One of the great features within SAM Broadcaster Cloud is the ability to share a single music library between multiple stations as a single SAM Broadcaster Cloud service can include up to 50 stations sharing the same music library.

We have seen how we can utilize the Media Type as one method of organizing the library content but SAM Broadcaster Cloud can also use Playlists to organize media and with multiple stations, properly managing your library becomes very important to ensure each station only plays the correct content for each specific station.

Playlists are available under the Library Tab and SAM Broadcaster Cloud supports two types of Playlists to help Station Managers and DJs organize their content - Shared Playlists and Station Playlists.

Shared Playlists

Shared Playlists are available to each station under a single SAM Broadcaster Cloud service and are perfect for categorizing music based on genres, albums, artists or any other commonality which would usually be available to multiple stations.

You could also use Shared Playlists for any other content that can be played on all stations like network promos, competitions, network wide commercials, etc.

Station Playlists

Station Playlists should be used to manage content which is only intended for use with specific stations.  Station Playlists are the perfect place to store station specific content like Station Ids, commercials that should only run on one station and music content specific to the station genre.

The number shown to the right of the Station Playlists (67832 in this case), is the Station ID and if you need to raise a support request, especially if you have multiple services and stations, it can assist the Helpdesk identify the station you are referring.

To access the Playlists simply select the Library Tab and the Playlists Window will appear.  To the right of this you will find the Contents Window which will display the Playlist content.

You can see that the Shared Playlist ‘Artists-Female’ has been selected and the tracks contained within this Playlist are displayed to the right.  You will also note that this station follows a naming convention which gives an indication of the type of content the Playlist contains without having to examine the Playlist contents.  This simplifies matters when you have multiple DJs working with the same library and helps ensure each DJ knows what type of track to expect when selecting the Playlist.  Playlists for a specific decade, artist, album or genre are easily identified by following a basic naming convention.