AutoDJ plays your music automatically when you are not live. That keeps your station on air day and night, even while you sleep.
Uploading music
- 1Log in to Centova Cast and go to Media, then Files.
- 2Upload your tracks. MP3 is fastest, but FLAC and WAV work too.
- 3Wait for processing. Centova reads the tags for your title display.
Making playlists
Go to Media, then Playlists. Create at least a General Rotation playlist and drag your tracks into it. That is your base. You can also schedule playlists by time, for example a calm list for the night and an upbeat one for the morning.
Playlist types
- General rotation: your standard music, plays continuously
- Scheduled: plays at fixed times or days, handy for theme shows
- Interval: every so many tracks, ideal for jingles and station calls
- Immediate: plays right away, for example a news bulletin
Put your jingles in an interval playlist set to every four tracks. That sounds professional without becoming annoying.
Running into the storage limit? Extra AutoDJ Space adds 15 GB, applied straight to your existing plan.
A weekly schedule that works
| Time slot | Playlist | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00 to 07:00 | Night, calm | Scheduled |
| 07:00 to 10:00 | Morning, upbeat | Scheduled |
| 10:00 to 18:00 | General rotation | General rotation |
| Every 4 tracks | Jingles | Interval |
| On demand | News bulletin | Immediate |
Order of priority
Centova Cast always picks the most specific playlist. An Immediate playlist beats a Scheduled one, which in turn beats your General rotation. When you go live your source takes over everything until you disconnect.
Where it usually goes wrong
| Complaint | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| The same tracks keep coming back | Too few tracks in rotation | Aim for at least 150 tracks, then a song repeats at most once every eight hours. |
| Jingles play too often | Interval set too low | Set the interval to every four or five tracks instead of every two. |
| Silence between tracks | Crossfade is off | Turn crossfade on at around two seconds in the AutoDJ settings. |
| Upload fails | File too large or unknown format | Convert to MP3 320 Kbps. WAV files are needlessly large for AutoDJ. |
Sort your music into folders by genre before uploading. Then you build themed playlists in a few clicks instead of picking hundreds of tracks by hand.