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MusicMaster Blog

To Tag or Not To Tag? posted on July 3rd, 2017

By Jesus Rodriguez

Recently I took a three hour road trip to a music festival and being the radio nerd that I am I took this opportunity to scan the dial and even some radio apps. I am around music 24/7 (at least it feels like it). I get away from it by listening to talk radio, specifically comedy channels. I love providing enjoyment to people in the next lane seeing me drive alone in my car looking like a crazy guy laughing about absolutely nothing in their eyes.

What I may say to some may seem like blasphemy and to others may make sense. If tagging music (have a recorded intro or backsell) is your thing then cool more power to you. It is super easy to do within MusicMaster. This blog is not about how to tag songs but if that is what you are looking for you may want to stop reading, click below, and enjoy yourself before I burst your bubble.

Song Tags 101

If you decided to keep reading and you are a fan of tagging music, you may want to take a seat first. Disclaimer, the station I am criticizing is that of a non-MusicMaster client.

Years ago before RSS Feed in cars, radio in car applications, and even before smart phones, I also was a tagger. I thought we were geniuses to be able to tell the listener quickly what was the song they just heard. It made perfect sense especially for new songs. Let’s be honest no one wants the on air personality opening the microphone to back or front sell every song. SO MUCH CLUTTER!

Well I found myself listening to this particular channel and they tagged every single bit. I get it. I may want to know who that was and maybe download the CD or TV special. However, unlike a music channel where songs can last a few minutes the bits ranged from about 60 seconds or less. That means there was a tag every 60 seconds or sooner. Now from a listener perspective what if your jock opened the mic every 60 seconds or less would you be ok with that? Ugh, NO!

How are your listeners going to know what new song or bit that was? Friends, look around you as I did on my drive. I thought to myself is all that clutter really necessary as I am staring at my cars panel which clearly tells me what song, artist, or in this case comedian that was just now? I bet your station has an app and I bet there is a most recently played tab. A P1 listener will find what they need but me the guy taking a drive enjoying your station punched out because of all the clutter. Instead of all those tags the station could have easily added up to five more bits in that hour. Maybe sticking to the less is more mentality would help them.

Have a different opinion? Comment and share your thoughts.

Artist Separation in MusicMaster posted on June 19th, 2017

By Marianne Burkett

One of the most common support calls I’ll get with a new user is a sudden issue with Artist separation.

There is a difference between the Artist field and the Artist Keyword field in MusicMaster.  The Artist field is used to describe the artist or artists that are on a song, all in one line. This field is not typically tested in the rules.  As an example, I will use a group of established rock artists that gathered in the late 80s and recorded a few albums together: The Traveling Wilburys.  Among the members of the band were Roy Orbison, George Harrison, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan.   In the Artist field on a Traveling Wilburys song, you’d likely just put “Traveling Wilburys” or your paper log and on-screen display in automation would read like a novel.   However, the Artist Keyword field would have multiple entries on different lines as shown in the illustration:

The on-screen display in your automation system would read “Traveling Wilburys”, but when you run the automatic scheduler to get your logs ready to air, you’ll have artist separation rules looking at the six separate keywords listed in your artist keyword field.  Note, I added Beatles to the list because of George Harrison’s involvement in the song.  (You probably wouldn’t want a Beatles song scheduling right next to a song featuring George Harrison.  Of course, that is entirely up to you.)

Artist Keywords are necessary in MusicMaster if you want artist protection. Great care should be taken with your keywords.  A typo or differently spelled keyword will not protect your artist! You will also need to install Artist Keyword Time Separation rules in the Rule Tree to determine your “overall” or “auto” setting.    As with life, not all things are created equal.  If you have a 90 minute time Artist Keyword time separation rule installed in your Rule Tree, this will apply to ALL of the artist keywords you have, unless you’ve created some unique or individual time separations.    There are a few different ways to do this:

  1. As you create the new keyword a “New Keyword” box will appear:

From here you can either leave the Auto setting alone or deselect the setting and physically type in the actual time you’d like to keep the keyword apart.

I’ve opted to put a 1 day 5 hour Artist Separation on The Traveling Wilburys because they only have one song in my library and I don’t want it to come up for consideration while Auto Scheduling as much as say, Tom Petty who is a core artist.  Yes, Tom Petty is in the group the Traveling Wilburys, but his time separation can be different.  Every keyword can have a unique time separation.

The second way you can setup unique Artist Separation times is to go to Dataset/Library/Keywords/Artist Keywords

You see I have a list of the keywords in my library and most of them say “Auto”.  That’s okay because the setting in the rule tree is the “Auto” setting at 90 minutes.  You’ll see Aerosmith, a CORE artist has a 1 hour time separation because we play a lot of Aerosmith in several categories.  I need that lower time so their songs have a chance to schedule.  On the other hand, Bad Company has a 2 hour and 40 minute time separation because I just have a handful of their songs and I want to try and have them schedule further apart so they don’t all play in one part of the day.  Make sense?

We do have a Keyword Separation Wizard in the Tools Section of Keyword maintenance and I encourage you to explore that.  It will give you recommendations, but only you will have the final say on whether to accept those recommendations or not.   Individual time settings override the setting in the rule tree unless you’ve opted to ignore individual keyword settings.

If you have any questions or are unsure about Keywords and Keyword Rules – be sure to contact your Music Scheduling Consultant.

Time-Saving Music Log Reports posted on June 5th, 2017

By Drew Bennett

Today, it’s tough to juggle everything you need to juggle at the station.  Even the music department can be something you explore to find ways of saving time.  One of those ways is to build reports and run them against a log you scheduled to make sure everything looks good before sending it on to automation.  In today’s tip, I’m going to talk about the reports you should run before sending any music log to air.

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MusicMaster 6.0 SR-4 Available posted on May 23rd, 2017

The latest service release for MusicMaster 6.0 is now available. This new update contains the latest round of corrections and enhancements. Here are a few highlights: A new navigation update allows you to use CTRL-[ to move the cursor back to the previous cell in most grid-based screen.  After you’ve done that, CTRL=] will return you to where you were.  In the Schedule Editor, clicking on the upper-left corner cell will select all rows will be selected.  Select multiple songs and use the context menu option in Library Maintenance to add them all to the Player Playlist. Nexus improvements include performance improvements to the getAttributes command as well as additional information being returned when using the getSchedule command with the mergeTraffic property. Various other updates and improvements are also included. Use Help, Check for Updates to upgrade to 6.0 SR-4 today.  Contact your Music Scheduling Consultant if you need assistance installing this version or have any questions about the new update.

Register for the new MusicMaster Support Center posted on May 22nd, 2017

By Jerry Butler

MusicMaster has upgraded our Support Center to give you better access to downloads, information and utilities you may need when using MusicMaster.  If you had used our previous version of our Support Center, you’ll need to register again.   I recommend registering as soon as possible, so you are ready to go when a file is needed.

Go to www.musicmaster.com and click on Support and Support Center.

Click on Register under New American & Canadian Customers to set up your login.

Type in the required information and click register.

Now that you are registered, you can access the MusicMaster Support Center 24 hours a day and download installers and utilities that you may need.  Thank you again for using MusicMaster!

Re-Purposing Fields posted on May 8th, 2017

By Dave Tyler

As a radio programmer for more than 30 years, I have cultivated my own programming philosophy about what works and what doesn’t. I bet you have too. While we all continue to learn, grow and change, sometimes what we need or want to get that sound in our head onto the airwaves changes as well. One of the many beautiful things about MusicMaster is its ability to change and conform and be customized to do and be what you want. In this article I want to show you how you may already have what you need at your fingertips by re-purposing fields that you don’t currently use.

I would like a field called “Mood” that I can apply rules to so I don’t have blocks of songs that are too heavy and depressing or for that matter too “Poppy” and Happy! Unfortunately I do not have a Mood field. I can look at all of my available fields and see if there is one I am not using that I can re-purpose. I can do this by going to Dataset/Library/Fields

When you do this, you will see a list of your fields. I know I want to use an “Attribute Overall” field because then I can assign the attributes I want and have a one character “Code” for each. Since I know what type of field I am looking for, I click the header for “Type” so MusicMaster will arrange them this way.

I only have two Attribute Overall fields.  I already have a Tempo field and to me Energy and Tempo are essentially the same (Again my philosophy. You may totally disagree and I am cool with that!).  I want to re-purpose this field and it is as easy as clicking on the field and entering its new name “Mood”. My Mood field will represent the feel of a song. You will note to the right of the name you can enter the abbreviation for that field as well. That is used in the event that in your layout you reduce the size of the field so the full name cannot be seen.

Now that I have my field I need to set the attributes I want for it. I do this by going to Dataset/Library/Attributes.

The Attribute Code Editor box will pop up and here is where you can add as many codes as you want. In my simple example, I have added Happy, Fun, Angry and Sad. Again you can add as many as you would like.

Once you have entered all of the codes you want, then it is time to code your songs.  Then you can add rules to keep these different codes in check.

If for any reason you need a field but you are currently using all the available fields in your database, you can always call your MusicMaster Music Scheduling Consultant any time and we will be happy to get the field(s) added to your database for you.  MusicMaster Pro 7.0 will give you the ability to add any type of field you want yourself.  Keep in touch and we’ll let you know when that version is released.

This is just one more way MusicMaster makes it easier for you to work your magic at your stations!