Joe Knapp

What is a Rule Group and why should you use it?

I refer to Rule Groups as boxes you can put some rules into.

Rule Groups give you the ability to use Dayparting or a Format Clock list to control when those rules apply, select which Categories will respect those rules and even let you apply a Filter to select which songs must test those rules.

You can put Rule Group “boxes” anywhere in your Rule Tree. They’re often used in the “All Categories” folder, but you can also use them in specific Category folders too.

Simply put, Rule Groups make it easier to organize and adjust rules.

When you open the Rule Tree, on top right-hand side is a Folder called: Special Rule Tree Items. Open the folder and you will see Rule Group inside. Grab the Rule Group with your mouse and drag that across to the “All Categories” folder, or to a specific Category folder on the left-hand side of the screen. Once you let go, the Rule Group Properties box will open automatically. Once you’ve added a Rule Group, you can right-click on it at any time to review or modify these Properties.

The six areas of the Rule Group you can adjust are highlighted below.

Let’s go over each of these and what it can do for you:

• Description: is just a name you give the Rule Group. Try to use a name that helps you remember the reason you want the rules included in this group, such as “Morning Drive Rules” or “Tempo Segue for Female Vocals.”
• Availability. This allows you to decide when the rules in this Rule Group are tested. Typically, programmers like to keep the rules engaged while using the auto scheduler and while editing. Some just want rules to apply only while auto-scheduling, others only while manually editing the logs. There is even a setting called “Rules in this group are never tested”. You can use this to “shut off” all the rules in this Rule Group without deleting them. This allows you to activate them again later.
• Time Restrictions. This allows you to “daypart” your rules. If you wanted a specialty show to sound a bit different than your normal programming, you can isolate different times of day and apply different rules to any location within the week. Remember that the Daypart codes you apply to Rule Groups may also be applied to songs. If you change a Daypart code, those changes will affect any song or Rule Group that uses that code. Consider naming any daypart for a Rule Group with something that makes it clear it’s used in the Rule Group, so you don’t accidentally change it and affect your rules.

What about the drop-down box in the Time Restrictions settings? That box says “Test against plays in any time period” by default. But what if you want to set up Hour Rotation rules that ignore weekday plays on weekends, and vice-versa? The option to “Ignore plays outside this time period” lets you do that. Put your weekend Hour Rotation rules in a Rule Group, daypart the Rule Group to only test on weekends, then set it to ignore plays outside the dayparted hours. MusicMaster will pretend the weekdays don’t even exist when testing these Hour Rotation rules on the weekend. You should also create a second Rule Group that is set up the same way but dayparted to only apply during the weekdays. The Hour Rotation rules you put in there will ignore plays that occurred on the weekend. There’s another option to “Ignore failures outside this time period.” Use this option when you want MusicMaster to see the plays outside the dayparted hours but ignore any failures against them. This is handy for special shows you might schedule on weekends where you only want MusicMaster to test the rules within the special show itself.

• Group Mode. Most people use “Test rules as if they are not in a rule group” because it allows them to see which individual rule failed in a Recap Report. “Rule Group fails when any included rule fails” causes the entire Rule Group to fail if any rule you’ve put in that group fails. MusicMaster doesn’t bother to test the rest of the rules in that group once it finds one rule that fails. When using this mode, you’ll see that the entire Rule Group failed in the Recap Report.

The most interesting option is “Rule Group fails when all included rules fail.” This one let’s you do some things that would be virtually impossible in any other system. For example, let’s say you don’t want two Slow Tempo songs that are both sung by Female vocalists to play back-to-back. It is alright, though, to play two Female vocalists back-to-back if one of them is not Slow. You’d put just two rules in the Rule Group to handle this special case. One would prevent two Slow songs from playing back-to-back and the other would prevent two Female songs from playing back-to-back. Both rules would have to fail before the Rule Group fails. If only one of them fails, the entire Rule Group passes.

• Clock Restrictions: You can use this if you’d rather just type in the Format Clock letter codes instead of using a Daypart code in the Time Restrictions section. For example, if you have a Sunday Morning Jazz show for four hours and you’re just using one or two clocks, typing in the Clock Codes separated by a comma would achieve the same exact thing as Dayparting the Rule Group. But, if you later move that show’s Clocks to different hours, the Rule Group will automatically follow that show to the new time period.
• Song Restrictions: This setting allows you to select a Filter and/or a list of Categories that would apply to this Rule Group. In my example screen shot, you’ll see the name of this Rule Group is Recurrent-Gold, so I’ve just selected those Categories and a fill category to adhere to the rules in this group. Note: If you have bypassed any Category using the All Category bypass option in the Rule Tree, that designation will supersede any settings here. In other words, if you bypass Category A, even if you include Category A on the category list here, it still will not be tested.

The Filter option is very powerful. It allows you to apply rules only to certain types of songs. For example, you might apply a special separation rule to songs with an Instrumental Sound Code if they also happen to be coded with a Jazz sound code.

How many Rule Groups can you have? As many as you like!

If you have any questions about Rule Groups, or would like to know more about the MusicMaster Rule Tree, contact your Music Scheduling Consultant, refer to the “Help” section of the software, or stop by our website and click on the “Learn” button.

Your Company Consolidated? Here is your MusicMaster Five-Step Emergency Kit

By Jesus Rodriguez

In the unfortunate world we live in today, many companies have to consolidate, furlough, let go, lay off, to stay profitable and avoid things like bankruptcies. Unfortunately, as we have experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic there has been a lot of lost revenue. Fewer places open for business meant they did not need to purchase commercials.

If you were one of the lucky individuals to not be affected by those changes, you may be thinking that those that think you got lucky have no idea of the amount of work you now have to do. You are more than likely now a team of one. Your Operations Manager is gone and you are overseen by another markets management. You lost your Music Director/APD. Maybe the Program Director got to stay but has been moved to a different location. Now here you are with a new promotion and your first time opening MusicMaster. Whether you are the PD that lost their team or the night jock that is now working days in the office to help program the station, I have compiled a list of some of our blogs and videos to help you get going right.

Here is your Five-Step MusicMaster Emergency Kit.

Your Music Director is gone and it is your first time picking a song that will go on the air. How do you add a song to the library?

Adding Songs, Imaging, or other items to the Library

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ockIX0Ue3U8&list=PLQClZKdxvI1ze6tU8BPwFbeorYCNAz-8y

You added your new music for the week to keep the station’s momentum going but you still need to create a log for tomorrow’s programming and your PD is also no longer available.

How to Use the Automatic Scheduler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P-Mp9ZIhOA&list=PLQClZKdxvI1ze6tU8BPwFbeorYCNAz-8y

Now you have your log, but you would like to massage the playlist to change some of the songs around.

Editing Logs

Swapping elements in the Log

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTZQJCe322M&list=PLQClZKdxvI1ze6tU8BPwFbeorYCNAz-8y

Replacing Songs

You can also replace categories easily by pressing F9 or double-clicking on the item to get the replacement window. Once you select the item you wish, press [enter] to replace it in the position. If you do not see the song or category you want in the replacement window press the binocular icon to open the query. That will allow you to pick a different category.

You have completed your log and are now ready to export it to your automation for on-air!

Exporting logs to your automation system

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXfahVJAv1s&list=PLQClZKdxvI1ze6tU8BPwFbeorYCNAz-8y

CALL MUSICMASTER!!!!!

You may not know this, but it is very likely that your subscription also includes 24/7 support for all users at your location. You are not alone. We have been there before too. Please call our direct support hotline at 262-825-4000. You’ll be put in contact with one of our support representatives so you can request a MusicMaster 101 session. These five steps are only scratching the surface of the power of MusicMaster. Let us help you become a MusicMaster Genius in a short time.

If you made it this far into this blog let me be one of the first to tell you congratulations on the new position. Remember you were selected by those above you for a reason and we are here to help you every step of the way beyond these five emergency steps.

What’s your MusicMaster tip?

By Brian Wheeler

For years, we at MusicMaster have provided you, our beloved MusicMaster users with tips and tricks, thoughts and concepts, schemes and strategies to get the most out of your MusicMaster experience.

Now it’s your turn. If you had one thought, one idea, one tip or trick that you could share with MusicMaster users around the world, what would it be? Here’s your chance to shine! We’re now taking your submissions contest@musicmaster.com

You have until February 11^th to get your ideas submitted to us. We’ll then select the three best submissions (as selected by a panel of judges) and share them with our MusicMaster family around the globe. The top selection will also win a fabulous prize from my prize closet! Here’s just a sample of some of the available prizes (we’ll try to tailor a prize to your tastes):

Our grand prize winner will be announced on February 22^nd, at which time we’ll also share the top three tips in our February article. Get those ideas submitted! We’re looking forward to seeing creative MusicMaster minds at work!

Legal note: by submitting a blog tip, you agree to let us use your name, call letters/company in our winner’s blog post. Please clearly notate in your submission if you wish to remain anonymous and we’ll be happy to honor that request. For transparency reasons, we request that those who wish to be eligible to win a prize allow us to share who you are.

Filter The Flow

By Chris Malone

At times, programmers will call MusicMaster Support and ask how to enforce a specific sound attribute at a specific position within the clock. For example, an Urban AC programmer may want to start the hour with a R&B sound attribute to establish a smooth R&B flow, right out of the gate. You can create a clock filter at any given position within your clock. Your filter ideas can go far deeper than sound code attributes. Commonly, you can create filters for energy, tempo, artist keywords and beyond.

In this example, we’re creating a clock filter on the 90’s position that follows our Legal ID to only include R&B songs within that category. First step, you want to double click on the 90’s fixed position on the clock and the Element Properties box appears. Click the Filters tab and begin defining the filter.

The setup translates as: only allow Sound that Contains Any Of – R, which is the sound attribute code for R&B in this database, to schedule in this position. Please pay close attention to the Clock Filter Level in your Element Properties because you’ll need to know that when you activate the Clock Filter in your Rule Tree. Once you’ve defined the filter you want, press OK.

The filter icon next to the 90’s position, indicates that the filter has been properly applied to the clock and to take it a step further, you can right click on the filter and Show Matching Songs to get an idea of which filtered songs qualify for this clock position.

Next, you simply want to activate the proper Clock Filter rule in your Rule Tree. In your Element Properties setup, you recall we are using Clock Filter 1. In the Available Rule Types under Format Clock Rules, we need Format Clock Filter 1. That available rule needs to be active. I put it under All Categories so I can adjust any clock adding a Clock Filter 1 and have it be Unbreakable. You can put the rule in a specific category if you’d like. Once you’ve turned on the rule, save your rule tree and you’re done!

With three Format Clock Filter options available, you have flexibility to mix and match Unbreakable and Breakable rules along with setting up different filters on different positions. Maybe you’d like a certain sound code coming out of a stopset. Set up the filter and make the rule breakable.

If you want to learn about Clock Filters or explore other ways to use Clock Filters, please reach out to your Music Scheduling Consultant for more assistance.

Planning For the Holidays

By Dave Tyler

We all love the holidays right? I know I do but we also know that if anything is going to go wrong it is going to happen on a Friday, when you are on vacation or over the holiday. So what can you do to minimize that?

When do you start playing Christmas tunes? Maybe you add some new clocks to your grid or perhaps you have a “Holiday” grid(s) that you use each year. No matter your format, it’s likely your regular playlist freezes around this time too. This gives you a unique opportunity to take the stress out of your scheduling.

Since you are doing your holiday music and your regular playlist is frozen, you can safely schedule out a week or more because you won’t be adding any new music or making changes. Think about it. If you’re using the Format Scheduler to activate those holiday grids, your regular grid will come back up all by itself. That means you might schedule the entire month of December and into January!

When you reach the point where you know nothing is going to change between when your holiday music starts and your playlist is frozen, get going. This accomplishes a few of things. It allows you to get the scheduling completed well ahead of time. It also gives you the opportunity to make just minor changes as each day comes along if needed. Finally, you won’t be in any big rush on that Friday before you take off to get tons of logs done.

We do get calls every year where someone says they have Christmas music scheduled on December 26^th and they don’t know why. It’s because they are manually activating grids and forgot to re-activate their regular grid. This is why we highly recommend the Format Scheduler. If you’ve never used the Format Scheduler before, this is the perfect time to give it a try. It’s just too easy to forget which grid you have active when you are manually changing it. By using the Format Scheduler, you pick the grid and date(s) where it applies. If you don’t change anything, your regular, active grid is used. You can even do this down to the clock level, which means if you decide to start playing holiday music at noon, you can change the individual clocks from noon to 11pm. You’ll assign the holiday grid to the entire day moving forward.

As you can see in this screen capture, the Fixed Christmas Clocks are scheduled across the day. I assigned the grid that contained this clock across multiple weeks. Any dates in yellow mean something different is going on. Any dates in white mean the regular grid is active. Dates in red (if you see them) mean the log has already been scheduled.

When you put this all together, with a couple of simple adjustments in MusicMaster, you can schedule your holiday music and get back to your regular programming automatically. When you factor in the ability to schedule ahead, it adds up to the MusicMaster way to take just a little bit of the stress out of the holidays. You’re welcome!

If you have any questions about implementing your holiday music, do not hesitate to reach out to your Music Scheduling Consultant.

Artist Keyword Separation

By Brian Wheeler

One of the more frequently asked questions I get when I’m helping a MusicMaster user dial in the rules is, “What does the auto setting mean in the artist keyword separation rule?”

This is a great question because the flexibility of the keyword separation settings in MusicMaster is often not fully understood.

Let’s start with “What DOES it mean when you set an ‘auto’ separation on artist keywords?” This is the default setting. If you set your ‘auto’ setting to 1:45, any keyword that has been assigned the ‘auto’ separation time will abide by a separation of an hour and forty-five minutes.

Your level of control doesn’t have to end there.

If you go to Dataset/Library/Keywords, you can put different settings on keywords that need more specific attention. Here’s an example where I’ve set specific artist keyword separations for two different artists.

For the sake of this demonstration, let’s say I’ve got an ‘auto’ keyword setting of 1:45. Any artist with the ‘auto’ setting in this screen will adhere to a separation time of one hour and forty-five minutes. I’ve checked two settings. In this case, I’ve asked MusicMaster to prevent Nickelback from coming up more frequently than every three hours, twenty minutes. Conversely, I’ve asked that Nirvana have a more relaxed setting than the ‘auto’ setting. They can appear every hour and twenty minutes. That doesn’t mean they WILL, but they could because of the setting I’ve given them. To apply these settings, I clicked the box next to Auto and entered the new restriction time.

You’ll find that the auto setting gets the job done in most cases. In some cases, you need to grant certain artists more freedom, such as when Drake decides to drop a record and also has several collaborations that find their way on the charts. Conversely, there are some artists in your library that you believe “a little goes a LONG way”, and you’d like to control the frequency of their appearance in your music log. Keyword time separation is your remedy.

If you have any questions regarding use of this feature, don’t hesitate to contact your MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant for more information. Be well!

Rules–Sometimes Less IS More!

By Dave Tyler

We’ve all been there. You are the new PD or MD at the radio station or recently got promoted and you are excited! You open up the database and your eyes spin because you have no idea what the previous person’s programming goals were and how everything was set up to accomplish it. Sound familiar? You look at the codes and rules and it looks like a composition by Conlon Nancarrow! (Google him…it’s worth it! ).

Initially you will live with it because you need to get logs out. At some point you realize that you do not feel in control because you don’t understand the previous philosophy. Now is the time to take control back and do things your way! I have been in your shoes. I took over and found all kinds of things happening I didn’t like. My first idea was to start adding rules to counter what was happening. This was a disaster. When I travel the country meeting MusicMaster users or take a support call I often recommend looking at the rules and finding the ones that have to do with your pains and just removing them! That’s right. Instead of adding rules, get rid of some rules. If you’re feeling really bold, just nuke the whole Rule Tree and start over.

You have your programming philosophy, the sound in your head of what the radio station should sound like. How are you going to get that with rules that someone else set up that make no sense to you? This is something you can do on your own or with the assist of your Music Scheduling Consultant. Here are some things to consider when you do this:

Make a backup of your data or even better, clone your data so you can play around in the clone and test your philosophy. If you want to do this work in the clone, schedule out several days. That way if you like the rule changes, you can simply continue working in that copy as the new “live” version of your data.

In the Rule Tree, right click on MusicMaster Rule Tree and click Delete.

Run the Rule Wizard to get an idea of some of the basic rules to set up like minimum rest, hour rotation and keyword separation rules.

Think about your Attribute rules and come from the position of the things you don’t want to happen. It might sound counter-intuitive but give it a try. Here’s an example: Let’s say you have a 60-40 mix of male to female artists in your active library. If put no rules on your Gender, you might end up with more males in a row than you’d like. The question to ask yourself is, “How many is too many?” The answer to that question then becomes your rule—Max in Sequence four for Gender=M.

If you pick just a few core items when you start, this has the added benefit of making it very clear which rules might be causing a problem as you run test schedules.

Whether you want to give this a go yourself or would like a helping hand, feel free to reach out to your Music Scheduling Consultant. We can help you through the entire process.