Schedules

Without a schedule, your station shuffles your whole library around the clock. With one, you decide what plays when: a calm mix in the morning, a jazz hour on Fridays, a talk every Sunday at ten. Schedules are part of AWE Radio Premium.

Playlists

A playlist is a named set of tracks from your library, in the order you choose. Open your dashboard, then Schedule, and press New playlist. Search your library, add tracks, move them up with the arrow, and pick how the playlist plays.

In order

From the top every time its block starts, then round again if the block is longer than the playlist.

Shuffle

Mixed, avoiding what played most recently, so short playlists still feel fresh.

Once

From the top, one time, then your normal rotation plays for the rest of the block. Made for a talk or a show, so it never repeats.

A playlist can hold up to 500 tracks, and you can have up to 50 playlists.

Blocks on your week

A block is a time on your week when a playlist plays. Press Add a block, pick the days, a start and an end time and a playlist, then press Save schedule.

• Times are in your station's timezone, shown at the top of the page. Check it once, especially if you set up the schedule while travelling.
• A block can run past midnight, for example Friday 22:00 to 02:00. It belongs to the day it starts on.
• Blocks can't overlap, so it is always clear what plays. They can follow each other directly.
• Outside your blocks, your station plays its normal rotation, the same shuffle as without a schedule.

The top of the Schedule page shows what is on now and what comes next, and the week view draws your blocks to scale.

Talks and shows

A talk, a sermon, an interview or a recorded show shouldn't turn up at random between songs. Mark it as a talk and it stays out of the shuffle and plays only when you schedule it.

• New uploads. In Library, tick These are talks or shows before you add the files.
• Tracks you already have. In Library, press Edit next to the track and tick the talk box.
• Your live shows. When you publish a recorded live show from the Live tab, it becomes a talk in your library by itself.

Talks are prepared for streaming like music, with the same loudness levelling, but we don't try to match them to a song, so they keep their own title and never borrow a stranger's album cover. On air they show the file's own cover art if it has one, otherwise your station's picture.

To put a talk on air at a set time, make a playlist with just that talk, set it to Once, and give it a block that starts when the talk should begin.

How the timing works

Your station never cuts a song or a talk off in the middle. That shapes the timing:

• A block starts with the first song change after its start time. In the minutes before a block, your station picks songs that end in time, so a block usually starts within a minute of its start time.
• The last item in a block plays to its end, even if that runs a little past the block's end time.
• Listeners hear everything about half a minute after it goes out, the same buffer that keeps the stream smooth.
• Changes you save reach the air within a song or two.

When something can't play

A schedule can never make your station silent. If a block's playlist has nothing ready to play, for example because its tracks were deleted or are still processing, your normal rotation plays during that block instead, and we email you which block it is.

If your Premium ends, your schedule pauses and your station goes back to shuffling your whole library. Your playlists and schedule are kept, and they start working again the moment Premium is back.