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Music Scheduling - How it Works

Updated

This feature is exclusively available in our PRO plan.

The Music Scheduling feature allows you to plan playlists using your cloud-based music library, leveraging a system based on categories and clocks. This approach is common in music planning systems and provides structured automation for playlist generation.

How Music Scheduling Works

Open this page in the Dashboard: Dashboard > Scheduling > Music

Categories

  • Definition: Tracks (including music, jingles, or ads) are organized into categories.

  • Purpose: Categories are used to define the type of content to be played.

Clocks

  • Definition: A clock is a sequence of categories.

  • Purpose: Clocks are used to automate playlist planning by defining the order and frequency of categories in a given time frame.

Playlist Planning

  • Mechanism: Based on the clock, playlists are automatically planned by repeating the sequence of categories until a 24-hour period is covered.

  • Considerations: The number of tracks in each category and the frequency of category appearance in the clock affect the playlist's composition.

Example

Consider a clock with three categories:

  • New (20 Songs)

  • Hit (10 Songs)

  • Recurrent (40 Songs)

Clock Sequence:

  • New / Hit / Recurrent / Hit

Planning Logic:

  • The clock sequence (New / Hit / Recurrent / Hit) repeats continuously for 24 hours.

  • Categories: The Hit category is planned twice as often as New and Recurrent, but contains fewer songs.

  • In addition to the frequency of each category, the varying number of songs in each category also affects how often a song is repeated.

    • Hits: 10 songs → A song is planned 4 times more frequently than New.

    • New: 20 songs → A song is planned 4 times less frequently than Hits.

    • Recurrent: 40 songs → A song is planned 8 times less frequently than Hits.

  • Assuming each song lasts 3 minutes, there are 20 category entries per hour (1 entry every 3 minutes).

    • New Songs: Each song will play 6 times in 24 hours.

    • Hit Songs: Each song will play 24 times in 24 hours.

    • Recurrent Songs: Each song will play 3 times in 24 hours.

Detailed Calculation

  1. Total Entries in 24 Hours:

    • 20 entries/hour × 24 hours = 480 total slots.

  2. Frequency of Each Category:

    • New: Appears once every 4-slot cycle.

    • Hit: Appears twice every 4-slot cycle.

    • Recurrent: Appears once every 4-slot cycle.

  3. Distribution of Total Slots:

    • The total cycle length is 4 slots. Therefore:

      • New: 1/4 of the time → 480 × 1/4 = 120 slots.

      • Hit: 2/4 of the time → 480 × 2/4 = 240 slots.

      • Recurrent: 1/4 of the time → 480 × 1/4 = 120 slots.

  4. Calculate Repetitions per Song:

    • New: 120 slots / 20 songs = 6 repetitions per song/day.

    • Hit: 240 slots / 10 songs = 24 repetitions per song/day.

    • Recurrent: 120 slots / 40 songs = 3 repetitions per song/day.

This calculation aligns with the frequency and distribution based on the clock sequence and the number of tracks in each category.