Built in Music Scheduling

Section 4: Built-in Music Scheduling

The Music Scheduling section in NextKast OnAir provides tools and features to create and manage music rotations, playlists, and rules that define the station’s sound. Proper music scheduling ensures a balanced mix of songs, maintains audience engagement, and adheres to station format guidelines.

Creating and Managing Rotations

• Rotations/Clocks: A rotation is a set of rules or a template that determines which songs are played from different categories (such as hits, classics, new releases). Rotations are essential for maintaining a balanced and dynamic playlist that aligns with the station’s format.
• Building Rotations/Clocks: Define your categories (e.g., Pop, Rock, Jingles) and assign songs or audio elements to these categories. Use the rotation builder in NextKast to configure how frequently each category should be played, ensuring a diverse mix of content throughout different dayparts (morning, drive time, evening).
• Category Health: The Category Health screen provides visual feedback on the health of your music categories. It indicates whether there is sufficient content in each category to maintain the rotation and helps you make adjustments to improve playlist diversity. This screen can be found in the Settings Window.

Configuring Automated Playout

• Automated Mode: This mode allows NextKast to automatically manage the music playout according to predefined rotations or playlists. It helps maintain a consistent and uninterrupted broadcast, even during unattended hours.
• Top of Hour Rotations: Schedule specific rotations or elements (e.g., station IDs, news updates) to play at the top of each hour. This is crucial for maintaining a structured and predictable broadcast schedule. This option can be set in the Settings Window.
• Force Schedule at Top of Hour: Ensures that any scheduled playlist or rotation starts precisely at the top of the hour, ensuring critical elements (like news breaks or advertisements) are broadcast at the correct time. This option can be set in the Settings Window and will cause all hours globally to start right at the top of the hour, fading out the currently playing track.

Using Rotations and Dayparts for Music Scheduling

• Clocks/Rotations: A clock/rotation is a template that specifies the type and order of content played within a specific hour. For example, you might have a morning clock/rotation that plays more upbeat music and a night clock/rotation that features slower, relaxing songs.
• Building Clocks/Rotations: Define the order of categories to be played within a given hour (e.g., 3 songs, 1 jingle, 2 songs, 1 commercial break). Clocks/rotations can be reused across different dayparts or customized for specific segments.
• Dayparts: Assign different rotations to different dayparts (e.g., morning, afternoon, evening) to create a dynamic and varied station sound. This helps in targeting different audience segments with appropriate content.

Advanced Scheduling Options

• Multi-Day Clocks and Custom Schedules: Create multi-day schedules that specify different clocks/rotations for each day or special event programming. This flexibility allows for unique content arrangements tailored to holidays, special events, or weekends.
• More Rules: When building clocks/rotations, the NextKast scheduler can add more rules to each clock/rotation uniquely. This gives a very powerful approach to control the flow of music during hours. “More Rules” include four rule types: tempo, genre, features, and gender. These rules dictate the maximum number of each type per hour and the maximum number of back-to-back tracks. The audio tracks must be tagged with appropriate data for this filtering to work.
• Randomized Song Order and Reshuffling: NextKast offers options to reshuffle each category for every day generation, providing a fresh and dynamic playlist daily. Additionally, when using iPass (Multi-Pass Scheduling), the selection order can be set to random in the Settings Window, allowing for more varied and unpredictable playouts.
• Position Filtering: When building a rotation, a user can double-click on a position within the rotation and set a sub-filter. A set of dropdown boxes will appear for genre, tempo, features, and gender, allowing the user to define specific criteria for that position. For example, a user can set a filter to ensure that the scheduler always picks an upbeat tempo song after every break.

Scheduling Voice Tracks Ahead of Time

• BreakNotes: Break notes can be inserted in the rotation/clock to indicate to voice talent where in the hour the host should voicetrack. This works in both in-studio and using the MobileVT voicetracking.

Utilizing Audience Data for Dynamic Music Scheduling

• Dynamic Adjustments: Leverage real-time audience data from your streaming provider to dynamically adjust playlists and rotations. Utilize key metrics such as tune-in and tune-out data to identify listener preferences, optimize music scheduling, and enhance listener engagement.
• Audience Pleaser Feature: Use the built-in Audience Pleaser feature in NextKast to dictate how the scheduler responds to the online streaming audience by favoring tracks that have a better tune-out ratio. Different audience percentages can be set for various dayparts using the scheduler, allowing for a tailored approach to maximize listener retention throughout the day. You can view the performance of tracks based on audience engagement metrics in the Statistics Window within the Track List Add Music screen.
• Viewing Statistics: The View Statistics button opens a screen where users can select one or more categories to display play history and listening stats of those tunes. This screen allows users to utilize the tune-out ratio to order tracks by popularity. After checking the categories to observe or move tracks in, press Process Report. Tracks can be moved between categories by right-clicking on them. This report is especially useful for online stations to manage music based on the tune-in and tune-out popularity of each track, sorted in a list.

Advanced Music Scheduling Features

• iPass (Multi-Pass Scheduling): iPass is a multi-pass music scheduling system where songs from high-priority categories (like Power) are selected first, ensuring optimal artist separation and content flow. You can assign different priorities to various categories, which controls how often their songs are played.
• Day Segment Separation: This feature allows you to divide the day into different segments and ensure that songs are evenly distributed across all segments before being repeated. This is particularly useful for stations with large music libraries or multiple voice track hosts.
• Debug Mode: Enables testing of scheduling rules by creating hypothetical playlists and analyzing them. This mode helps identify and correct any issues with separation rules or category health before going live.
• Category Health Report: Provides detailed data on the performance of each category, such as search depth, song separation, and the average number of hours between plays, allowing for fine-tuning of rules and rotations to achieve a balanced sound. This window can be found in the Settings Window.

‘Repick’ Category to Fill in Hour

• Repick Category: A user can manually create a category named ‘repick’. The user can place tracks in this category, and NextKast will pick only from these tracks at the end of a playlist hour as a filler to make it to the top of the hour (TOH).
• Purpose of Repick Category: The intention is for the user to fill this category with varying length tracks. NextKast will only use this category when it gets to the end of an hour, and it will try to pick a track that will fill the hour as close as possible. It is a good idea to place fade early friendly songs in this category if you are using force schedule changes in settings.

MobileVT: Remote Music Management Tool

• Playlist Management: MobileVT offers the ability to view, create, and modify playlists from anywhere. You can edit the content of existing playlists, adjust the order of tracks, and even remove or add new tracks on the go. Generated playlists can be dynamically edited to fit special programming needs, such as live shows or themed segments. Changes made through MobileVT will sync automatically with NextKast OnAir, ensuring seamless integration into your station’s schedule.
• Uploading New Tracks: Easily upload new music tracks, promos, jingles, or other audio files directly into the station’s library through MobileVT. This feature supports multiple file formats, ensuring flexibility and compatibility. Newly uploaded tracks can be assigned to specific categories, added to rotations, or included in upcoming playlists, allowing immediate incorporation into your station’s programming.
• Managing Music Categories: MobileVT allows you to move tracks between different categories remotely. For example, you can quickly relocate songs from ‘New Releases’ to ‘Current Hits’ or ‘Recurrent’ categories as their popularity changes. By categorizing tracks properly, you ensure that the automated scheduling system has the most accurate and relevant content, improving the listener experience.
• Editing and Modifying Generated Playlists: Make real-time adjustments to playlists generated by the built-in music scheduler. You can drag and drop tracks, adjust transitions, and apply crossfade settings directly through the MobileVT interface. MobileVT also supports managing and editing the rules governing playlist creation, such as tempo, energy level, and genre balance, providing more granular control over your station’s sound.
• Advantages of MobileVT:
  • Remote Access: Manage your station’s content from anywhere, enabling quicker responses to last-minute programming changes or unexpected events.
  • User-Friendly Interface: The intuitive design of MobileVT makes it easy for users to navigate through different functionalities, whether they are seasoned programmers or new to radio automation.
  • Real-Time Synchronization: All changes made through MobileVT are reflected immediately in the NextKast OnAir software, maintaining consistent and accurate programming across all platforms.

By leveraging MobileVT, stations can maintain flexibility, optimize scheduling efficiency, and ensure a dynamic and engaging programming lineup that adapts to both planned and spontaneous content needs.