Welcome to Librarian

Librarian is where your station's music lives. It manages your audio library β€” organizing songs, keeping track of metadata, setting transition points, and making sure AutoCast always has clean, reliable information to work from. Think of it as the quiet professional behind the scenes who has every record filed, labeled, and ready to go.

Your library is stored as a simple tab-separated file (library.tsv) in your Station Folder. Librarian reads it, displays it, lets you filter and edit it, and writes it back to disk. No cloud, no database server, no subscription required β€” just a well-organized file that every TuneTracker app knows how to read.

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Using Librarian Mobile? Most of this documentation applies equally to Librarian Mobile, with one exception: the Import tab is desktop-only. Librarian Mobile is for managing existing songs in the field β€” adding new audio to your library still happens at the station on Librarian Desktop.

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Important for mobile users: Librarian Mobile requires the desktop Librarian app to remain running on your station Mac while you're connected from the field. Be sure to leave Librarian open at the station before you head out.

The Four Tabs

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Import
Bring audio files and metadata into your library β€” from files, from other databases, from filenames, or from embedded tags.
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Attributes
View and edit song metadata β€” artist, title, genre, year, and any custom fields your station uses.
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Transitions
Set EOM, Cue, and Ramp points on songs so AutoCast knows exactly when to start and stop each track.
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Touchups
Annotate songs with silence boundaries and broadcast-target loudness so AutoCast plays them cleaner β€” manually for selections, or automatically by watched folder.
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What is TuneTracker Go?
The shell that hosts Librarian Mobile and the helper that runs at your station β€” what each does, how to keep them happy, and how to ask for help.

How the Window Works

Librarian's window is divided into three vertical panes that work together:

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You can select multiple songs in the middle pane and edit their attributes all at once. Very handy when you've just imported a batch of tracks that share the same genre or year.

The Status Bar

The black bar at the very bottom of the window does double duty. Hover your mouse over any control and it shows a plain-English description of what that control does β€” no guessing required. When your mouse isn't hovering over anything, it shows the current state of your library: how many entries are loaded, how many are showing after filtering, and so on.

The gold speaker icon on the left flashes green when something finishes successfully, and red when something needs your attention. If it goes red, read the message before doing anything else β€” it won't bite, but it does have something important to say.

The "Removed Entries" Message

From time to time, you may see a black panel appear over the waveform area listing files that have been removed from the database. Don't panic β€” this is completely normal and not an indication that anything has gone wrong.

Every time Librarian loads your library, it checks that each entry still has a corresponding audio file on disk. If a file has been moved, renamed, or deleted since the last time you used Librarian, the entry is quietly removed from the database and listed in this message so you know what changed. No files are deleted β€” the message is simply letting you know that something that was in the library no longer appears to be available.

Common reasons this happens:

If the files were moved intentionally, just dismiss the message and carry on. If something looks wrong β€” for example, a large number of files disappeared unexpectedly β€” check that your Station folder path in Preferences is still correct and that any external drives are connected.

Your Station Folder

This is the single most important concept in the TuneTracker System: every audio file you plan to use in your station must live inside your Station folder. Not just for Librarian's sake β€” every app in the suite (AutoCast, MakeMyDay, TuneStacker, and the rest) looks inside the Station folder to find your audio. If a file isn't there, it doesn't exist as far as the system is concerned.

When you first set up the TuneTracker System, you chose a location for your Station folder. Inside it, you'll find subfolders for Music, Commercials, Jingles, Promos, Sweepers, Liners, Programs, and more. Your audio files go into those subfolders β€” that's how Librarian organizes them into categories, and how AutoCast knows where to find them during a broadcast.

Files stored on your Desktop, in your Downloads folder, on a thumb drive, or anywhere else outside the Station folder will not be seen by the TuneTracker apps. If you want to use a file, move or copy it into the appropriate subfolder of your Station folder first, then let Librarian import it into the library.

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Keep it all in one place. Scattering audio files across multiple locations is the number one cause of missing-file errors, broken playlists, and dead air. Your Station folder is home base β€” if it's not in there, it's not in your station.

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Your library file lives at {StationFolder}/Logs/Database/library.tsv. Librarian keeps five rolling backups automatically, so if something ever goes sideways, your data isn't far away.

Keyboard Shortcuts

ShortcutWhat it does
SpaceToggle playback on the Transitions tab.
EDrop an EOM marker at the current playback position.
CDrop a Cue marker at the current playback position.
RDrop a Ramp marker at the current playback position.
EscapeClear markers and reset the waveform display.
↑ ↓Navigate the song list (stops playback first, so you don't accidentally audition twelve songs at once).
⌘ASelect all songs in the current view.
⌘LApply attribute changes (same as clicking the Apply button).
βŒƒβ†©Apply attribute changes β€” alternate shortcut.

A Typical Workflow

If you're new to Librarian, here's how things usually go:

  1. Import your audio files β€” Use the Import tab's "See This First" wizard. It walks you through picking files, choosing where they go, and getting them into the library.
  2. Clean up metadata β€” Head to Attributes to fill in artists, titles, genres, and any other fields your station cares about. The filter system in the middle pane makes it easy to work on groups of songs at once.
  3. Set transition points β€” Use the Transitions tab to mark where each song's EOM, Cue, and Ramp points are. AutoCast uses these to make your segues sound natural rather than abrupt.
  4. Touchups for clean, consistent on-air sound β€” On the Touchups tab, scan your songs for leading and trailing silence and for integrated loudness. AutoCast reads the resulting values at playback time, trims dead air at the head and tail of each file, and SteadyCastβ„’ applies a per-song gain so every song hits your station's target loudness β€” without ever modifying your audio files. Run it manually with By Selection, or set up watched-folder rules with By Folder to handle ongoing arrivals automatically.
  5. Let AutoCast take it from here β€” Once your library is in good shape, the rest of the TuneTracker suite can do its job properly. A well-tended library makes everything downstream work better.