The Amazing Clock Wheel has two additional configurable options for song selection when building playlists: a Dupe Checker and a Genre Checker. When you build your template and save your session for auto scheduling, these options are remembered as well. So if you are creating a template for an all electronic show, disbale the Genre Checker before you save your session. The next time your electronic session is scheduled to auto build the Genre Checker will be turned off before the playlist builds. Same goes for the Artist Check.

DUPE CHECKER

So far you have just built a pretty basic playlst using the Amazing Clock Wheel's default settings. In default mode the Amazing Clock Wheel will do a duplicate artist check when building your playlist. It keeps track of the last three hours of your new playlist and makes sure it doesn't play the same artist twice in that period. This feature is used by default to ensure that you build playlists that are compliant with RIAA guidelines for Internet broadcasts.

We had several requests from our users to make this feature adjustable so we have added a little config section where you can completely disable the duplicate artist check or change the length of time that the application keeps track of. To access this setting go up to the "Config" menu at the top and select "Dupe Checker."

Here you can enable/disable the duplicate artists check and set the length of time during which an artist should not repeat. If you could care less if an artist plays twice at all just uncheck the "Dupe Checker On/Off" box. Then close the window. Be sure not to click back on the main application window without closing this config window. You'll never be able to get this window open again - a small bug that needs to be addressed.

If you want to perform a duplicate artists check but would like the period of time to be greater or smaller than 3 hours, make sure the "Dupe Checker On/Off" box is checked and then change the time in the drop down menu below it. You can type in your own number or just select one from the menu.

A note on the Dupe Checker algorithm:

I had two choices for implementing the Dupe Checker:
1) If the Amazing Clock Wheel could not find an artist that has not been played in the last X hours from the remaining songs that have not been played from the list, it would go ahead and use its original choice.

2) If the Amazing Clock Wheel could not find an artist that has not been played in the last X hours from the remaining songs that have not been played from the list, it would continue to search for an alternate artist from the songs that HAVE already been played. Then if it still couldn't find one it would go with its original choice.

I decided to go with option #1 because I felt it would be better to repeat an artist than to repeat a song. The original concept of this app was to make sure all of your songs were played before they ever played again so allowing the ACW to choose a song that has already played was a bad idea.

GENRE CHECKER

It came to my attention that many radio station programmers try not to play two songs in a row with the same feel. Like playing two dance songs back-to-back, or two rap songs, two metal songs, etc. So I added the Genre Checker algorithm.

Go to the Config menu and select "Genre Checker."

This option is disabled by default. If you would like to perform the Genre Check when building your playlist simply check the box that says, "Genre Check On/Off." Now when your playlist is being generated the Amazing Clock Wheel will check the previous song and compare the genre of the new song. If they are the same the app will select a different song. The same song selectoin logic applies to this feature, it will only look in the remaining unplayed songs for a replacement and if it doesn't find one it will go with its first choice.

Remember if you want the Genre Checker to be engaged when your session is scheduled to auto build you must enable it, then save the session. Same applies to the Dupe Check.

Future versions of the Amazing Clock Wheel will allow you to specify your own additional song info [tempo, male/female artist, arrangement (solo/band/orchestration)] for use in selecting songs.

PLAYLIST TO TEXT OPTION

I recently received a request to add the ability to export your playlist to a text file. This program director wanted to be able to see a simple representation of what was being played at what time, broken down by hour. This was so he could decide where to insert live breaks into his show.

I have now added this feature to the application and again, this setting can be saved for each session individually. You may not need a text output for every playlist so you don't have to have it set for every one. Just remember, if you want to save this setting for a session so the text playlist is automatically writen every time the session is scheduled to run, you must check the box and then save the session.

The check box is located at the bottom of the Final Playlst panel. If the playlist you're building is called "hothitsradio_6 hour.m3u," the text playlist will be called "hothitsradio_6hour.m3u.txt" and will be in the same folder as the final playlist.

Click here to see a sample text output file.