music scheduling on time

we need to program music on an houly basis, that is audio files in specific folders should play at set times (f.e. soft music from 7 pm). we also would like to schedule a full week in advance. trying air list i discovered that .alb files don't seem to contain any time information. the computer will be shut down at midnight. how is raduga supposed to know how to proceed the next morning on a correct schedule ? what would be the best way to solve this problem ?

to b. spry: as you are selling raduga and airlist pro as a package too, it would be very helpful to have some information about raduga in air list's online help.

best,
andreas

Re: music scheduling on time

I have the same problem. We’ve been running Raduga on the air in the “shuffle” mode for almost a year with great results. But. it seems our audience is getting a bit more sophisticated. They are now asking for specific program segments. For instance 6:00 AM to 9:00 am, they want upbeat, lively music. During the workday, they like things a little more subdued, but about lunchtime, we need to pick up the tempo. After lunch, it’s back to our regular format. But by evening drive time, we need to sound wide-awake. About 6:00 PM, I’ve had several people request a “cocktail hour.” Friday and Saturday night, they'd like to dance, but generally, after dark, they want music that’s appropriate for more horizontal activities... You get the picture.

I’ve tried to fool Raduga to play these day parts by entering them as either .alb or .rot files in the provided scheduler. It will dutifully play them at the requested time, but when it returns to the “primary play list” it defaults to the first song in that list without shuffling. If it would just return to the primary play list where it left off, all would be fine. So far, I have not been able to get it to do that. It always goes to the first song in the list.

Short of buying Airlist, are their any simple work-arounds? I’m trying to keep this as simple as possible. In fact, the simplicity of Raduga is what attracted me in the first place.

Arlist may be great, but at first glance, it does not look like it will simplify my life.

Re: music scheduling on time

Andreas,
The .alb files created by AirList must be started by Raduga at the designated time using the event scheduler. For example, if you have generated a playlist for Monday, 7:00 AM, then you must program this time in the scheduler and specify the name of the .alb file to start. AirList always generates the same file name. Therefor you don't have to change you schedule for the next week.

Chuck,
I think you are addressing a different issue. Did you try the "Shuffle" mode? For exmaple you could schedule your "Coctail Hour.alb" at 6:00 PM. When you return to the "Default.alb" at 7:00 PM, the default playlist is shuffled and therefore it starts with a random track.

Re: music scheduling on time

I do run Raduga in "Shuffle." Maybe I'm just lucky and should have gone to Las Vegas instead, but it seems like every time I've tried scheduling alternative playlists for a couple of hours, when it goes back to the "default" playlist, Raduga plays the same song at the beginning of the "Default" file. It appears to have not shuffled that file, although that is the mode I run it in.

I must admit, I never checked the entire list, just the first song. So maybe I need to try this some more.

Admittedly, I've hesitated to mess with this a lot because Raduga is always running on the air, and it is awkward to get very "experimental" in public. Life was easier before we actually signed on and got an audience. This is an instance where running it on a second computer to experiment would be very handy.

Still, it would be a huge improvement, if in future versions, Raduga could just pick up where it left off in the "default" play list.

Re: music scheduling on time

We also await a version of Raduga whereby it will remember where it was in a given playlist, when that playlist is returned via the scheduler.

To help, we had written a schedulable shuffle command. At least they are shuffled when they return. Our banner ad is on the Raduga website. It is not free but it is quite cheap.

Re: music scheduling on time

I think this could be resolved by adding the time checking feature that is offered in Airlist/Stationplaylist software into Raduga. Then we could use the top of the hour markers, and Raduga would know when to add/drop songs at the end of the hour to make sure it was right on time for scheduling.

Does this make any sense? Maybe the .alb format should be changed to enable time checking and full compatibility with Stationplaylister and Airlist.

Just an idea.