I’ve spent about an hour on Powergold today - and am quite taken by it… Songs can exist in multiple categories (a particular favourite of mine), jingles, promos and liners can easily be loaded into your “clocks”. Schedule outputs can be created for any playout program - you can create+save your own output templates. Once I had found how (and where) Powergold handles the rules, properties and such - It was plain sailing to edit rules and define new ones. A feature I quite like is “Future Moves” - you can specify a date in the song’s card to automatically remove it from “CategoryA” and place it in “CategoryB”. “Packets” are also supported, allowing you to evenly rotate oldies from a particular artist/group.
You will need to register on their website but the demo (with sample database) allows you to do everything the full version does. The only limit is that you can’t use the import/export utility. The tutorial videos on the website are well worth watching - Torben may even get some ideas for mAirListDB from them
Yep, have an old demo somewhere and on a freshly formatted PC should run no problems (my demo was for 30 days several years ago). Must get the latest. I’m still a great fan though of Music 1.
I haven’t asked about pricing yet - but it appears that you can have it on “buy-out” or as a rolling lease. The database folder has a number of files, most ending in .db, with Song.db (most of the data) being readable in MS Access These other DB files obviously feed back to the Song.db file as there’s an Artist.DB database so if you screw around with the main one it may cause problems.
Steve Silby is the UK rep, who both of you may have heard of (think boats)
i use powergold and i must say it is pretty amazing software, after reading endless threads of people saying they use MUSIC GEN LITE or whatever its called, i thought id download it, i thought it was impressive but doesnt compare to powergold.
Its just really spooky how you asked the question on a day where i have been looking at different bits and pieces etc.
Yes… Powergold? Clever software and used it for several years, on, of all things, a Country music formatted station.
Had clocks for everything, Weekdays, Weeknights, special days like ANZAC day, Xmas day, Easter day, Long weekends… you name it, I made a clock for it… and dayparts too.
Me = Geek.
Didn’t get into tempo, mood, and sematics of that nature… just needed the basics of good artist separation, title separation, daypart variations, ways of having rotations within rotations and a way of turning out a weeks programming in a hurry, with Jingles, Promo’s, Sponsorship (Advertisements) and specialis(z)ed programming elements included.
Lotsa fun making it work… very satisfying when it did!
and what software did it produce all these magic things for… Winamp
Hi Chris… I’ve found that you can make the rules as simple (or complex) as you wish - the main thing that usually stops people is finding how each bit of software “does it” - Natural Music and Powergold both come with sample databases so you can see how things should be done
Found the first issue with Powergold: Artist/Title/Filename fields are only 50 characters I suspect they’d rather you use a “cart-number” style of filenames (arrrrrrrghhhhhh!) That seems to cause a problem for sending #mAirList COMMANDs to the log - looking at Chris’s clock layout, I guess that sort of thing can be achieved via “Automation Commands”.
50 characters?!?!! Sorry: that would make it an instant ‘bin job’ IMHO, no matter WHAT the package is capable of. Especially the 50 limit for filename: COMPLETELY unrealistic nowadays, unless you’re using software that insists on renaming your audio files to ‘cartnumber’ format (either because the programmers are lazy or stupid; or in a pathetically poor attempt to lock you into using ‘their’ software for ever). That was the principal reason we rejected PSquared’s Myriad, which is otherwise a reasonable package but still NOT as flexible as mAirList. And about £1000 more expensive, as well.
I’m a tad confused by that comment: looking at Chris’s stuff, no artist or title seems to be longer than 50 characters?
I’ve recently taken to downloading tracks (with amazon now being so cheap!)
Im just putting the tracks into powergold but the problem i have is adding the logging details
(Record Company, Record Company No., Publisher, Composers, prefix & suffix)
Does anybody have any ideas of where i can get these details from or a website etc?
This problem is the same with any download site, as they dont provide you with that information!
AMG (All Music Guide) should get you the record label, album number, track number and usually composer(s).
Music publisher is more difficult. Here in the UK, I would try the PRS (Performing Rights Society), who administer composers’ royalties. Is there a similar organisation in your country?
Finally, I don’t understand what you mean by ‘prefix and suffix.’ ???
[quote=“Cad”]50 characters?!?!! Sorry: that would make it an instant ‘bin job’ IMHO, no matter WHAT the package is capable of. Especially the 50 limit for filename: COMPLETELY unrealistic nowadays[/quote] Steve Silby said that it isn’t a problem for most users but I agree with you, Cad - It’s daft and not that hard to increase the fields in the database.
[quote=“Cad”]I’m a tad confused by that comment: looking at Chris’s stuff, no artist or title seems to be longer than 50 characters?[/quote]What I meant was that if you’re using fairly long descriptions or commands, you’re going to come unstuck by using the “Filename” field for them (remember that mAirList treats every M3U line like a file unless it’s a non-audio item - so dummy, silence, commands etc really need to be placed in the song card’s “Filename” field. For example: #mAirList COMMAND RPC http://192.168.111.111:9300 is 50 characters and that causes a problem as you’ve not even defined a [friendly name] let alone the actual command I haven’t done too much with putting #mAirList bits into the Automation Commands part of Powergold yet - from what I read, it’s a “hidden” part of your schedules and may not actually appear in the final log.
Seems that Powergold is lease-only, and I’m waiting to hear back on a price for personal use. Steve has replied to some of my questions so a few things are clearer
hadnt come across AMG before so will give it a go, thanks for the info.
I am in the UK, so will try PRS.
Just so you know, the prefix & suffix. On a Cd, if you look at all the numbers, there will be a code on it something like LC012345. The prefix is the LC and the suffix is the numbers. music logging at the station i work at requires this into the system.
I hope your station is aware that the format of a CD ‘number’ is not always letters followed by a number? You can use any combination of letters and numbers you wish as the ‘prefix:’ provided that the ‘prefix’ you want to use has not been used previously by a different record company. Therefore, a prefix is always ‘tied’ to a particular record company or other organisation pressing CDs commercially (such as schools, or ‘our lot’ [see below]).
I know all this because I went through the process of negotiating a mutually suitable ‘prefix’ with MCPS some years ago when I was was getting an MCPS licence to get some CDs pressed commercially by Nimbus. (Long story involving a Babylon 5 fan club and some silly parody lyrics applied to well-known songs.)
Hence the ‘prefix’ of our CD was EAB5CD and the ‘suffix’ was 05.
I suspect they’d rather you use a “cart-number” style of filenames (arrrrrrrghhhhhh!) That seems to cause a problem for sending 
