Music Search & Library
The Search Pad at the bottom of AutoCast's right column puts your entire music library at your fingertips. Start typing and results appear instantly — no waiting, no loading. It's designed for the moments when you're on the air and you need to find something fast.
Searching Your Library
Type at least three characters into the search field and AutoCast begins filtering. Results update with every keystroke, searching across all fields in the library — artist, title, album, genre, comment, and more. The results show artist, title, and duration for each match.
AutoCast loads your entire music library into memory at startup, so searches are instant regardless of how large your library is.
AutoCast remembers your last search between sessions. When you launch, the search field is pre-populated with whatever you were searching before — handy for stations that frequently look for the same categories.
Boolean Search Operators
For more targeted searches, AutoCast supports Boolean operators. They must be uppercase and surrounded by spaces:
| Operator | What It Does | Example |
|---|---|---|
AND | Both terms must appear somewhere in the record | Springsteen AND Born |
OR | Either term must appear | Beatles OR Stones |
NOT | Excludes results containing the following term | Eagles NOT Hotel |
| (none) | Plain substring match across all fields | Fleetwood Mac |
Operators can be combined. The NOT clause is always evaluated first, so Eagles NOT Hotel AND California finds Eagles songs containing "California" but not "Hotel." Matching is case-insensitive.
Working with Search Results
Once you have results, there are several ways to interact with them:
| Action | What Happens |
|---|---|
| Single click | Selects (highlights) the row. |
| Double-click | Sends the item to your preview output device for auditioning. |
| Long press (1 second) | Also previews the item — the row border blinks orange briefly while AutoCast loads it, then preview begins. |
| Drag to program log | Inserts the item at the position where you drop it in the log. |
| Right-click → Make Next-to-Play | Inserts the item immediately after the currently playing song — it jumps to the Deck B position. |
| Right-click → Get Song Info | Displays all library fields for the song in the Message Pad. |
| Right-click → Edit Song Info | Launches Librarian with this song's editor open, ready to edit its metadata, cue points, and other attributes. |
| Right-click → Listen In Preview | Starts preview playback on your preview output device. |
Get Song Info
Right-clicking a search result and choosing Get Song Info displays a full readout of that song's library record in the Message Pad. You'll see artist, title, album, genre, duration, year, decade, gender, tempo, comment, ramp point, EOM point, cue point, and any custom fields — everything AutoCast knows about that song. Blank fields are omitted to keep the display clean.
Edit Song Info
Choosing Edit Song Info from the right-click menu sends a message to Librarian and launches it (or brings it forward if it's already running). Librarian opens directly to that song's editor, so you can adjust its metadata, set or refine its cue and EOM points, or update any other attribute. When you save in Librarian, AutoCast picks up the changes the next time it reloads the library.
Inserting Songs into the Broadcast
The most common use of the Search Pad during a live broadcast is inserting a song you want to play that isn't currently in the log. There are two quick ways to do it:
Make Next-to-Play — right-click a result and choose this option. The song is inserted immediately after the current song in the program log and appears on Deck B. It will play next, and AutoCast resumes normal log order after that.
Drag to the program log — drag a result into the program log and drop it wherever you want it. You can drop it anywhere in the list — third from now, sixth from now, wherever. The log adjusts and recalculates predicted start times immediately.
The Music Library Database
The data behind the Search Pad comes from your music library database, maintained by Librarian. The database lives at Logs/Database/library.tsv inside your Station Folder — a tab-separated file containing a record for every song in your library.
Each song in the library has these fields:
| Field | What It Stores |
|---|---|
| Artist | Artist name |
| Title | Song title |
| Album | Album name |
| Genre | Music genre |
| Comment | Free-text field — often used for category (e.g., "TalkBed," "LegalID," "Sweeper") |
| Duration | Total length in seconds |
| Cue | Point where playback begins (in seconds from the start), skipping dead air |
| EOM | End-of-Message point — where the next song's crossfade begins |
| Ramp | Point where the vocals begin — used for voice track talkbed timing |
| Gender | Artist gender (M/F/Group) — used in rotation scheduling rules |
| Tempo | Song tempo classification |
| Year | Release year |
| Decade | Decade (e.g., "80s") — for era-based scheduling |
| Misc1–Misc3 | Three user-defined fields for whatever your station needs |
| Filepath | Full path to the audio file on disk |
Setting accurate Cue and EOM points is what makes AutoCast's crossfades sound professional. The Cue point skips any silence or count-in at the beginning of a file, so the new song punches in cleanly. The EOM point tells AutoCast exactly when to start the crossfade — at the natural energy point in the song, not just a fixed number of seconds from the end. Both are set in Librarian.
The Ramp point is equally important for voice tracks. It tells AutoCast where the vocals begin in a talkbed, so the music can fade back up cleanly after the voice track without talking over the singer. Again, set in Librarian.
The Comment field is a workhorse in AutoCast. It's how you categorize songs for dynamic selection commands like # VT, # Overlay, and Cart buttons. "TalkBed," "LegalID," "Sweeper" — whatever category label makes sense for your station, put it in the Comment field and AutoCast can find and rotate through those files automatically.
Next up: Live Breaks & LiveAssist →