Custom Rotations

  1. Centova Cast - Client Usage Guide
    1. Basic Usage Guide
      1. Obtaining a Hosting Account
      2. Setting up your stream
      3. Your First Broadcast
      4. Viewing Statistics
    2. Advanced Usage Guide
      1. Creating Advanced Playlists
      2. Adding an Introduction Track
      3. Providing Access to DJs
      4. Managing Media Files
      5. Uploading Media via FTP
      6. Viewing Station Logs
      7. Publishing Station Information on Your Web Site
      8. Configuring Relaying
  2. Centova Cast - Client Reference Manual
    1. Accessing Your Account
    2. Dashboard
    3. Configuration Settings
      1. Stream
      2. AutoDJ
      3. Widgets
      4. Files (SHOUTcast v1/v2)
      5. Albums
      6. Server Overrides (SHOUTcast v1/v2)
      7. Relaying (SHOUTcast v1/v2)
      8. Master Relaying (IceCast)
      9. Mountpoint Relaying (IceCast)
      10. Mount Points
      11. Advanced
    4. Widgets
      1. Stream Status Summary
      2. Stream Details
      3. Recent Tracks
      4. Listener Map
      5. On-demand Content
      6. Song Requests
      7. Tune In
      8. Stream Directory
      9. Web Player
    5. DJ Management
    6. Statistics Report
    7. Broadcast Reports
    8. Current Listeners
    9. Server Logs
    10. Server Controls
    11. AutoDJ Controls
    12. Playlist Manager
    13. Media Library
    14. File Manager

Custom Rotations

Your account includes several sample playlists representing common playback rotations used by many stations. You may, however, wish to create a custom set of playback rotations for more fine-grained control over the playback frequency of your tracks.

Configuring the Playlist

You can configure a general rotation playlist by creating a new playlist, then:

  1. Set the playlist type to General rotation.

  2. Specify a Playback weight. See the next section for details.

  3. Click the Save button to save the playlist.

  4. Add media to the playlist as explained in Adding Media to a Playlist in the Basic Usage guide.

Playlist Weighting

When creating a General Rotation playlist, the most important option is the Playback weight. The weight controls how often tracks from this playlist are played relative to tracks from other General Rotation playlists; tracks from a playlist with a higher weight will be played more frequently than tracks from a playlist with a lower weight. You can use this to ensure that, for example, new releases (in one playlist) are played more frequently than older tracks (in another playlist).

Example

As an example, let's assume you want to set up your station to play ten (10) "top 40" tracks per hour, four (4) "classic" tracks per hour, and one (1) "oldies" track per hour, on average. To accomplish this, you might create the following three playlists:

Top 40             Weight: 10
Classic            Weight: 4
Oldies             Weight: 1

With this configuration, regardless of the number of tracks in each playlist, the selection of tracks played from each playlist will always match the weighting you have configured.

Note: The weight values don't actually correspond to "tracks per hour" -- the above example just assumes roughly 15 tracks per hour based on a 4-minute average track length. Weights are actually just a relative measure used to indicate how often you want each playlist to be used relative to the others and don't have any special significance beyond that. So for example, you would see identical results if you had used weights of 100/40/10 instead of 10/4/1.

Other Settings

General rotation playlists support a variety of other features for controlling how general rotation tracks are played. For more information about the settings available for General Rotation playlists, please see the General Rotation Playlist Options section of the Reference Manual.

Next: Centova Cast - Client Usage Guide