Some stations are dealing with new operating procedures owing to the virus. This note concerns running pre-recorded programs in combination with automatic music recognition.
Scenario: DJs may record their shows in advance and upload the audio to an automation system for future scheduled play-out. Spinitron is set up for automatic music recognition.
Disable the connection between your automation and Spinitron.
If you don’t then automation and recognition will both put spins into playlists and the result will be lots of duplication. It doesn’t matter if you are running the robot DJ some of the time and pre-recorded shows at other times: recognition works for both.
You disable the connection on your end in the automation system. This basically means undoing the set-up instructions that you can find in the Automation Control Panel in Spinitron. It’s different for each automation system. If you need help, contact us.
Set automation mode to Live Assist so that recognition will add songs to playlists created in advance.
Every DJ should create a playlist in Spinitron corresponding to each program that they upload. DJs can either
a. Leave the playlist empty and recognition will add spins as they play on the stream,
or
b. Add all the playlists spins manually in advance and disable recognition for the duration of the program using the playlist preferences (in the cog icon, top right on the playlist worksheet page).
I followed the procedure as outlined up above. I tried it on my show today. Had some issues. The Music Recognition is not working. I had some songs that did not have the artist name.
It is not mentioned above. If a host has a 2 hour show, they will need to create 2 playlists, correct? There is currently a show that is a pre-recorded show and there is no playlist. What did I do wrong? How can I get this to work? please and Thank you.
Question #1 & #4 - Not working - The show at 8pm was a pre-recorder show. When I looked under Report - Search - it did not show any songs that played for the hours of 8-10pm. I did see some of the other syndicated shows was showing the music that played. I know the host didn’t put an empty playlist for last night show. But it should still record the music, correct?
Question #2 - That was an issue on my end about the artist not showing up.
Question #3 - The 2nd hour of my show didn’t record the music into the playlist. I had to go in and paste the 2nd hour list into the playlist.
Look in your automation log in Spinitron (in the admin area). It shows that only 4 songs were recognized between 6pm and 10pm. (Times there re UTC which is 4 hours ahead of Eastern).
We checked the logs in ACRCloud and saw the exact same thing. And the connection log shows there was no problem with ACRCloud connecting to your stream.
So we are left with the question: why were so few songs recognized during that time?
One possibility is that the music played is not fingerprinted in ACRCloud’s database. If the music you played is mostly available for streaming or to buy in things like Spotify and Apple Music then this isn’t the answer.
The other possibility is something technical. For example, pitch shift can affect recognition. For example, sometimes a DJ will produce a show and then in a final step before delivering it, adjust its duration to fit a specified time-slot by pitch shift. I know this is standard practice at at least one station.
Other kinds of degradation might explain it but pitch shift is most likely, I think.