Music scheduling
Step 2: Categories
Configure the rotation groups that control how often songs play.
Categories are the groups of tracks your clocks draw from. They come from your music library, which you can bring in through the Soundwaves Relay from your playout system, import from a CSV file, or upload directly.
Categories have two levels: a category (for example "Music") contains subcategories (for example "A-list", "B-list" and "Gold"). Each subcategory has its own colour, which is used to identify it in clocks and logs.
How categories are used
- When you build a clock, each music position draws from one subcategory.
- When the scheduler fills that position, it picks a track from the subcategory that doesn't break any of your unbreakable rules.
- Pass orders are built from a list of subcategories.
How a track is picked
For each music position, the scheduler:
- Ranks the subcategory's tracks from most rested (played longest ago, or never played) to least rested.
- Takes the top share of that list, set by the category's dig depth.
- Tries those tracks in a random order, skipping any that break an unbreakable rule.
- Places the first track that breaks no rules at all. If every remaining track breaks at least one breakable rule, it places the one with the fewest.
If every track it tries breaks an unbreakable rule, or the subcategory has no tracks, the position is left unscheduled and shows up in Logs.
See Most rested first in Key concepts for more.
Next: Step 3: Dayparts.