Auto DJ Show Scheduling

Posted 11th March 2016 by Lee

We often get asked how to set up Auto DJ to schedule shows for your listeners – so if you’re looking to have a “personal touch” to your standard Auto DJ programme, this could be the answer.

Auto DJ Scenario

Let’s work on the assumption that you are a radio broadcaster for a community radio with a regular slot each week – but you’re DJ can’t make it that week, so instead of replacing them you could use Auto DJ to schedule their show – from the music, to the voice overs and jingles. With a little bit of pre-recording in tools such as Audacity, you could have the show on the road in no time at all.

Setup Your Playlist

The first thing we need to do is collect our songs together, so we can upload them to Auto DJ (if they aren’t there already!) If you are using voice overs and other things (ie, if you have pre-recorded parts of your show in Audacity for example) then you should also collect these together (or record them!) and have them ready to upload to the server. Once you have this, login to CentovaCast and head to the ‘Playlists’ tab and choose ‘New Playlist’ from the top righthand side.

Here you can see that I have set up the new playlist called “Lee’s Show”. The important bit is the scheduled playlist details, this tells Auto DJ when to start (and stop!) your playlist. In this case I’ve scheduled it to run on 12/03/2016 at 09:00am until completion. You can specify the amount of minutes you wish to run for, but in this case I’ve chose the option to play until completion. Depending on your situation you may wish to change the settings slightly!

So, my hour slot from 09:00 – 10:00 will require 60 minutes worth of “tracks” in the Auto DJ. Let’s head over to the “Media” section and get this show on the road…

Order Your Tracks

So now we are looking at assigning the tracks to your playlist. For demo purposes, I don’t have 60 minutes of music uploaded to Centova – have only got a couple of (really bad) tracks for testing purposes, so to save myself a little time here, you can just be imaginative.

In the media manager, head to ‘Media Library’ in the top left hand side of the screen and choose your songs, just simply drag these into the playlist you have just created. Keep adding tracks here via the usual methods until your playlist is long enough for your entire show. If you are unsure on how to add tracks to your Auto DJ, check this KB article here.

The timing on the playlist should equal the time your show is scheduled to run for, unless you have defined a cut-off time for the playlist. And there you have it! These are scheduled to play at 09:00 -onwards to cover the show where I shall be out of the office! Simple.. If you have any questions or queries on doing this, hit us up via social media, on Facebook, Twitter, G+ or submit a ticket to us and we will be happy to help!

Categories: SHOUTcast