3. Automating your station's broadcast

So you know what a tag and how to use them fully. Or do you?

In the previous help article, we teased that tags serve an important purpose beyond keeping your media library nice and tidy. That other purpose was broadcast automation. Well, now it’s time to make good on that promise and show you the true power of tags.

As a recap, here’s what we said about using tags for broadcast automation:

Tags aren’t just for tidying up - they can also run your broadcasts for you. You can assign tags to playlists so that, when the playlist runs, your station will randomly pull and play matching media. This means you can skip the track-by-track curation. Just tag your media, link those tags to a playlist, and schedule it. Job done.

In this guide, you’ll learn about all the features we support to make automating your station’s broadcast a breeze. Once you’re finished with this help article you’ll be comfortable with the following:

1. How to use tags to automate your station’s broadcast, and
2. What are event intros and how to add one to an event.

Enough preamble, let’s get into the nitty gritty!

Adding your first tag to a playlist

Tags by themselves are only useful when it comes to organising your media library. Tags when added to playlists are the winning combination when it comes to broadcast automation.

We’ll explain what effect adding a tag to any playlist has on what is broadcast from your station’s stream in the next section. For now, where just going to show you how to add a tag to a playlist.

1. On your computer, open Radio Cult.

2. Click the Media button in the top navigation bar to head to the Media page.

3. Click the Playlists button in the side navigation bar to head to the Playlists page.

4. Click the playlist you want to add a tag to.

5. Click the Add tag button.

6. Click the tag in the Tags dropdown you want to add to the playlist.

Nice one - your first tag has been added to a playlist. Read on to find out why we had you do that.

What does adding a tag to a playlist actually do

Well, before we answer that crucial question, let’s make a couple of things clear:

1. A playlist can include as many different tags as your heart desires, and
2. The same tag can be added to a playlist multiple times.

With that out of the way, let’s use a couple of examples to demonstrate what adding a tag to a playlist actually does:

Say your playlist is structured in the following way:

So when this playlist starts being broadcasted, your streaming server will “randomly” choose a piece of media with the CLASSICAL tag for the first tag entry. Then it will repeat this process for each subsequent CLASSICAL tag entry. It will also ensure for each subsequent tag entry that a different CLASSICAL-tagged piece of media will be broadcasted (where possible).

As you can see, this allows you to set the tone of the playlist, without having to individually curate every individual track within it.

Let’s move on to a slightly more complex example. Say you have another playlist which looks like this:

For this particular playlist, your streaming server will again “randomly” choose a media file tagged with STING to begin the broadcast. This is useful if you want the broadcast to open with a musical phrase or sound effect unique to your station. It will then specifically broadcast Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. The rest of the broadcast will play out just like the previous example, as again there are 3 CLASSICAL tag entries one after the other.

We demonstrated this sort of the playlist structure for the following reasons:

1. To show how easy tags make it to include your stations' stings at the beginning of a show. Though the world’s your oyster - you could include this STING tag or multiple copies of it at any point during the playlist.
2. To make abundantly clear that a playlist doesn’t have to contain only tag entries or only media files. If you want both in your playlists, then have at it.

What are event intros and how to add one to an event

Now you may be wondering what happens if I have an upcoming event where:

1. I only want to broadcast a single media file - say a pre-recorded 1 hour DJ set, and
2. I want the event to begin with a sting, message or jingle.

Do I have to go through the hassle of including a single media file and the relevant tag in a playlist to get this to work? Well, fear not because this hypothetical hassle only exists in your imagination. Let us introduce you to the wonders of event intros.

Any pre-record or playlist event can have an intro. An intro plays once at the start of an event. It can be a specific media file or a tag. If you select a tag, then your streaming server will play one random media file from that tag.

Let’s show you how to add an intro to an event similar to the example we just mentioned:

1. Click the Schedule button in the top navigation bar to go to the Schedule page.

2. Click any time on the calendar.

Tip: To create a longer event, drag your mouse down the page while you’re selecting the time.

3. Add a Title to the event.

4. Click the Pre-record button in the Media section.

5. Click the media file you want to add to the event.

6. Click the Advanced button in the Media section.

7. Click the Intro dropdown.

8. Click the Tags button if you want to add a tag intro (ignore this step if you want to add a media file intro).

9. Click the tag you want to add as the event intro. If you’re adding a media file intro, click the appropriate media file.

10. Click the Create event button.

Nicely done - you’ve now created your first event with an intro.

With that all said and done, you should now be familiar with the crucial features we support in automating your station’s broadcast. We’ll now leave it up to you to automate your station how you please.

By now we’d like to think you’re no longer a beginner with the platform. Amongst other things, you’ve created some events, you’ve added some media files and you’ve added some tags. But all this new knowledge will be for nothing, if your listeners can’t actually listen to your station’s stream. So click here to learn how to set up your embed player.