Power to the Listeners: Ratings Now Influence Live Playlist

News

This week, we implemented the biggest architectural change in over 2 and a half years, and the result is more control in the hands (and ears) of our listeners. For more details, read on!

Since beginning the transition away from colocating our own server hardware in January, we’ve been working on implementing a new system to replace something we’ve previously referred to as the “scheduler.” This piece of our station’s process chain determines what plays and when from a larger collection of music which is known as the “rotation.” This week, we officially switched over to the new system, resulting in two notable changes with the station.

First, the new scheduler takes after the previous system and prioritizes low play counts and least recently played music to rotate through all available music on the station. From there, the system now uses user ratings directly to determine what the most favorable song is for the current listener group.

In order for users to influence what plays, users must either be logged in to the web app before connecting, or have logged in to the website within the last 3 months before connecting from the same location. Afterwards, all active songs ratings from connected users will be considered when building the playlist. Active ratings include both gold and blue stars (blue stars are ratings submitted in a previous year).

Second, the station now utilizes a new post-processing suite which provides a profound uplift in radio-quality sound across all songs and stream types including live broadcast events. This should ultimately help some songs which have balance and mastering issues (not uncommon in the indie music space) while slightly enhancing well-mastered songs.

That’s all for this week, go take advantage of the new system by rating more music, and thanks for listening!

[Knowledge #157]

Suggested Posts