Fine-Tune Your Music

Music software is a wonderful thing, but it easily falls victim to rule clutter and the law of action-and-reaction. When we review music software for clients, we sometimes observe a tendency to add new rules for music scheduling without cleaning out the old rules. All music software works like a funnel. There's a big opening at the top with all the songs you might play. Before songs drip from the bottom of the funnel to actual airplay, they are squeezed by the narrowing of the funnel. The more rules and restrictions you add, the fewer the songs that make the grade.

Give your music software a tune-up. The Lund Consultants offer these six tips for better music scheduling:

• Clean out unneeded rules. You probably no longer need those "boy band" or Garth Brooks rules you had when you played a ton of songs by those artists. Watch for rules that duplicate or conflict with each other. Examine your artist, special artist, and group separation rules in particular.
• Use the fewest rules possible to achieve the sound you desire. Every restriction causes a reaction or limitation somewhere in your scheduling.
• Use the right tempo controls. Most software programs offer numerous ways to control the pace of your music. Avoid jarring shifts in tempo and swaths of slow songs. Try starting each sweep or hour at a higher pace, and use rules to stay within a speed range.
• Stretch your library. Use gold recycling from midday to the next overnight. These are largely exclusive listening periods, and you can vary the actual mix of songs by not recycling currents and recurrents.
• Don't ask for the impossible. Having a scheduling rule that says no male artists back-to-back may sound like a good move for variety, but not if your library is 80% male artists. The same goes for tempo restrictions.
• Avoid artist repeats and conflicts. Check your spelling and spacing on artist names, as well as solo versus group artists such as Rob Thomas and Matchbox Twenty or the Eagles and their various members. Be aware of secondary artists that should be listed separately in most software.