MusicMaster Blog

Takin’ Care of Business – Part 1

Time-Saving Tips When You Don’t Have Enough Time

This is a guest article written by MusicMaster ProTeam consultant Kristopher Jones, Owner of M3 Merge Music Media.  In this article, he shares some of his favorite time-saving tips in MusicMaster.

Time. We never seem to have enough of it. With all of the responsibilities of running a radio station (or several), the immediate demand of what’s urgent moves like a tsunami through the day, leaving a trail of debris and destruction in its wake.

Okay, maybe it’s not quite that bad, but it can be hard to find the time to sit down and focus on your music scheduling. “I just don’t have enough time” is something I hear from clients all the time.

I schedule music for a lot of radio stations, so knowing how to set up MusicMaster is critical for me to produce outstanding weekly music logs with confidence and efficiency. I’m a big believer in investing dedicated time up front knowing that the payoff will save me time every single week going forward. Think of it as ROTI – return on time investment.

Here’s part one of some of my favorite time-saving tips and tricks in MusicMaster.

Library – Saved Queries

If your MusicMaster routine includes selecting and sorting categories, the next time you do that, save it! Just click on the binocular icon, “Save As” and give it a name.

I have saved queries for my currents and recurrents, sorted by category, artist keyword and title for doing my weekly music adds and changes. I also have saved queries for my active library, sorted the same way, and another sorted just by artist keyword and title. Now, under the queries tab of the Info Bar on the left, all those saved queries are just double-click and go!

Library – Saved Views

I have a variety of library grid layouts that I use for different tasks. This helps me eliminate the visual clutter and focus on what’s important. By clicking on the show/hide fields icon, you can select and arrange things how you want them and save that layout so you can quickly load it next time.

For example, when I’m doing my weekly music adds and changes, I double click the saved query I mentioned above and load my saved grid for that task, which shows important details like add date, move date, category spins and library spins.

I have another one just for coding (role, tempo, energy, sound, mood, era, etc.). I also have a saved grid layout that matches the “add new songs” layout in every database. That allows me to quickly copy and paste crossover songs from one format to another.

Schedule Editor – Favorite Query

I run my power recurrents and power gold categories pretty tight. I want those songs to get maximum exposure and always have great rotations. When a position goes unscheduled, it’s typically because hour rotation rules are protecting those rotations. Instead of compromising my rotations, I’ll fall back to my secondary category to fill the position. If you have your category rotations and hour rotation rules set correctly, you shouldn’t have too many of these to fill.

By double clicking the unscheduled position, then clicking on the binocular icon, you can check additional categories to test in the position. It works exactly the same as a saved query, “save as” and give it a name. Then, click the down arrow next to the binocular icon with the red heart and make your new saved query a “favorite.”

Next time you have to fill a power gold position with a secondary gold, just click the binocular heart icon all those additional songs will be immediately tested for that position. Find the best song for that position and go!

Schedule Editor – Saved Views

Just like with saved library grid views, you can save and load different layouts in the Schedule Editor as well. My goal is always to eliminate visual clutter so I can quickly see what I need to see to make decisions efficiently. Strip out anything that doesn’t serve that purpose.

Schedule Editor Filters

This is another way to reduce visual clutter when you’re editing your logs. Here you can remove various non-music elements from the view so you can focus on the flow of the music. You can also isolate certain categories.

History Browser Favorites

A common use of the History Browser is “Most Played” reports. Similarly to everything else, once you have made your Time Period, Categories and Display selections, save it as a “favorite” so it’s just a one click process every week.

I use the History Browser extensively as an analysis tool to check on the health of rotations, artist separations, coding and more. All are saved as favorites so I can quickly get a read on what’s happening in my databases and make adjustments if necessary.

There’s never enough time. Finding ways to shave the time it takes to do routine weekly tasks, or even more complicated analysis, buys you more time to focus on the quality of your work. If you take advantage of the tools available to you in MusicMaster, a little time investment up front will save you hours over the course of the year.

There are more time-saving tips and tricks in the schedule editor… I’ll save those for next time. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me at the email address below. I’d love to hear from you!

“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.” – John Wooden

When you go to Schedule Properties you will see a column for Max Fails and one for Max Skips. Ever wonder how these are used?

Let’s start with what Max Fails and Max Skips are.  These settings only apply when using Dynamic Rest Compensation as the Category Order Management (set under Schedule Order). 

Max Fails is the maximum number of times a song in the search depth can be passed because it fails one or more rules. Once it gets to the setting, the song is put back in its rightful place in the Schedule Order. This is considered to be a Skip.

Max Skips is the number of times you’ll allow that song to be skipped before you force it to sit at the top of the scheduling stack until it does finally plot.  When a song is skipped the number of times you’ve set, it will remain in the search depth until it eventually schedules, however long that takes.

What does that mean? When your Max Fails is set to 10 and Max Skips is set to 3, if a song fails to be scheduled 10 times unsuccessfully it will be skipped. After that song is skipped three times it will sit at the top of the stack indefinitely until it can be plotted automatically.   You can also set set a value that is a percentage of the number of songs in the category, which allows the values to change dynamically as the size of the category changes.

Why use this? When an element is being scheduled, the search depth allows multiple songs to be considered and the best available one is scheduled.  If a song is having a hard time scheduling it will just sit at the top of the stack indefinitely. This is where using Max Fails allows MusicMaster to keep track of the number of times the song was bypassed while scheduling.   You’re using use Max Skips to tell MusicMaster it’s okay to let the song fail out and be skipped, but after so many times we just want it to schedule and to keep trying it until it does.

Keep in mind the search depth is being prepared for each element you schedule.  The songs are adjusted so the one with the most fails is considered first.  The purpose of that is to give the songs that are most difficult to schedule more opportunities to schedule.

Sometimes you have songs that fail due to their coding or other rules you have set up.  These songs become difficult to schedule and the search depth can become clogged with these songs.  Using Max Fails and Max Skips gives you a way to remove these songs from the search depth after it reaches your settings.

Should you have dayparted songs, those get special treatment.  Since they cannot play due to their dayparting, the songs do not get fails. If there is a Max Skips setting and it has not yet been reached, the dayparted song is skipped immediately.  If there is no Max Skips setting or it has already been reached, the song is “bypassed”, which means it will remain in the search depth but not counted against it.  That allows the search depth to dig one more song to find something to play. You can probably imagine a situation where your search depth could be completely filled with songs that failed dayparting if MusicMaster did not do this.

Of course, if you are using search depths of 100% every song would be up for consideration every time the category is called for. Then Max Fails would still put the song back into its rightful place in the category, but you’d potentially be considering that song anyway if nothing earlier in the depth meets the unbreakable rules.

Now that you know what these values do, you’re probably wondering what happens with different combinations of these settings. 

When there is no Max Fails setting, a song simply remains in the search depth until it schedules.

If you have a value for Max Fails but not Max Skips, the song will just keep failing and will be skipped for as long as it takes to be scheduled.

You can see the songs that currently have Fails and Skips in the Schedule Order editor.

For more tips and tricks, check out our other blog articles or call your friendly MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant.

By: Jesus Rodriguez

Recently the topic about mix show spins came up a lot with my clients. I’m referring to stations that air syndicated, or local DJ mix shows either prerecorded or live. I am shocked to see that many of my clients have a blank hour for these programs in the log or are not reconciling what aired by the jocks. I understand that part of it may be the limitations of the software your DJs use to mix the tracks. Maybe they can’t export a playlist for reconciliation like your automation integration, but at the very least, I would assume that you are getting some playlist for every show submitted.

I’m writing this article, not only because I am still to this day a club DJ that got his first break on the radio as a kid via a mix show, but more importantly because of the number of spins and credit you are missing out on in the spins reports you submit to any agency. Let’s do some basic math:  let’s say that you have a lunch mix, a traffic mix, and a night mix on your station daily, but you don’t account for those spins. With only one power position song you are missing up to three spins per day. Let’s not get started on the four to seven per hour or more for night weekend mix shows or the nonstop holiday weekend mixes of spins not accounted for in your reports. I can’t even count that high; it’s so many!

Here is your solution, and it is called History Linking!

Step One: Mixshow Library Song Carts

If you are doing prerecorded mixes that schedule in MusicMaster, you are halfway there, but if you are not doing a prerecorded mix show, you can still use this method by creating a mix show category to keep track of what aired. In this case, I would create a dummy category and dummy song carts not in rotation for the mix shows. That way I can follow these steps as a placeholder for my history linking items to be able to account for the spin count of all the songs I have in rotation that are linked to an aired live mix show

Step Two: Sharing History

You’ll need a Keyword Multiple field in which to place a unique identifier for the song. If your data is lacking an unused Keyword Multiple Field you can create one in version 7.0. If you are on an older version, check you Field list to see if you have unused field you could use.  If you don’t have any available fields, contact your MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant and ask them to add one for you. You can label this field as “History Link.” Make sure to note the field ID assigned to the History Link field in Dataset/Library/Fields.

Now go to Tools/Options/Additional Properties. Under the History Header, indicate the History Link field ID in the Primary Rest Field, and set Primary Rest Rules to 1. This tells MusicMaster to use the History Link field when determining song rest. Then click Apply and OK.

Step Three: Mixshow Song History

Now that we have a History Link Keyword Field we can use it like we do other keywords to help keep songs from scheduling around our prerecorded mixes so that we don’t go from regular programming to the same song back-to-back. You accomplish this by using a unique identifier in the history link field in both our current songs in the library as well as the mix show cart. Typically, I would recommend an automation number.

Now that both your songs in the library and prerecorded mix have the cart number in the history link field, we can put a rule to separate those unique items from each other by using the History Linked Keyword Separation Rule in the rule tree for your music and mix show category if it’s a prerecorded mix. This is the same way we would keep songs by the same artist from playing to close to each other.

I would suggest if you are using prerecorded mixes, it would be best to place that category at the top of your scheduling properties pass order so that it schedules first then all of your song categories can schedule around it to prevent the same songs from playing too close to each other when you launch the mix. To adjust the order, go to Dataset/Schedule/Schedule Properties and drag the category to the top of the list using the blue pointer arrow.

History linking has an additional benefit which takes us to the next step.

Step Four: Viewing Combined Histories

After you have scheduled music, open the F6 history graph for one of your linked songs. By default, MusicMaster displays all scheduled spins of that song within the active history. You can use the dropdown at the right of the song line to switch from the Song view to any keyword history, packet history, and even move history. Since the History Link is a keyword field, you can see a combined history of all songs sharing that History Link! Furthermore, you can click the icon to “Highlight plays by the active song card you are on” to add boxes to the display for spins of this copy as opposed to other copies of the song. You can see that in the next capture.

As you manage your station, we would not recommend you not delete the elements.  You could move them to a dead category or use the Song Merge feature. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into History Linking, you can watch our Master Class video on History Linking.

You are now all set. Your music library will now include the History Linked spins for your mix shows when you run your reports, glance at your history graph, and have more control over song separation.

Should you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact your Music Scheduling Consultant.

By Dave Tyler

Every professional no matter their trade requires tools to get the job done. If you have ever bought a cheap screw driver you have quickly learned that a quality tool will get the job done better and last longer. MusicMaster is a tool. Actually it is more than that. It is a toolbox and even more than that it is one of those big red rolling toolboxes filled with other great tools. Today I want to tell you about just one of them that may be overlooked but is packed with powerful qualities to make your job easier and your station sound better!

If you have not already met, let me introduce you to the “Rule Wizard” and explain why it is so darn good. We all want our station to sound its best: to get the best rotations, avoid tempo train wrecks and artist conflicts etc. The Rule Wizard can cut to the chase for you. It is easy to access this power. Simply go to the Rule Tree and click on the Rule Wizard icon and it will start working its magic. After analyzing your data and looking at things like how many songs are in your categories and how many times those categories are being called for in your active grid voila, RESULTS!

Keep in mind MusicMaster and the Rule Wizard and simply crunching numbers and doing calculations. I know I didn’t get into radio because I loved math. If you did more power to you but I got into radio so girls would think I was cool (still working on that, just don’t tell my wife!) So these “Suggestions” that pop up are just that. In my example above you can see my Category D (80s/90s) has a minimum rest rule set much higher than the suggestion. I bet this database is getting a lOT of unscheduled positions for that category because of that rule. If I want to correct this all I have to do right click on the recommendation and choose “Update Rule”. Then save the rule tree and I am done.

Keep in mind that the Rule Wizard does not have a “Programming Philosophy” like you do which is why these are “Recommendations”. In the end you decide if that suggestion makes sense. My above setting is so out whack that ignoring would likely mean more unnecessary work being done by me each day while massaging my logs.

Here are a couple more important things to remember when using the Wizard. The Wizard makes its calculations based on the last scheduling session. If you just scheduled your weekend then ran the Wizard that may not be the a clear view of what your database needs. I always recommend scheduling a full week, 7 days so that the Wizard has a comprehensive view of the big picture. You can always unschedule the music when done. The other item to be aware of is that the Wizard knows you likely have other rules and settings that will affect your songs getting scheduled and it takes this into consideration when making its recommendations. If you put your Minimum Rest rule at 100% of what is possible and there were no other rules in your database then that might be okay, but you do have other rules like Artist Separation, Tempo rules, Dayparting, Era etc. If you set it at 100% because it is not the ONLY rule you have you would get unscheduleds and probably a bunch. The Wizard understands this and so once the numbers are crunched and it comes up with the 100% it backs it down by about 30% to give room for other rules to come into play. The recommendations given by the Wizard are conservative and generally a safe bet to go with.

MusicMaster has other ways to determine things like Minimum Rest. You can go into Turnover Analysis and see results in there and jot them then go make the changes but why when the Rule Wizard can save you that time so you can get back to trying make girls think you’re cool?!

If you have any questions, please call your Music Scheduling Consultant.

By Marianne Burkett

Every so often a client will call and ask for a report about what titles have moved from one category to another in a given time period. Thank you to the clients who requested a date range as it is a very useful report!

Now in version 7 we can now do this in Special Library Reports – Move History Report.

Go to Dataset/Analysis/Special Library Reports and next to Report Type, you’ll see four different reports available in the drag down. The report I’m referring to is the Category Move History Report. We’ve added “Time Period” to the Report with Start Date and End Date field options.

Let’s run a one-week report with the currents:

When I print to PDF, the report is self-explanatory and easy to read with date moved and total Library Plays, along with Category, Song ID, Add Date.

If you have any questions about this report or anything else, contact your Music Scheduling Consultant!

Happy Scheduling.

By Jerry Parker

We all know about backups, right? We know how important they are, and how critical they can become in the event of a system failure. I’m not going to remind you again about them, as you no doubt are very much aware of their value. Instead, I’m going to ask you a different question:

When was the last time you tested your backup to be sure it worked?

I’ll pause for a second or two to let that sink in….

In my experience, most companies are pretty good at performing periodic backups. Naturally some are better than others, but I can say that in my experience with customers very few have actually (if ever) tested their backups to be sure all was well with them. Backups can fail too, just like any other software. An important part of your disaster recovery plans should periodically include testing your recovery processes.  It will do you no good to discover, in the heat of an emergency, that your recovery process was flawed and you didn’t know it. When formulating your disaster recovery plans, you should consider all foreseeable scenarios, including what to do if something you were counting on suddenly wasn’t there.  What would you do in event of an emergency, if you tried to restore your latest backup and it failed?

Here is the disaster recovery regimen I use for protecting my data:

I take daily backups, and keep them for one week on my local PC. Every Friday, I take a backup and store it on a NAS separate from my desktop. At this point, I delete the previous weeks daily backups. Once a Month, I take a backup for historical purposes and store on a USB Stick and keep it in a safe place. At this point I delete the prior month’s weekly backups. Additionally, when I take my monthly backup, I immediately restore it on another machine and compare the live and restored data to be sure all is well. Thus, at any point in time, I have the following backups I can fall back to if I need to restore. The last seven days of dailies, The last four weeklies, and the last 12 monthlies. Remember there is no difference between a daily, weekly and monthly backup. The only difference is where you store it and for how long.

For more information on testing restores of your backups of MusicMaster data, contact your Music Scheduling Consultant.

Protect yourself, because stuff happens.

By Brian Wheeler

Your MusicMaster database is your baby. It’s what makes your station like no other on the planet. You’ve pored over the rules, you’ve edited and exported countless logs, added and moved countless songs. It is the essence of the station. It’s your product. What would you do without your database?

Let’s not find out! You’ve heard MusicMaster scheduling consultants hound you for years to perform regular backups, so you know the drill. You may already dutifully perform backups. I know several users who back up their data daily. But there is a NEW threat that you should be aware of, if you’re not already.

At least three major broadcast groups in North America have been hit by ransomware in the last year. Ransomware shuts down your systems and holds them hostage, hoping for a big payday. Cybercrime is on the rise, and everyone is a potential target. Hopefully your IT/Engineering department has taken steps to lessen the threat. But YOU can do something for yourself, too!

Under Tools, Backup, you can not only create a standard backup, but you can create a CUSTOM backup.

This enables you to put a backup of your data in another location besides the standard backup to your data folder, a place that could be vulnerable to ransomware or crashes. One extra backup to your thumb drive and you’ve got an extra layer of protection should the worst occur.

In this example, I am sending the backup to the Desktop.

Here, I’m setting it up to go to an external drive. Cloud options could also be considered for this.

Note the Additional Files option. If you use any utilities like Library Synchronization, Reconciliation, Traffic Merge or Nexus, you can specify those extra files as well. That means you’re external backup would contain your data and every file you need to continue working.

During a recent incident in which ransomware crippled a station, a MusicMaster user called me up, we installed a copy of MusicMaster on a personal laptop he owned, and he calmly put his flash drive data into his laptop. He was scheduling logs in a matter of minutes.

I hope you never encounter a situation where a thumb drive is your lifeline to keeping your station afloat. But if you do, you’ll be so glad you took this extra step in protecting your baby.

If you have any questions on how to set up a custom backup, feel free to reach out to your MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant.

If you’re doing this already and think you’re done, think again. Come back next week to find out the one thing you’re probably not doing to ensure you are covered in an emergency.

By Dave Tyler

Everyone loves having the latest and greatest. For proof just look at the release of a new cell phone….cool features and abilities. MusicMaster software also regularly updates our software with great features and abilities too. However, I have found there is some confusion with the process of updating. Let’s go over why updating is a good thing and how to do it.

The Why

Updating your software keeps your program working optimally. We update our software for lots of reasons. Perhaps Windows released an update that has lots of systems running a bit wonky. Our folks will update on our end the files that the Windows update has problems with to get things back to good. All stations report to some organization be it ASCAP/BMI or SOCAN or Sound Exchange. MusicMaster has all of the reports for all of these companies globally, and when they change a requirement in their reports they let us know first so we can update it in the software. Then, when you run the required report it will have all of the information they need in it. Sometimes we update our software when we find a way to make it run even more efficiently than it already does. We love making your life easier and the process smoother. Updating your software keeps things running their best!

The How

Updating your software is easy and only takes a minute or two. Before updating I always suggest making a backup of your current data and putting it somewhere safe. To backup your data just go to Tools/Backup and either perform a standard backup which places the backed-up file in the same folder as your database, or you can do a custom backup perhaps to Dropbox or a flash drive.

Once your database is backed up, go to Help/Check for Updates.

At this point MusicMaster will check and see if there are any updates available for you and if so you can begin updating.

Once you begin the process of updating the software, go ahead and close MusicMaster behind the update and allow the process to finish. The entire process should only take a minute or two.

Here is one important thing to keep in mind when updating. If multiple people work in the same database from different workstations, then everyone needs to be on the same “Version” of MusicMaster. Although we recommend everyone be on the exact same version and release, if one person is on version 7.02 and someone else is on 7.06, then those are compatible version/releases because they are both 7.0. However, if someone who needs to work in the data is on 6.0 and you update to 7.0, they will no longer be able to open the data once it becomes 7.0 data. It is just important to communicate with your co-workers so everyone is on the same page and if you have an Engineering or IT department, I am sure they would appreciate you going to them first.

Updating your software is the best way to not only remain the most current but also the best way to have the finest tools for scheduling music literally at your fingertips and the process is simple and fast. As always if you ever have any questions do not hesitate to contact your Music Scheduling Consultant.

There is a confirmed bug in certain Microsoft Office security patches that were released on Nov 12, 2019 that can cause some operations in MusicMaster to display the error message ‘Query is Corrupt’. Specifically KB4484127, KB4484119, and KB4484113 are affected. Removal of these updates from Windows will resolve this issue. It can also be avoided by adding ADE=0 to the [Options] section of MusicMaster.ini.

Update Dec 16, 2019: Microsoft has released newer updates that correct this issue. These can now be installed instead of removing the original updates. Most users will need to install the 32-bit version of KB2986256. If this update gives the message ‘No products affected by this package installed in the system’, then additional solutions can be found here

If you are experiencing this issue and would like assistance in removing these patches, please contact MusicMaster support.