We have a lot of violations in the categories with more songs (the last ones), and I can understand why,
but I don’t understand one thing: why M1 only searches a song with no violations in the first 20 positions of the stack instead of searching in the whole category?
…….because if it could search the whole category, it would be capable of scheduling a song again too quickly. for example, if you have a category that you have set for repeat-plays every 3 days, and if you allowed M1 to search or consider all of the songs in the category for every slot it comes to, then a song could schedule on Monday and then, perhaps, come up again on Tuesday, and then maybe come up again on Wednesday.
M1 believes you want every song in each category to get the same number of plays in the days and weeks and months. So, it will not automatically re-schedule any song until every other song in the category has been scheduled.
We advise setting the number of choices at about 15% of the category. This can be enabled as the “automatically set” function on the Category Rules screen. In this way, if you have a category with 100 songs in it, and if you have the rotation pattern set so that a song that schedules on Monday a 11am and will then come up again on Wednesday at 6pm….then it is possible that the song might now play at exactly 6pm hour…maybe it is moved up or down a bit. Maybe it will schedule Wednesday at 3 or 4pm, or maybe 7 or 8 or 9pm. It will fluctuate a bit because there will be other songs scheduled and other rules that will be encountered. Thus the category may not schedule in rank order of 1-2-3-4-5. Maybe it will be scheduled
2-1-3-5-4, etc.
Scheduling with a 15% “window” for each category, it ensures that you won’t have the song that scheduled Monday at 11am, scheduling again on Tuesday at 11am, or anywhere near any hour or slot that would be unacceptable. All the songs will and should schedule in a rotation pattern that very closely adheres to the ‘plan’ you have for the category, as is seen on the Rotation Prediction chart for that category.
Encountering music selection & flow Rules Violations is something that will happen with all music schedulers.
The Music 1 difference is that we believe it is best to make the choices and editing decisions during the scheduling run. You can, however, put M1 into Automatic Scheduling Mode (under the menu: Rules>Enforcement) and have it run like first-generation music schedulers. It will schedule the entire day without stopping. But then, you’d need to scroll through all the hours, find the ‘problems’ and fix them. It is not so efficient to do it this way.