We’ve been working toward the use of RadioDJ –a free radio database, library and automation system — to make it easier to do the airplay copyright reporting we’re required to do by law. Because our somewhat unique DJ model makes 24/7/365 song logging onerous, we’ve been allowed to use the old rule, logging and reporting every track we play for two weeks very quarter. There are 15ish songs per hour. Even playing YouTubes, we can log that on our shows.
Personally, I’ll be using RadioDJ exclusively for my shows during these two week periods, because it can print these reports from what I play. For reference, here’s what one of those reports looks like. By chance it started on Valentine’s Day. It covers six weeks, but we haven’t used it exclusively.
Here are a few tutorials (RadioDJ, Audacity, Easytag etc.)
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. The first four are pretty much essential to understanding our system at Ozcat Radio.
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.
2. The RadioDJ Desktop
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.