MusicMaster Blog

By Jerry Butler

Does your active library skew older or newer?  What is your target year?  I occasionally get calls from programmers wanting to find out the average year for the music in their library.  Here is a quick way for you to analyze the yearly breakdown of your library.

First thing you will want to do is confirm the field you are using for your year data is a numeric-fixed field.  Many stations use a text field for this, but there is an advantage of using the numeric-fix field.  To check what your field is, you can hover your mouse over the header for the field in your library maintenance window.  You’ll notice I have both a year (numeric-fixed) field as well as a text field side-by-side for this demonstration.

You can also click dataset, library and fields and locate your “Year” field.  The description will be on the right telling you if it is a text or numeric-fixed field.  If it is a text, you may consider copying your year data over to a numeric-fixed field.

If you have a numeric-fixed field already, I recommend creating a category group for your active categories.  This give you a more accurate view of what is airing on your station. You can do that by right clicking in your info bar (list of categories) and selecting category groups.  You may also go to Dataset, Library and Categories and click Groups on the popup.  Click new, type in the name Active Music and click “OK”.  Select categories that are scheduling to be included in the group and click OK.

You can now pull up all active music by clicking on your new category group Active Music.  Once the group is showing in the library maintenance window, you can right click on the “year” header and select library analysis.

You will get a year breakdown in both the text and numeric-fixed fields as well as unique values.  However, if you are using numeric-fixed, you will also be able to see Min (earliest year), Average year and Max (latest year) at the bottom of the display.  This will give you a better idea of the music that makes up your active library and how many songs still need coding.

If you have any questions, reach out to your Music Scheduling Consultant.