Artist Separation Not Working

Hi Steve, I have the new station using Music 1 SE, but I’m having a problem with artist separation, it doesn’t seem to be working. I’m either getting a double shot of the artist, which is not set, or I’m getting the artist twice within the hour. I must be missing something. Can you help me out.

Yes, here’s the check list

1) Click the Artist button to show the list of artists

2) Open the Edit menu and select: Compute Maximum Separations

3) Click to select the first artist….scroll to bottom of list and hold shift key and click on last artist, to select them all.

4) Open the Update Drop-down field at the top of the artist list and select: “Separation”

5) To the right, in the next field it should say: Computed Separation

6) Click the yellow button to the right of that. All the artists will be set for either the computed separation or 2 hours, whichever is less.

7) Look at your categories in RANK order (click the “rank” heading at the top of the song list so you see the songs in 1-2-3-4 order. Then scroll up and down the list to be sure you don’t have songs by same artist next to each other…you want them spread thru the list equally. A Shuffle command with “Separate Artists” will do a good job, if not.

After those steps are taken, Load a new schedule. Open Rules>Enforcement.

Be sure there is a check in the Artist Separation box. That tells M1 to enforce the rule. If it is not checked, M1 is not observing that rule. Also, you must be scheduling in “Manual” scheduling mode. If not, if you are scheduling in “Automatic”, M1 will not stop for any rule violation….Automatic is only for making a very quick must-get-it-done-now type of log, it doesn’t produce the very best results because the computer has to make choices when violations are encountered and computers don’t have much sense about such things.

Special Note About Automatic Scheduling: Music 1 SE will not stop to display rule violations when it is scheduling in Automatic mode. When slots are encountered where all the current choices would violate one of your formatting rules, it will make a choice itself and fill the slot. After the schedule is finished, you can then scroll through the schedule and see M1 has ‘flagged’ the violations by displaying those Song Titles in red font. In the Log/List view it will have a “violations” column that will display the specific violation for each song.

When scheduling in Automatic mode with Music 1 Version 7/Professional, it WILL stop for violations until and unless you open the Rules>Enforcement menu and un-check some, or all, of the Rule boxes. In this manner, you can tell M1/Pro to ignore some rules but not others.

One artist plays three times in 40 minutes

We have Justin Bieber songs placed in 3 different categories. Yesterday he played 3 times in a 40 minute window. How can I prevent this from happening?

First, go to the Artists table and check to be sure you have a proper separation set for him. Also check to be sure there are no misspellings. Like if you had him in one time spelled bieber and another time spelled beiber. In such case, you open the mis-spelled one and correct it…when you close, M1 will ask if you want to ‘delete this duplicate artist’ and you say yes. It’ll put the proper spelling on all the artist carts that have the wrong spelling.

Next, look at the rules for the categories to be sure the box “don’t enforce artist separation” is not checked.

Next, load a schedule, go to Rules>Enforcement and be sure the box “Artist Separation” is checked. Any rule that has no check mark is not being enforced.

Also…if you have more than one song by same artist in any single category, make sure they are fully separated. Like if you have a category with 100 songs and 2 are by same artist, you’ll want them separated by between 30 and 60 or so slots in Rank order within the category. This will ensure that the two are well spaced in regular scheduling.

And finally, you’re not scheduling in ‘automatic’ mode are you? In Automatic, M1 does, of necessity, have to schedule some songs in violation of rules.