There is so much documentation either necessary or useful for us as a new public radio station. This page will be an ongoing resource where we can consolidate our links for such stuff and not have it scattered over 35 different machines. If you run across anything that you think should be here, email us the link and a short description and we’ll see that it gets entered into the page.
While we’re putting this together for Ozcat Radio, as it grows it will become a useful resource page for other new stations. OK, here we go (in no particular order for now).
Tool Tutorials: RadioDJ and Audacity, primarily
I did software tutorials for a decade or so. These are a much more casual rip-and-read, off-the-cuff kind of introduction to some of the tools at our disposal. The highlighted titles open the videos.
1. The Ozcat Desktop
A simple 3 minute video about the basic Ozcat desktop that I posted on Facebook after a tough weekend botwise. All Ozcat DJs need to watch this, to understand the studio desktop we either work with or have to know how to suspend.
A 7:34 run-through of the elements of the RadioDJ desktop, our SoundXchange-legal library and automation software. This highlights the areas of it and explains them, and for anyone who has to interact with it, it details how to start and stop the system when you’re not using it, and to start it up again. It only looks complicated. Well, it’s pretty complicated underneath…
3. Stacking a Playlist for RadioDJ
How to most easily and correctly stack a playlist from our music library so the tracks can be added into the RadioDJ library for airplay. 7:25 long.
4. Loading a Playlist into RadioDJ’s library
How to load the playlist made in the previous lesson into the RadiDJ library database so the tracks can be played on the air. 11:22 long.
4. Ozcat Desktop Tools: Dolphin and EasyTag
An 8:24 long intro to the Dolphin File Manager, and how to access EasyTag through it. Dolphin has a few really helpful tweaks for stacking playlists and EasyTag is an… um… easy mp3 tagger. To go into the library, every track has to be tagged with at least artist and title in the mp3 tag for royalties.
5. Ozcat Audacity Trainer
The basics of using Audacity for Radio audio work. Also touches on remote workflow with Teamviewer. This one is 20 minutes long.
6. Ozcat RadioDJ Trainer 1: The Basics
This is more detail on RadioDJ for those who want to use it for their programs. It covers what’s available on the basic unlogin: all you need to stack and run programs, but not things that can break it. It’s 19 minutes long.
7. Ozcat RadioDJ Trainer 2: Loading, Categories, Rotations and Events
Intermediate and just short of advanced RadioDJ usage. Programing the automation with rotations, events and categories and adding material to the database just glancingly. 27 minutes long.
Archive Files, Still Some Good Info
- The Basics of Music Licensing in Digital Media – A bit dry, but it covers the subject pretty well. Copyright, royalties, podcasts, streaming audio & video, downloads, sampling and “fair use”, it touches it all.
- In the Matter of Commission Policy Concerning the Noncommercial Nature of Educational Broadcasting – The wonderfully named FCC bible on the subject of underwriting.
- The Public and Broadcasting – FCC document for the public file.
- FCC FM Station Self Inspection Check List – 35 pages long, so this is a link to an FCC PDF document that is what it says there.
- San Francisco-based Record Labels – Contact info. Fairly comprehensive.
- The Changing Face of Record Promotion 2010 – A nice overview of the record and radio businesses and the interaction between them. Viewed from the viewpoint of commercial radio, but the basics are the same.