Categories & packets

Learn the category basics in one video: rank order scheduling, views, moving songs, selection categories, rules and rotation charts.

Start from the recommended category rule settings, and see why a bigger search depth or repeat-play setting won’t improve your schedules.

Design up to ten category views with their own columns, then add, change, move and restyle columns with a right-click on the heading.

Add Start and End Date columns to a category view and choose how the dates, including Date Added, are displayed.

Change the fonts in your category lists.

Set the rank order your categories schedule in, and link categories so they schedule in the same pass.

Set the search depth (maximum number of choices) at 10 to 15% of a category, and let M1 adjust it automatically.

Know what the repeat-play rule is for: keeping songs from repeating too soon after a shuffle or a manual search-and-schedule.

Choose per category whether M1 flips hour-restricted songs or holds them, so restricted songs neither bunch up nor lose too many plays.

Change the play percentage on non-music cards when it is locked at 100%.

Use packets, categories inside categories, to rotate a group of songs as one: examples, how to add a packet and how to remove one.

Use packets to give some songs less airplay, play one song twice as often, or keep the lesser hits by big artists in play.

Work out the turnover of songs inside a packet yourself, since the rotation prediction chart counts a packet as one song.

Put songs in two categories at once with a Selection category, for a weekend show or a countdown, and remove one when you are done.

Schedule songs from specific years: a Selection category for whole shows, or a song-from-search clock item for single slots.

Decide how often to shuffle each category and when: why shuffling breaks predictability, and the rules that help after a shuffle.

Re-schedule a category’s overnight songs later in the day with Recycle, the M1 way that keeps other rotations intact.