MusicOne Windows · Rules & rule violations
Understanding Rule Violations When Scheduling
See why M1 stops for a rule violation as it schedules, how to place the song without breaking a rule, and how to tell when your rules are too tight.
Updated
These two videos show what M1 does when it stops for a rule violation during scheduling, and how to make the editing choice.
Watch the video on YouTube: Scheduling - Rule Violations During Scheduling Part 1
Watch the video on YouTube: Scheduling - Rule Violations During Scheduling - 2
Read and resolve rule violations
Music 1 schedules the day in multiple passes, in rank order. In this setup it schedules the C1 category from midnight through 11 pm, then makes another pass for B2, and so on. As it does, it will hit some slots (not a lot, we hope) where all of its choices at that moment violate one of your formatting rules. Then it stops and asks you what to do.
That usually happens when Music 1 is near the bottom of a category’s card stack: it has just a handful of songs left to schedule before the stack turns over, so it has very few choices.
Example 1: a sound code violation
Music 1 stops on the A1 category. It’s at the bottom of the card stack, with only one choice: Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. The violation in this slot is Rock, a sound code violation.
To see what that means, open Rules, Edit, Sound Codes. This station allows a maximum of three rock songs an hour, and the hour already has three.
Best case: jump ahead to the next hour and see if Bruce fits in any of those slots. The first song of the 1 am hour won’t work: the last song of the midnight hour is a rock song (Boston), so that would be a rock-to-rock violation. The sound code rules restrict scheduling from a rock song into sound code 2 (rock), sound code 7 (easy listening) or sound code 8 (hard rock).
Bounce to the next hour and click the first A1 slot there. No violations for Bruce.
Double-click Bruce. The song goes into the A1 slot without any rule violation.
All that took was jumping ahead two hours, and Born in the U.S.A. plays in the overnight show as it was supposed to. Then you continue scheduling until Music 1 finds another violation to show you.
Example 2: when your rules are a little too tight
Normally your selection method is Rotate with Multiple Choices, with the dig level (the number of choices) set automatically. Music 1 sets it at about 20% of the category: the A2 category has 130 songs, so the dig level is 26.
In this schedule, Music 1 stops in the A2 category in the midnight hour, at 12:55, and all 26 songs at the top of the stack violate a rule. That’s unusual. It usually means you’ve set rules that conflict with the content of the library, so songs are ruled out of too many slots.
The Cars: artist separation. Another song by The Cars is scheduled less than an hour away.
The other two choices: a fast-to-slow rule would be violated, and there’s an overall limit on how many slow songs can schedule in the hour.
Open Rules, Edit to see the tempo rules on this clock: scheduling from a fast song into a slow song is ruled out, and so is scheduling from a slow song into either another slow song or a fast song. The program director also allows no more than three slow songs an hour, and by scheduling the other categories, Music 1 has already scheduled three slow songs in this hour.
Search the whole A2 category (all 130 songs) and you see almost everything violates a rule in this slot. Maybe one third of the songs don’t.
Rules are guidelines, not the law
Some editing is almost always necessary, and that takes human choices. The rules are general guidelines you put up for your music flow. When all of Music 1’s choices violate your rules, you make the call.
But if you see the same rule come up over and over again, your rules are probably too tight: they conflict with the overall content of the library. Contact the Music 1 office and we’ll help you figure it out.