For radio geeks only

Most people who use software like iTunes will tend to choose a bunch of songs and call it a playlist. It'll have their favourites on it, themed around a certain idea (Classics, Housework Music, Relaxing, etc). Every time they play that list of songs, the same songs appear. Even in Shuffle mode, there's still no real surprise at work.

And, dammit, it's just not complicated enough.

Having played around with the iTunes playlists as a result of the helpful comments to my last post about wanting to try a 30% NZ music content rule for my iTunes randomness, it got me thinking once again about approaching the Holy Grail of iTunes playlists manipulation: Radio Station-style programming.

This is something I've been distracted by on occasion over the last year or so, but had never given any serious attention to. But now I've had this little breakthrough about the power of smart playlists, live updating, play counts and playlist folders, I was game to give it a try.

Regardless of what you think of the calibre of music radio stations, there is a fairly sophisticated set of philosophies behind how music can be chosen to create a theoretically pleasing balance of predictability and surprise.

Of course, in these days of media conglomeration and deregulation, most of what you hear is predictability. It need not necessarily be that way, but there is some sense in letting people hear their favourite songs.

Of course, when asked, my favourite music is anything I haven't heard yet. But sometimes, I just want to hear a mix of music that has a little bit of "I LOVE this song," a spot of "Oh my god, I haven't heard this song in AGES," and a smattering of "Oooh... what's this?" -- all wrapped up in a whole lot of music that I just kind of like.

In other words, 90% made up of a variety of different flavours of familiarity -- and about 10% of the unexpected.

In order to achieve these results in a radio station context, a piece of software like RCS Selector is used. This allows you to categorise music into different piles, allocate songs from each of those piles into 'clocks' that specify which pile of music you want to draw from next, and then apply a set of rules to them, such as 'no more than 3 Billy Joel songs an hour' (for instance).

In its simplest form, there is the A-list, which has all the top songs that MUST be heard; a B-list containing much of the familiar and reliable songs that make up the bulk of the playlist; and a Gold category containing those songs that drop little nostalgia bombs on the odd occasion.

Now, no radio music programmer can resist the urge to take simplicity and weave it into something that boggles the imagination, and so there are usually many categories, clocks, dayparts and other sub-divisions of sub-divisions at work. But let's keep things simple for now.

So -- that much explained, what I've attempted to do is to emulate a basic form of the kind of music programming that Selector allows -- only with my own collection, using the iTunes smart playlists.

It's not an exact science, and some of the most useful rules that Selector allows you to enforce are entirely unavailable in the iTunes environment (unless you can think of some crafty way to work around things like artist separation). But after a weekend of tweaking, I think I've come up with a fairly good approximation.

Here's how it works (you may like to try this at home):

1. The Repertoire
First, I set up a master 'Songs' playlist. This is a smart playlist that selects my entire iTunes Library, and then filters out everything that's too long (over 6 and a half minutes), too short (under 1 and a half minutes), or is generally unsuitable for these purposes (classical music, spoken word, really monumentally heavy rock, and the kind of avant-garde stuff that requires close attention and a stiff drink).

This master list is the source from which I draw all music for the 'radio station'.

2. The Categories
I then started by selecting a dozen songs to drag and drop into the A Category. These are my current absolute favourite songs, and the ones that I have been humming to myself over the past week or so.

If I'm wandering in and out of earshot of the "radio station", I want to reliably be able to hear one of my favourite songs within about 20 minutes. Remember, this is for when I'm in familiarity mode, not in full on 'surprise me' mode.

Next, I trawled through the master songs list, and found about 200 songs that fit the bill for the B category. In other words, these are fairly contemporary tracks that I like and enjoy, but are not necessarily the ones I am currently getting most excited about and don't want to hear more than once every couple of days.



I put these in what I call the 'B Basket'. This is a standard (ie: non-smart) playlist from which I'll draw a smaller selection of songs at any one time to fill the playlist.

The Gold category was next. I chose about a hundred songs that fit this bill. Again, I put these in a "basket":



I decided to also have a category of "up-and-coming" songs. These are new additions to my collection that I suspect might make it into the A category soon, given a little exposure. I chose about 10-12 of these (it'll vary naturally and update frequently).

Finally, I made a large category called Flavour. This is a smart playlist that contains everything from the master list except for those songs that have been chosen for the other categories. Here is where my surprise comes in. This could end up being pretty much anything - although those entirely unsuitable tracks have, you'll recall, already been taken out of contention.

3. The Clock
I had to figure out how I could make a clock format so that the rotates were spread evenly. Because iTunes smart playlists can do day separation, but not hour separation, I was forced to do a rolling 3-hour clock, rather than the traditional hour clock. This took some working out, and I resorted to pen and paper, but trust me, the hour clock was unworkable.

In my three hour clock, all 12 A-rotate songs will play, as will all 10 Up-and-coming songs. To fill the hour, I also want 15 B-rotate songs, half a dozen Gold tracks and a few Flavour tracks. This averages out to an idealised 1-hour clock that looks something like this (assume 4 minute songs):

A-Rotate
Up & Coming
B-Rotate
Gold
A-Rotate
B-Rotate
Up & Coming
B-Rotate
A-rotate
B-Rotate
Flavour
A-Rotate
Up & Coming
B-Rotate
Gold

Okay, put like that, it looks incredibly repetitive. But bear in mind that even with only 12 'hit' songs, I'm not going to hear my favourite A-rotate for another 3 hours, and even then, I may miss it. The idea here is that when I switch on my 'radio', I'm going to hear one of my favourite songs before too terribly long.

4. The Playlist
So - with that structure in my head, I then made a playlist folder. Into that folder went my A category and Up-and-Coming (non-smart) lists, and a couple of new 'Smart' playlists.



The smart playlist that makes up my the B-list selection for the three hour clock consists of 15 songs chosen at random from the B-basket, that had not been played in the previous 1 day.

Similarly, the Gold smart playlist consists of 6 songs (remember, this is a three-hour clock - so everything is tripled and 2 per hour equals 6 songs) chosen at random from the Gold list, but that hadn't been heard in the last 3 days. Like this (click to enlarge):



And finally, into the folder goes the Flavour smartlist, consisting of 4 songs that haven't been heard in the past 2 weeks, drawn from the massive Flavour basket (in other words, everything else).

That folder of playlists is my radio station's 3-hour rolling clock, consisting at any one time of about 45 songs. The A-rotates, B-rotates, Golds, Up & Comings and Flavour tracks all rotating on their own little schedules.

5. The Playback
So I feed that folder (entitled 3-hour clock) into the Party Shuffle function of iTunes, press 'play', and away she goes.



Of course, as I said, it's an inaccurate process. I don't end up with that lovely spread I outlined above for my idealised 1-hour clock.

Sometimes I get two A-rotates in a row. Sometimes I get two Golds back to back. Sometimes I have an A and a B by the same artist (a 'twofer', if you want to look at it as a happy accident). But, of course, Party Shuffle lets you see that sort of calamity coming up from a distance, and you can tweak on the fly. What PD can resist tweaking the playlist?



I've already become tired of one of my A-rotates over the course of the weekend, so I've had to drop it back to a B, and I'm on the hunt for a suitable replacement.

And naturally, I'm looking for ever more sophisticated ways to control this process, probably through the manipulation of ever more layers of folders and sub-categories. The urge to apply mood rules and do things like artist/group separation, content quotas and day-parting is entirely seductive.

I'm also already thinking about making an entirely different station, that is entirely more funk, soul and jazz and a whole lot less indie rock. It was much easier to start with something that had contemporary hits and clear 'classics' before I immersed myself in more challenging genres and formats...

And for now, this pleases me.

You can track progress of my music listening at my Last FM page, if you're interested in seeing where all this tweaking has got me...