Playlists going haywire

[Pablo]

Hi there


I run a new specialist dance music internet radio station in the UK.


We are experiencing major problems with the company we use to stream via Shoutcast with playlists misbehaving and ruining our programming. And, as such, are looking for solutions and alternatives.


All our shows comprise 1 hour DJ mixes and the specific problem is that shows in a sequential playlist play more than once (when they aren't programmed to do so) and therefore our timetable gets mucked up.


The server company say that the problem is due to corrupt MP3s we are uploading. However, I scan all the uploads beforehand and they pass anti-corruption tests. In addition I process each show in Audacity and am very careful that the bitrate and sample rate is correct.


I suspect the problem may relate to some of our DJs using MP3s that they have downloaded from torrent sites, but with so many DJs one our roster it would be almost impossible to prevent the odd track downloaded from a torrent site being played as one of many tracks in a DJ mix.


Do others experiencing such a thing? And are there companies who have more robust servers?


Bw


Pablo

 

[Support]

Hi Pablo,

Your hosting company could be correct in that if some files are corrupted, the server is perhaps skipping those files and only playing those that work, causing repeats. Although to be honest this is not something we have ever come across ourselves.

Also, what do you have the playlist "Type" set to? As a "General Rotation" playlists will still play in the sequential order if this is how you have it set, but this will just keep looping the playlist starting with the first track, and then restarting when the end of the playlist is reached. You will want to use "Scheduled" if you want this to be played at a specific time. If you work out any many total hours all of your mixes equate to, you can then set the scheduled time accordingly preventing any mixes from repeating etc.

You mention about some of your DJ's possibly using illegally downloaded tracks that may be corrupt. Even if this was the case, if its an hour long recorded mix that you are uploading, this would make no difference what so ever if those original Mp3's were corrupt. By them recording an hour long mix, they are just creating a whole new audio file anyway. Then if, as you say, you are encoding this in Audacity at the correct samplerate / bitrate, then its quite unlikely that you are going to be having any issues with these files.

We offer server hosting here (Shoutcast / Icecast) as well as the AutoDJ feature. Some more information on this can be found here:

Internet Radio Servers
Auto DJ

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