Playlists

A playlist is a pool of tracks plus the rules for drawing from it. Playlists reach air in three different ways, and the settings on the playlist behave differently in each: a scheduled show can hand a whole hour to one, a clock slot can pull one track at a time out of one, and — when nothing at all is scheduled — every general rotation playlist you own runs the station between shows on its own.

That last one is the part most operators do not expect, so it comes first.

Playlists fill unscheduled airtime by default

You do not have to set anything up for this. Every playlist that is Enabled and set to General Rotation with at least one ready track is automatically part of your station's rotation between shows. No fallback playlist, no schedule entry, no clock: build one playlist, upload music, and the station has something to play around the clock.

This is called ambient rotation, and it is what runs whenever nothing else is on air — overnight, between shows, on a day with an empty schedule, or underneath a live show whose DJ has not connected yet.

Two consequences worth knowing:

• A fallback playlist is optional now. It used to be the only thing standing between an empty schedule and the emergency tone. Today it is a backstop *behind* the rotation, for the case where every general playlist is empty or blocked at the same moment. Studio only raises this as an error if you have no fallback and no general rotation playlist — otherwise it just tells you how many playlists are covering your unscheduled airtime.
• Every playlist you build joins the rotation unless you say otherwise. If you created a playlist purely to feed one clock slot or one specialist show, it is *also* competing for unscheduled airtime. Turn off Enabled to take it out of ambient rotation while leaving it available to the clock or show that names it directly. The filler playlist is the one exception — it is excluded automatically, so its emergency tone never gets dealt into normal rotation.

Playlist Type

The type decides how a playlist behaves *in ambient rotation only*. It has no effect when a schedule event plays the playlist directly or a clock slot pulls from it — a clock already states its own cadence, and a station-wide interrupt cutting into a scheduled show would override the precise instruction with the vague one.

The last three are interrupts. They are how a station without a clockwheel gets "an ID every 4 songs", "traffic every 20 minutes", or "news at :00" — the same cadence a clock expresses with track counts and pinned minutes, available to stations that never built one.

When more than one interrupt is due at the same moment, the tightest deadline wins: Once per Hour first, then Once per x Minutes, then Once per x Songs. An "at :05" bulletin has a narrow window to hit; a song counter only drifts.

Some details that decide when an interrupt actually fires:

• A playlist that has never aired is due immediately — including the first time you save it.
• Cadence is counted from the playlist's last play, so an interrupt that gets skipped does not "owe" you catch-up plays afterwards.
• Only songs count as songs. For *Once per x Songs*, jingles, sweepers, talk breaks and filler are not counted. Without that, "every 4 songs" would arrive early on any station running sweepers.
• Once per Hour waits rather than runs late. It fires as soon as possible after the minute you set, but if the hour has already run past that window it waits for the next hour instead of going out badly late. Nothing is ever cut off part-way, so a song still playing at your minute finishes first.
• An empty interrupt is stepped over, not fatal. If the playlist has no ready media when it comes due, the station plays music instead of dead air — and the playlist screen warns you, because a rule that is silently ignored every time should say so.

Rotation weight

Weight (1–25) only matters when two or more General Rotation playlists are competing for unscheduled airtime. Studio draws from the pool in proportion to weight: a playlist at 3 wins roughly three times as often as one at 1.

If you have exactly one general playlist, or your station runs entirely on clocks and scheduled shows, weight does nothing at all.

Weight decides *which playlist* gets asked for a track. What comes out of that playlist is decided separately, by Song Playback Order.

Song Playback Order

• Smart Rotation — least recently played first, so the whole playlist cycles evenly. The safe default for music.
• Shuffled — the playlist is shuffled into a deck and played through in that order, then reshuffled. Adding or removing tracks reshuffles automatically.
• Random — a genuinely random pick every time, repeats included.
• Sequential — your manual order, top to bottom. Use it for ordered features, countdowns, or a scripted hour.

Separation rules

Three limits, all in minutes, all measured against what the station has actually played:

• Artist separation — do not play this artist again within x minutes.
• Title separation — do not play this title again within x minutes.
• Avoid repeat — do not play this exact track again within x minutes.

Set any of them to 0 to switch that rule off.

Separation applies everywhere the playlist is used — ambient rotation, a scheduled playlist show, and a clock slot pulling from it — not just between shows. It is checked against the whole station's recent output, not just this playlist's, so two playlists that share an artist still respect each other.

If the rules block every eligible track, Studio relaxes them for that one pick rather than going silent. Rules degrade before dead air. If that happens constantly, the playlist is too small for the separation you asked of it.

Fallback and filler

Two playlists can be given a station role from the playlist screen:

• Set as fallback — the backstop behind ambient rotation, used when no general rotation playlist can produce a track. Optional, and increasingly rarely reached. Note that a fallback playlist set to General Rotation is *also* an ordinary member of the rotation pool.
• Set as filler — the last resort, and also the source of short beds used to land exactly on a show's start time. Excluded from ambient rotation automatically.

Create a playlist

Create playlists around programming intent: daytime rotation, specialist show library, overnight gold, promos, or seasonal music. Keep names clear because the Schedule and Clocks screens display them in selection menus.

Use the library picker to add tracks. Ordered playlists are useful for fixed shows; rotating playlists are better for long-running automation because Studio can keep pulling from the pool.

Use playlists in schedules and clocks

A show can play one playlist directly, or a clock can reference different playlists in different parts of the hour. Clocks are usually better when you want a repeatable station sound with IDs, talk breaks, and music categories.

The two are not the same thing from the playlist's point of view. A playlist show hands the whole hour to the playlist; a clock slot pulls one track at a time out of it and decides everything else itself. In both cases the playlist's type and weight are ignored — the schedule or the clock has already decided what plays and when.

Attach a voice track to a playlist

A voice track can be attached to a playlist rather than to a date, which is how you say "play this intro before that song, every time it comes round" without rebuilding it each week. See Voice Tracks.

Because a playlist reaches air in the ways above, placing one asks which of them you mean. The default covers both, so a link plays whether the playlist is running as a show or a clock slot has pulled the track out of it; Not in clock shows keeps it out of clockwheel hours. The placed voice-track list states which per row.

Maintenance habits

Review high-rotation playlists regularly. Remove stale promos, add fresh songs, and keep specialist playlists narrow enough that the show still sounds intentional.

Check the playlist screen for rule warnings after any edit. An interrupt with no minute set, a song counter of 0, or an empty interrupt playlist will never fire, and Studio flags each of those where you set them.