Which tool does which job?
Each kind of programming has its own tool in the radio panel, and most scheduling headaches come from using the wrong one. Match the job first, then build it.
| What you want on air | Use | How it behaves |
|---|---|---|
| Your everyday music mix | General rotation (Format tab) | For every song, Auto DJ picks one playlist at random by the weight you gave it |
| Ads, IDs or promos at a steady pace | Interval playlist | Comes round every so many songs or minutes and waits for the current song to end |
| A bulletin or show at a set time | Scheduled playlist, or a show block in the week planner | Plays through, then the rotation returns; it can start on the minute instead of waiting |
| A whole daypart with one sound | Time window in the week planner | The playlist or clock fills the window from start to end |
| An hour with a shape | Hour clock | A running order of music, jingles, IDs, commercials, news, weather and programs |
| A recorded or syndicated show | Programs tab | Files and breaks in order, airing once or weekly, with an optional expiry date |
| Christmas or a one-off week | Seasonal schedule | Replaces your normal week between two dates, but only at the times where it has slots |
Lay a floor under the whole week
Build your default playlist before anything else, because it plays whenever nothing is scheduled. Without one, the panel falls back to shuffling your entire library, and that library holds every file you uploaded. Your ads and station IDs could come up as if they were songs (that's our reading of how the fallback works, and the reason this step comes first).
Choose music that suits any hour, with enough tracks that the small hours don't sound like a loop. The panel shows an estimated running time beside each playlist's track count, and the clock editor's Check box warns you when a playlist is empty or running thin.
Drawing a radio show clock
A clock is one hour of programming you can reuse, and each part of it is either In sequence, taking its turn, or Fixed at a set minute past the hour. Here is one way a weekday morning hour could look, as an example and not a formula:
- News, fixed at :00
- Station ID, then four songs from your hits playlist, in sequence
- Commercial break, fixed at :20
- Jingle, then two songs from a second playlist, in sequence
- Station ID, fixed at :30, then eight songs in sequence
Pin only what a listener or an advertiser actually sets a watch by. That's our advice, not a panel rule: songs run to their own lengths, so the more fixed points you add, the more the hour has to bend around them. Read the hour preview before you save, and give mornings, evenings and weekends a clock each.
Clocks always go into the week as time windows, and a window can't cross midnight. A late show running from 10 PM to 2 AM has to be placed as two windows, one on each side of midnight.
A line-up on your page is not a schedule
The Schedule tab holds two different things, and mixing them up is how a show gets announced and never airs. Your shows is the public line-up that listeners see on your station page, in your app and, once your listing is approved, in the guide; nothing plays from it. Listeners see it as on now and up next. The week planner further down the tab is what actually decides what goes out. A show you want heard and seen needs an entry in both.
When you drop something on the planner, the Dropping makes choice matters. A show plays through once at that time and the rotation resumes; a time window fills the whole span. Blocks line up in 5-minute steps, in your station's time zone.
A scheduled show normally waits for the current song to finish, so it can start a little late. Tick the option to start on the minute and whatever is playing fades out, which suits a top-of-the-hour bulletin and probably not a relaxed music show.
A folder playlist set to play only the newest track is the easy way to run a daily bulletin: give it a slot in the week once, and after that each file you upload is the one that airs. If nobody uploads, we'd expect yesterday's file to stay the newest, so make that upload somebody's job.
The order that avoids surprises
Some settings restart Auto DJ and some only go live when you save, so the sequence matters more than it looks.
- Settle Live settings first. Time zone, recording, dead-air detection and, on Platinum, next-show handoff and the standby source sit under Go live. Saving them restarts Auto DJ once: a few seconds of silence, and any DJ on air has to reconnect. Do it now, not during a show.
- Upload and sort your music. Uploading only puts a file in the library. It reaches the air once it is in a playlist and that playlist is saved, unless it went into a folder a folder playlist plays.
- Build the default, then the rotation and intervals.
- Draw your clocks and place everything in the week planner.
- Read the week check. It flags overlapping windows and which one wins, slots that would go silent because their playlist is empty or deleted, and shows that run into each other.
- Press Save programming and wait for All changes saved. The Format, Playlists, Schedule, Clocks and Programs tabs share one draft, and your listeners hear none of it until then.
- Add the public line-up, DJ accounts and DJ hours. These save by themselves, and changing DJ hours never restarts anything.
What happens when a DJ takes over, and when they leave
A live show needs no schedule change: connect an encoder, or press Go live in the browser studio, and you take the air from Auto DJ. Disconnect and the automation is back. Everything in between is worth knowing before your first real show.
| The moment | What the station does | What to set |
|---|---|---|
| DJ connects | Live audio replaces Auto DJ | Give each DJ their own login; they get their own settings |
| DJ signs off or loses the connection | Music returns on its own | Nothing |
| DJ's hours run out | They're taken off air | Set DJ hours; without them a DJ can go live whenever they like |
| DJ stays connected but silent | With dead-air detection on, they count as gone after the time you pick and Auto DJ fills in | Switch on dead-air detection in Live settings |
| DJ's encoder sends more than the plan's bitrate | The encoder is dropped and the panel says why | Have DJs stay at or under 128 Kbps on Premium, 320 Kbps on Platinum |
| You need someone off air now | Disconnect removes them from On air now | Lock them out for 15 minutes to 7 days, because most encoders reconnect on their own |
| One DJ follows another | On Platinum, the next DJ connects early to /next and goes on air as the first one leaves | Turn on next-show handoff |
| You want a backup encoder | On Platinum, a standby source gets its own /standby mount | Turn on the standby source |
Keep something scheduled underneath every live show. Auto DJ plays the blocks you placed whenever nobody is live, so a DJ who oversleeps costs you a show and not an hour of silence.
Rehearse once before launch, or at a quiet hour, because the test goes out on your real stream. Add a test DJ and listen on your phone: connect, disconnect, then connect again and stay silent past your dead-air time. Go live › On air now shows who the station thinks is live. With recording turned on, each live show also lands in your library as an MP3, ready to become an episode through podcast publishing.
The browser studio goes on air as one of your DJs and follows that DJ's hours, so you need at least one DJ account even if you are the only presenter. Use Chrome, Edge or Firefox.
Knowing when the station has gone quiet
A station nobody is watching needs to tell you when something is wrong, and that alert starts switched off. Open the Reliability tab, tick the off-air email, choose how many minutes of nothing should trigger it, and add anyone else who should hear. You get a second email when the station is back.
- Station playing the wrong thing? Look for the unsaved-changes bar first. The last saved programming keeps playing until you save.
- Silence with Auto DJ on air? Check that your rotation or default playlist has tracks, then try Restart.
- A schedule change went badly? Version history on the Reliability tab keeps the last 50 versions, and a restore can itself be undone.
- Several people in the panel? Start, Stop and Restart have no confirmation step, so agree who touches them.
Reruns have rules too
If you rely on the US statutory licence for recordings, how often you repeat a show can matter as well as what's in it. Section 114 of the US Copyright Act limits a music program with a set running order and advance-announced airings to 3 airings in any two weeks if it runs under an hour, or 4 if it runs an hour or more. Archived and continuous programs have rules of their own. So one announced airing a week leaves you room. A weekly show plus a weekly repeat makes four airings in two weeks, which is over the limit for a show under an hour and right at it for a longer one, and the same show announced every day would be over either way, on our general reading. This isn't legal advice, and the licensing guide sets out the wider list.
Auto DJ builds the US webcasting play rules into its rotation, Smart shuffle in the playout settings can follow them, and a track leaves the air by itself once its rights end date passes. Don't assume that reaches a show you built by hand in a fixed order: check those yourself. The licences stay yours to arrange, and our royalty fees guide explains the main ones.
Which plan holds your week?
Premium has the whole scheduling toolkit, and Platinum is about what happens around it: a bigger library, more presenters and handovers without a gap. The Free plan has no Auto DJ, because it has no music storage, so that station is on air only while an encoder is connected.
| For a scheduled week | Premium | Platinum |
|---|---|---|
| Music storage | 20 GB | 100 GB |
| DJ logins | 5 | 20 |
| Clocks, seasonal schedules, recorded shows, week check | Included | Included |
| Automatic takeover and handback, browser studio | Included | Included |
| Gapless handovers, backup encoder, standby slot | Not included | Included |
| Even loudness, your own cue points, listener requests, voice links | Not included | Included |
| Your first hour clock built for you | Not listed | Included |
Choose Premium if one or two people present and Auto DJ does the rest. Choose Platinum if your day is a chain of back-to-back presenters, or if a gap between two shows would bother you. Sound quality, listener limits and everything else are compared on the radio hosting page.
This setup isn't for everyone. Your library and schedule live on our servers in New York or Bucharest, so a studio that needs its playout on a machine in its own building wants something else.
Questions people ask
- What if a DJ forgets to sign off?
- If they have DJ hours, they're taken off air when the time runs out. If their encoder stays connected and sends silence, and dead-air detection is on, they count as gone after the time you picked and Auto DJ fills in. You can also press Disconnect and lock them out for a while.
- My presenters are in different time zones. Whose clock does the schedule follow?
- Your station's. The week planner and DJ hours both follow the one time zone set in Live settings, so tell each presenter their slot in station time. Changing that time zone later restarts Auto DJ once, which is one more reason to set it first.
- How do I repeat a recorded show?
- Build it on the Programs tab, then add an airing for each repeat, once or weekly, with an expiry date if it should come off by itself. Save episode saves on the spot, along with any other programming changes you had waiting.