NPR Digital Services Blog

A few people have asked about this recently.

Did you accidentally enter your playlist on the wrong date? Do you want to make a copy of a playlist that’s already been entered? Here’s how:

To Correct the Date on a Playlist or Duplicate a Playlist:

• Go to your Composer Admin Tools: http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/xxxx/guide.guideadmin (substitute your call letters in for the ‘xxxx’ in the web address)
• Click Export Playlist Data and Run a Report for the date on which the playlist was incorrectly placed. TIP: Set the end date one day later.
• Save this File to your Desktop.
• Modify the Export File to contain the playlist data just for the particular show in question, editing out other program playlists information entered on that day. Be sure to keep the header row.
• Edit the date and time columns as needed, make any other edits and Save as a tab delimited text file.

As you know, playlists for syndicated programs such as Jazz After Hours, Echoes, Sunday Baroque, C24 and many more are now available for your listeners to browse and search from your own Composer Pro program guide.

We recently updated the Syndicated Show functionality a bit, so now you can also choose the episode you air.

• Just make sure your Program Guide is up to date.
• The system will automatically assign playlists for your syndicated programs as they become available. Syndicated show playlists will automatically appear on your program guide with a playlist icon, as they become available.
• If playlists are uploaded ahead of time, they’ll also display in your ‘Now On Air’ widgets.
• To choose a different episode, simply log into your Composer Admin, and go to the Create/Edit Playlist screen.
• Click the choose Syndicated icon , and then select a different episode by ID or date.

We’ve updated the way searching playlists works.

Listener Search:
We are limiting playlist search results for listeners to reduce the load on database. Listeners can search for any 30 days at a time, and can set the date range for those 30 day periods as they choose.

Admin Search:
But never fear, stations can still search their entire playlist archive. We’re also improved search results for admins. If you’re logged in, you can now access all the playlists for a particular program, going back to day one.

• Log into Composer Admin
• Click ‘View your Guide’ in the upper right corner
• Click search playlists. Now when you search, you’ll be able to see all the playlist results. Previously, this was limited to 75 results.

Here’s a quick tip: With Composer Pro, you can see all the songs played in the last 24 hours in one big playlist. You can add this new link to your site. Check it out:

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/netradio/guide.guidemain?action=viewSongs

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kumd/guide.guidemain?action=viewSongs

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wfcr/guide.guidemain?action=viewSongs

To see yours, just substitute your Station ID.

We’re thrilled to roll out a new, much-requested, Composer Pro™ feature  — the ability to import all playlists for a full day from one single file!

• Go to add a playlist for the desired day, and click on the new link/icon “Import Full Day“ at the top of each column, right below the date.
• Follow the steps, and import one playlist file, formatted as usual.
• You will see individual playlists added for each program that day.
• You can edit those individual playlist as usual.
• You can still add an individual playlist for any program that does not have one.

As you may know, we have an exciting new Composer Pro feature in the works, based on your feedback.. It’s the ability to import a full day’s worth of playlists from just one file!

We’re getting there, but we need some help testing – if you’d like to help test and get a sneak a preview, please let me know.

Thanks!

Suzanne

We continue to improve Public Interactive Composer Pro based on your needs and feedback. Here are a few new features in the works right now.

Improving Playlist Import

Filters: We recently updated the playlist import filters for Composer Pro and continue to think about ways to make this task easier for stations. Here is the current complete list of playlist import filters:

• Music Master
• Music Librarian
• Music Director
• Selector
• SoundExchange
• Generic tab delimited text

We’re also currently starting to work on an option to import a full day’s worth of playlist information from one file. Stay tuned!

We’re also working on a few smaller updates, like updating the order of the Add Song Manually fields so that the SX required fields are listed together and improving the way you enter syndicated programs into your schedule.

Syndicated Show Playlists

In Composer Pro, we recently updated the playlist import filters for Music Master and Music Librarian to match more recent versions (as well as older ones) and added an option for Selector.

We also added a new format – you can also now import playlist information in the standard SoundExchange playlist format!

Current complete list of playlist import filters:

• Music Master
• Music Librarian
• Music Director
• Selector
• SoundExchange
• Generic tab delimited text

Interested in importing your playlist information in other formats? Have ideas about other ways to import playlist data? Let us know!

Composer Pro users will notice a few small updates.

We made some changes to improve the accuracy of the playlist search function for your site visitors.

We also added a new, more Classical-friendly playlist template. The fields are reordered, so that the Composer is listed first.

To choose the new template:

• Log in to your Composer Pro admin. (NOTE: Someone with master admin log in privileges will need to make this change)
• Select the Playlist Wizard and leave first question set to “Yes, I would like to post playlists”,  and click Next.
• Then, on the next screen, choose Template 4.
• Examples
• KUAF: http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kuaf/guide.guidemain?action=viewPlaylist&playlistID=564398&eventID=3039
• Public Radio Delmarva: http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wscl/guide.guidemain?action=viewPlaylist&playlistID=564407&eventID=165722