August 2018

Axel Friebis Joins the MusicMaster Family as Customer Relationship Manager

First, he was interested in MusicMaster Solo Edition as a web radio programmer – now, Axel Friebis has joined the team of MusicMaster’s international distributor ON AIR as Customer Relationship Manager. Since August 1st, Axel has been overseeing ON AIR's day-to-day sales operations and international partner network. In this role, Axel works closely with Rainer Eichhorn and the ON AIR team to ensure customer success and the building of true relationships. In his spare time, Axel works on his web radio station (now of course with MusicMaster), spends time with his family, or can be found underwater diving and looking for the best footage.

"Axel has nearly two decades of sales and business development experience working in the IT sector. By joining the team, he has found a place to combine a true passion for music with his business skills. A perfect match for the both of us.” says ON AIR’s General Manager Max Mueller. Axel will be present during this year's IBC tradeshow in Amsterdam in September and is reachable through email at af@onair.de and phone: +49 175 8489337.

Upcoming Events

Tracy Johnson: "Personalities Promoting Music: Music Promoting Personalities"

The MusicMaster ProTeam is a group of experienced broadcast consultants who are available to assist MusicMaster clients with programming advice. Each month, we will present a guest article from one of our ProTeam consultants. This month, Tracy Johnson shares his insights on how on-air personalities can build a better connection with the music.

I’ve never known of a legendary music station without great personalities. And I’ve rarely heard of truly dominant personalities on a music station without a strong music base that supports them.

You spend hours and hours agonizing over music decisions and crafting the ultimate music flow to optimize time spent listening and station branding.

Then, the air talent treats music as an after-thought. It’s almost like the songs are commercials taking up space between the times they get to talk.

Yet that music is a path to personality fame. And high profile personalities are the key to making the music stand out against the pure plays and streamers that are cutting into time spent listening.

Here’s the thing: On most music stations, listeners are coming primarily for the music. They want to be put into a good mood, use the station as a soundtrack or hear their favorite song. So doesn’t it make sense that the fastest way to become a popular personality is to demonstrate that you love the same thing the audience loves?

That’s why it’s so disappointing when air talent fails to connect with listeners about the music. It’s a missed opportunity to make the station sound better and become more popular at the same time.

On the other hand, great personalities showcase the songs, artists and format in a way that makes the station sparkle. The relationship between great personalities and great radio stations is intimate. Personalities NEED the station, and the station NEEDS personalities. That’s how radio will remain relevant in an ever-expanding competitive world.

It’s Easy to Do

Embracing the music is actually easy to do. It just needs to be an important part of the daily show prep.

There’s a ton of information readily available about every artist. That’s great, and personalities can use it on your show.

But programmers need to work with talent to make sure the information is turned into entertainment. Don’t distribute it as a history lesson or just reciting facts.

Get rid of breaks like this:

HERE'S THE LATEST FROM A WOMAN WHO LAUNCHED HER CAREER AT THE AGE OF 16, AND TWO YEARS LATER WAS OPENING FOR JAY-Z.

Listeners are not impressed with an encyclopedic knowledge of the facts. Instead, use the information to add to a more interesting break. For example:

ADMIT IT, WHEN YOU FIRST HEARD RIHANNA’S SONG (TITLE…WITH HOOK PLAYING IN BACKGROUND), YOU LIKED THE SONG, BUT NEVER GUESSED SHE WOULD BECOME THIS…HER 16TH #1 SONG, AND SHE’S NOT EVEN 30…I THINK I WAS STILL LIVING IN MY MOM’S BASEMENT PLAYING SUPER MARIO BROTHERS. HERE’S (SONG).

The first thing you’ll notice is that this is longer. Sure. It takes longer to tell a story than rush through facts. But isn’t that more interesting? And it personalizes the content.

Most personalities could invest just a few minutes planning how to present music on their show. It's easy to take it for granted, but music makes up a large percentage of the entertainment value on most radio shows, so doesn't it make sense to do a great job connecting to it?

Work with talent to begin integrating music-based content throughout the show in small bits. Make it an important part of the entertainment equation. It’ll make the station stand out.



Want more advice like this? Click here to visit the Tracy Johnson Media Group online, learn about consulting services, and access many more resources such as the Morning Radio Blog.

  Quick Tip

Artist Keyword Density

If you have put off analyzing your data because you believe it's a time-consuming process, just remember: you use MusicMaster, so that's not true! Here's a way to see how often an artist is playing on your station: Go to the History Browser. Pick your active categories and whatever time frame you want. On the Display tab, select Artist Keywords (All). In the lower section, make sure Show Turnovers and Show Rank are set to "Yes". Once the report displays, not only will you see which Keyword played the most, but you will see the average amount of time between those plays plus other information about how the keyword rotated. Pay particular attention to the "Dev" column. The lower that time, the more consistently the keyword plays for your audience.


New From the MM Blog
Getting to Know Your Station by Analyzing Your Library

by Brian Wheeler - You had your rules perfectly set. Your categories were looking good, rotations were purring along, things were going nicely. But in recent days, things aren’t rotating quite like they were. Your well-oiled machine is now running like a misfiring jalopy. What could it be? It might be time to analyze your data.

First, don't beat yourself up. It happens to the best of us! Data changes over time when you’ve got music moving in and out. Even something so simple as modifying your coding and cleaning up errant information in fields can alter the overall makeup of your library.

A few recent conversations I've had with a few MusicMaster users have brought this phenomenon to light, so I thought it would be a good time to point out a feature in MusicMaster you may have forgotten about...

Continue Reading in Blog


Troubleshooting Special Sets

by Marianne Burkett - Special Sets in MusicMaster are a great way to do things like twofers, matching up artist liners to songs, etc. As we build our clocks with special sets, sometimes we do things in a hurry and forget the important details section. In the example below, you’ll see the special set is matching up Title Keywords with the setting of All(Exact). It is looking at Next Song (Music Only). In the bottom area we’re using rules from the category “Artist Intros” and Bypassing any rules that might keep Title Keywords apart.


A Special Set in this configuration would need an Exact Match in the Title Keyword Field in both the Non-Music Artist liner category and the Music Category that comes after the Special Set in the clock. It will only work with an Exact Match from Field to Field. The liner is looking at the next song scheduled.

Continue Reading in Blog

Welcome to MusicMaster!

Use the dropdown menu below to view a list of stations and locations.
Click a station on the list to visit its homepage and listen live!


This month, the MusicMaster team traveled near and far - from our home state of Texas all the way to Brazil! The month kicked off with the Texas Association of Broadcasters conference in Austin. MusicMaster's Melanie Knapp and Jerry Parker were there to share the latest with clients and connect with our automation integration partners at the show. Melanie also stopped by for a visit with Entercom and Emmis stations in Austin.

Entercom Austin Nikki Nite, VP Programming & Operations at Entercom Austin, Melanie Knapp, MusicMaster and Cedric Turner Music Director and On-Air Personality on 95.9 R&B

Melanie Knapp, MusicMaster and Evan Shipe, Music Director and On-Air Personality 103.5 BOB FM Emmis Communications Austin

Phil Pollack Capital Broadcasting Association, Inc. KMFA Austin, Technical Operations Manager


Later in the month, MusicMaster's W.I.Z.A.R.D. Jill Sorenson met with many of her former public radio colleagues at the Public Radio Program Director's Conference, also in Austin. One of the highlights was a celebration of the 20th Anniversary of national distribution for Sunday Baroque. Sunday Baroque has been using MusicMaster since its original DOS days! It is heard on approximately 200 public radio stations and networks across the United States. Congratulations to host and executive producer Suzanne Bona on this milestone (pictured at right with Jill).

Recently, many new users have made the switch to MusicMaster in Brazil thanks to the efforts of Informa, a MusicMaster sales and integration partner. This month, those users had an opportunity to attend a Genius Day in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, led by MusicMaster MSC Jesus Rodriguez. Clients traveled from four states to attend. Jesus also had the opportunity to visit with clients at Radio Globo and CBN in Rio, and SGR (Sistema Globo de Radios). Orbigado to Gilberto Mariano and the Informa team for all you did to make these events such a success!

MusicMaster Geniuses from Rio De Janeiro show off their MusicMaster Genius certificates

An enthusiastic group of MusicMaster Geniuses from São Paulo

The grand tour of Rio De Janeiro included sweeping city views from atop Sugarloaf Mountain

Evan Shipe

Music Scheduling Czar / Emmis Austin Radio

MusicMaster friend and raving fan Evan Shipe is a prime example of today's busier-than-ever broadcast professional. Not only is he the Scheduling Czar for Emmis/Austin, he's been working as Music Director, Imaging Director and Afternoon Drive at BOB-FM/Austin. Fortunately, Evan has MusicMaster to help him through the day!

Evan shares, "Having multiple duties to manage can make for a long day. Luckily, Music Master does most of the heavy lifting for me and keeps us at the top of the Nielsens. Using the 'Auto-Platoon' feature lets my listeners feel like they’ve lucked into a song they haven’t heard in a while. I use 'Auto Move' for imaging so we always sound topical. For example, Back to School, Fall, Fantasy Football, and Veterans Day sweepers automatically come and go without me moving them. I also use the 'Match Flow' rule on imaging so a 'Freedom Rock' sweeper doesn't play into Adele.

"I was lucky enough to get to beta test MusicMaster Version 7. Virtual Search Depth is probably my favorite feature, since my categories are constantly changing. It’s a real game changer. There’s a LOT of cool stuff in 7!

"For anyone just learning MusicMaster or anyone spending a lot of time editing their logs, I’d suggest setting aside 30 minutes on the slowest day of your week to watch some of the MusicMaster walkthroughs or webinars. You’ll learn something that will save you six to ten minutes per day. You do the math."

Cole Marshall

MusicMaster Development and Webmaster
Madison, WI

Cole Marshall has been with MusicMaster for seven years, helping to maintain our web presence and building online tools that help make life easier for both our clients and our team. Cole says, "I really like the variety of projects I get to work on, because I get to solve a lot of unique challenges, like connecting all the various services and software the company uses and expanding the online capabilities of our products. I also enjoy the chance to help with MusicMaster’s look at tradeshows and in ads by contributing graphic design work and motion graphics."

Cole lives with his wife, Laura, and their two dogs, Ghost and Mabel, just outside of Madison, WI. He has a degree in Interactive Media from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, which afforded him the opportunity to work with a lot of different technologies and forms of art. In his free time, Cole enjoys continuing work in much of those art mediums, from pen drawings and abstract paintings to photography, graphics, web design, and even some wood and metal work. Click here to connect with Cole online.


Cole and Laura


Michael Cross is looking to put his 30+ years of broadcast experience towards a new opportunity to create winning radio. That experience includes everything from On-Air Talent to Programming to Operations Management.

Michael’s career highlights include being at the forefront of the ‘Active Rock’ format with KJJO/Minneapolis and Z-Rock/Dallas. He also worked CHR/Top 40 at KISR/ Fort Smith, AR, KMYO/Tulsa, and KDWZ/Des Moines.

Michael has worked in all market sizes, and has extensive knowledge of Rock, Classic Rock and Classic Hits formats. He generated and maintained excellent Nielsen ratings success in both Waterloo-Cedar Falls and Cedar Rapids markets, and created brand awareness for KFMW-FM (Rock 108) and 105-7 KOKZ-FM in Cedar Rapids and Waterloo, leading to ratings and revenue gains.

We’re also proud to say that Michael is a MusicMaster super-user with over 20 years experience dating back to the DOS days!

Michael is searching for a PD gig with either rock, classic rock, classic hits or oldies formats. He’s also open to an on-air position and prefers Middays or PM Drive. He’s currently located in Waterloo, Iowa. Download Michael’s resume to read more about what he has to offer your station.

You can also connect with Michael through e-mail at amfmdx1980@gmail.com or visit his social media pages: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.



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