TuneStacker Commands - "Random"
TUNESTACKER FOR COMMAND CENTER - KICKING IT INTO WARP DRIVE
While TuneTracker Basic™ lets you search for one attribute (song characteristic) at a time, TuneStacker for Command Center lets you get a lot more specific; searching for songs based on considerably more than one attribute...and the result is amazing flexibility in creating the ultimate music mix for your station.
Just as a person has more than one characteristic, so does your music. So describe your songs in more than just one attribute! Load them with rich descriptions of their style, era, pace, frequency of use in your format, impact, etc., so they are findable in many unique ways. Mark their Genres...their Tempos...give them ratings based on your own creative rating system...and use the Comment field to give them even more searchable information of your own choosing.
Now you're ready to do some awesome things with your format!
In this example, we'll start with the assumption that you have marked your all of your songs' Genre, Tempo, and Comment attributes, so they're searchable by all of those characteristics. Now, look at how creatively you can select your music.
- Examples
Random Comment 70s Genre Soul Tempo Fast
Random Comment Mornings Genre Pop Tempo Medium
Random Comment Current Genre Alternative Tempo Slow
Random Comment Live Genre Rock Tempo Fast
Random Comment LightRotation Genre AOR Tempo Medium
Random Comment BritishInvasion Genre Oldies Tempo Medium
In the first line above, we have the attribute Comment followed by the description, "70s," then the attribute Genre followed by the description, "Soul," and the attribute Tempo followed by the description "Fast." Each of the other lines follow a similar approach but with different descriptions. You can come up with whatever you like, based on what works well with your library and the kind of music mix you want to create. When finding a song for each of the lines above, TuneStacker will follow all the "rules" you've given it for that song.
THE RATING ATTRIBUTE
TuneStacker for Command Center lets also you search by the Rating attribute. Don't overlook this one as as a possibility!
The Rating attribute is a single character that can be a number or a letter. There's nothing that says that you must use just letters or just numbers, either, so be creative.
Number ratings come in handy as a way to rank songs according to quality, impact, intensity, or call-in popularity among your listeners.
Letter ratings are great as a way to indicate a time of day ("M" for mornings, "D" for drivetime, "E" for evenings, "O" for overnights, "A" for all, etc.), how frequently you'd like it played (H for heavy, M for medium, L for light), or any other rating method you can dream up that's useful to you. Or you might use the rating to mark a song as "I" for instrumental, "M" for male vocal, "F" for female vocal, and "G" for group. So, depending on your own creative rating system, your items might look like the ones below:
- Examples
Random Genre Blues Tempo Fast Rating O
Random Comment WeekendsOnly Genre Pop Tempo Medium Rating 4
Random Tempo Slow Genre Ballad Rating 7
Random Comment Song Comment Genre Rock Tempo Fast Rating L
PHRASE SEARCHES
You can also do a search for a phrase that contains spaces, such as a title or album name. To do so, just be sure to put quotes around it, like this:
- Examples
Random Album "Dark Side of the Moon"
Random Title "Birth of the Blues"
Random Artist "Paul Revere and the Raiders"
Random Comment "Only During the Murphy Show"
Random Tempo "Medium Slow"
WILDCARDS
TuneStacker for Command Center gives you the ability to search by part of an attribute's description rather than the whole thing. Why would you want to? Let's consider a possibility:
You might have labeled some of your songs with the Genre "Classic Rock," some with "Alternative Rock," and some with "Hillbilly Rock." That lets you be very specific when you want to narrow it down that far. But sometimes, you might just want to grab any rock song, regardless. So you would use a wildcard to randomly select from among all the songs that contain the word rock in the Genre attribute. To do so, just uses asterisks (*) to let TuneStacker know whether the wording you're looking for is found at the start of the phrase, in the middle somewhere. The first example below is what you'd use for the situation we just described.
- Examples
Random Genre *rock (finds any song whose Comment ENDS with the word "rock")
Random Comment Good* (finds any song whose Comment STARTS with "Good")
Random Genre *ock* (finds any song whose Genre includes "ock" in the middle somewhere)
Wildcard searches can also be done on phrases. Any one of the following will find a song from an album entitled "My Whole Life."
- Examples
Random Album My*
Random Album *Whole*
Random Album *Life
See the "Getting Double Duty" paragraph (below) for more ways to take advantage of phrases and wildcards
FORGIVEN IN ALL "CASES"
In TuneStacker for Command Center, you no longer need to worry about upper and lower case. So either of the following examples will work equally well:
- Examples
Random Comment Song
rAndOm COMMENT sOng
GETTING "DOUBLE DUTY" OUT OF AN ATTRIBUTE
By using compound words or phrases in an attribute, you can get one attribute to behave like several. For instance, you might like to cheat a little and use the Genre attribute to not only describe a track as "Contemporary Christian" but also indicate it's "Christmas" song. So you can mark the Genre attribute as "Contemporary Christian Christmas," and get quintuple duty out of it by randomizing in all of these ways:
- Examples
Random Genre "Contemporary Christian"
Random Genre "Contemporary Christian Christmas"
Random Genre Contemporary*
Random Genre *Christmas
Random Genre *Christian*
In the above examples, please look carefully to note that on some lines we're using quotation marks (phrases) while in others we're using asterisks (wildcards). See the paragraphs above, which explain those two concepts.
EASY DMCA COMPLIANCE
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act puts some specific requirements on those who must comply to its guidelines in order to qualify for a "statuatory license" as a small Internet broadcaster (thus avoiding a lot of hassle with record companies). TS3 makes compliance very simple. Just follow these steps.
- Be certain all your songs' Artist and Album attributes are marked accurately.
- Count all the lines in your format clocks. Count only the lines that DO NOT begin with a pound sign. Determine how many there are, on average, per hour.
- If the total average lines per hour is 20, then in TS3 ProximityGuard, assure that, at a minimum, you have set it to protect "Artist" by no fewer than 20 events, and "Album" by no fewer than 20 events.
By following those three simple steps, you will assure you are playing no more than one song per hour from the same Album, and no more than one song per hour from the same Artist. While that might seem like pretty weak proximity protection, and you'll probably want to be considerably more aggressive than that for your format, that's enough to allow you to comply to the DMCA rules, according to our understanding of their requirements. Ultimately, however, the responsibility for compliance is yours, and not ours, so please monitor your program logs' contents carefully and consult with a qualified copyright attorney to confirm you are in compliance.
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