Question regarding music sources on radio

spurious

In the (very) old days, they had to have the vinyl with songs for requests, then presumably they lined up CDs?

How do they do it now? Do they have access to streaming services?

If i email Lilian at the weekend and request some obscure song - can she just search for it and play it? How does it work these days?

L1011

Majority of stuff a station is likely to play is on their computerised playout already; a lot less space than a music library. Those went vinyl to CD to PC in most cases, with some places loading songs on to NAB carts and others using minidisc - although both of these were more commonly used for promos, liners, ads etc than for music.

If looking for something obscure, you'd go find a copy of it online, possibly even buying it off itunes or similar. The stations pay copyright fees, a % of turnover for commercial stations, to cover playing it so don't need a physical copy

New music is generally sent to the stations digitally by labels these days. Some new acts still send CDs - if you are in this position, don't, the music director quite plausibly doesn't even have a CD drive on their PC or a CD player in their office.

KildareP

Vast majority of it is done from the playout system.

RTÉ have quite a substantial music library available on their playout system but they do occasionally play CD and vinyl on air on the more specialist shows.

I imagine using streaming services on air is a last resort - most streaming services don't offer radio safe edits of songs with explicit lyrics for starters.

RINO87

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122066793#Comment_122066793

Would RTE still maintain a "hard copy" library, or are CD's, Vinyl from presenters personal collections?

its_steve116

I'm more interested in where pirate DJs got their music from in the 80s and 90s, especially that which wasn't released in Ireland.

Losty Dublin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122066861#Comment_122066861

RTÉ still have a hard copy library for music, yeah. Some of it is kept on site; the rest is kept off site at a facility in Ballymount along with their programming archive.

Losty Dublin

Nova/Sunshine/Q had most of theirs sent in via record labels and PR firms; it helped having contacts in the game. Occasionally material. The specialist lads in the 90's generally did their own homework and spent their own money getting tracks; shops such as Abbey Discs were a massive help. It wasn't unheard of for DJ's to spend £10 on white label dance tracks or imports back then; way more than a month of Spotify or Apple music access today!!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122068295#Comment_122068295

ford fiesta

i didnt know RTE had an off site facility for Audio in Ballymount, as they still have vinyl and tape archives 2 levels underground in the Radio centre with CD library overground. Check out Mr Springs YouTube series where he discovers some hidden gems down there.

https://youtu.be/dWKoKcK8WyY?si=1JQVMi7rwgMATBKl

Although I heard somewhere that these archives / libraries have been closed to staff since Covid.

RTE TV tape and film archive is stored out in Sandyford as far as I know.

I also heard that the website ilikemusic.com created by BBC producer Phil Swern is used by RTE and other stations for music downloads.

TheBMG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122068295#Comment_122068295

A lot of music would arrive in and be dubbed straight onto cart back in the day. Not a perfect playout method but it generally meant you could avoid nasty crackles, skips or cue burn. A terrible hassle to keep the cart machines aligned though which is why you sometime used to hear a massive change when switching from stereo to mono (or vice versa) on your radio.

It was possible to buy a turnkey music library from a production company (I think technically they were ‘leases’). TM Century and their ‘Golddisc’ library come to mind, but there were other service providers too.

These were CDs that were not on sale to the public and would be compilations of tracks appropriate to suit the station format. They occasionally pop up on eBay from time to time.

Radiowaves.fm, dxarchive.com and pirate.ie have great archive stuff and what you notice on 80s airchecks is that from about 1987 the music sources seem to sound better, especially the older stuff. I’m guessing CD players in studio were becoming a thing by then.

Losty Dublin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122068886#Comment_122068886

Fun story. Following one of his infamous reboots, Wild Bill had given one of the old Q 102 weekend jocks their notice. Said DJ was less than enamoured with the news so they spent their last show miscueing much of the music Carts to commence mid track; the rest were all "accidentally" left on the bulk eraser machine along with most of the jingle library 🤐

ford fiesta

I dont think RTE radio ever played songs off cart tapes - always vinyl, CD or I guess mini-disc for a short few years

Infoanon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122073564#Comment_122073564

Wild Bill was not a fan of Jam Jingles ,'kicking out the jams ' ,so the loss of Q's jingles would not have upset him too much.....

AFAIR the majority of stations were using Carts/Vinyl or Cassettes in '87/88 , CDs only used ocassionally.

Any improvements in audio was probably down to better processing and FM stations , AM was still king in many parts of the country.

RTE - fairly sure they used Carts but open to correction

ford fiesta

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122074609#Comment_122074609

If you listen to archive shows of BBC Radio 1 around mid-late 80s, the sound of their shows is excellent and surprisingly they were using vinyl 90% of the time, not CD. Like RTE, I dont think they had songs on cart either.

California Dreamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122074609#Comment_122074609

They had 2 Sony toploading CD players around 1988. The memory is a bit vague, did Pierre Doyle own the Sony Centres or were they just big advertisers?

Ger Roe

Pirate Q in the mid 80's, made a big promotion out of being the first station in Ireland to use CD's. Whenever they played one, it would be highlighted with a Martin Block V/O announcing that 'this track is being played on the Sony compact disc system'.

Somewhere in the tape collection I have a recording of Greg Gaughran playing the first CD track on air - Money for Nothing, Dire Straits. 'Brothers in Arms' was the album that launched CD's in Europe… it was the standard audio quality test. I remember at the time that the limited range of CD's available would have set you back IR£30 + …. a lot of money at the time. The players themselves cost hundreds.

California Dreamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122076155#Comment_122076155

Total thread derailment! Radio Nova International, the one from the UK that was on 94.9 in Dublin in the latter part of 1988 claimed all their music was played on compact disc.

Declan A Walsh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122077624#Comment_122077624

That was relayed courtesy of Southside FM at the time.

TheBMG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122077624#Comment_122077624

they had some sort of automated playout for the CDs. I believe there was a control panel in studio and the discs themselves were held in a remote jukebox system.

bullpost

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122078037#Comment_122078037

I was involved in setting up a similar system for RTE Radio in the late '90s. It was supplied by a Norwegian company .

Infoanon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122077624#Comment_122077624

It was Nova 100 who claimed to be 'all compact disc ' , using a Philips six disc CD player. Based in 143 Upr Leeson Street.

Satellite Nova was using a playout system and had all the ex Energy , ex Nova studio equipment.

Ger Roe made a very good point - there was not a lot of music available on CD and both CDS and the equipment were prohibitively expensive , with little noticeable improvement in audio.

In fact many disliked the sterile sound , and the audio quality on Q and Nova / Energy was already superb using Carts.

Sony were big sponsors on Q, I don't think Pierre Doyle had any financial involvement in the Sony centres.

Pat James

Back in the seventies i used both vinyl and cassette, All from my own collection,Fast forward to now and I am using Vinyl and CD and again from my own collection. The delivery system has changed as in I started on Medium wave ,onto FM and now an inter net steam,

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122078069#Comment_122078069

Late 90s would be exceptionally late to be investing anew in such a system, as hard drive storage had become 'cheap' enough for broadcaster budgets by then and you had a number of PC based playout products.

Infoanon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122078037#Comment_122078037

CLAMM - Computerised Library and Music Management System , as you correctly suggested it was linked to a bank of 20 6 Disc CD players.

CLAMM could be operated from the Selector computer package.

Definitely derailing....Radio England had a music playout system on board in 1966 but....it was very noisy to use and the music tended to be out of date by the time it was loadable

Declan A Walsh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122077624#Comment_122077624

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122078153#Comment_122078153

Just a small point. I am sure Infoanon is referring to the Dublin superpirate Radio Nova when they say Nova 100. Nova 100 is the name sometimes used by the current licensed rock station Radio Nova. I don't know if the pirate was ever referred to as Nova 100. As I say, just a small point! The satellite Radio Nova was of course the aforementioned UK-based Radio Nova International, operated by pirate Radio Nova's Chris Cary. I was fortunate to be able to pick up RNI through Dun Laoghaire pirate Southside FM's relay of it on 94.9 FM in 1988.

Bringing the subject back to today (and back on topic!), I wonder what the music sources for the pirates of today are. I am thinking mainly of the Dublin weekend pirates, which are largely oldies oriented and often automated. There are also the Medium Wave pirates in the border county areas: Radio North and Radio Star Country.

Also, what about Irish online stations such as 8Radio.com, Gem Radio Gold/ Gem Radio New Wave and Dublin's ABC?

Glaceon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122079916#Comment_122079916

I know some of the guys involved in Freedom, they're using a a computerised playout system.

KildareP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122079916#Comment_122079916

8radio are using Myriad while Freedom are using PlayoutONE.

L1011

There's extremely cheap, albeit you get what you pay for with them, playout systems available; as well as the option of just applying the term pirate to your software too for cracked copies of the bigger systems.

Infoanon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122079916#Comment_122079916

The 'Hot 100 FM ' Radio Nova , aka 'the Hot 100 FM all compact disc music Radio Nova ' aka Nova the Hot 100 FM '

Afaik Energy AM use OTS for playout and have record/vinyl players in situ.

Processing wise a lot use Breakaway

bullpost

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122078387#Comment_122078387

It probably was hard-drive based, fully networked and no single point of failure. Expensive kit and a big project for RTE.

bureau2009

What about broadcast sound quality? Which is the best? Vinyl, CDs or whatever the current system is? What about people with stereo receivers? Is stereo a thing of the past? Bluetooth doesn't lend itself to stereo sound (unless speakers are paired.)

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122080557#Comment_122080557

CD or PCM audio off a PC, which would be identical. All stations in Ireland bar Newstalk are stereo; stereo Bluetooth speakers exist as do amps for separates systems with Bluetooth input.

TheBMG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122080576#Comment_122080576

Newstalk facilities are stereo AFAIK for their streams but FM output is mono .

waynescales1

What’s a playout system?

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122081941#Comment_122081941

Software that plays the music, liners, identification jingles, ads etc for radio stations. These days always off computer storage; previously they could command CD/NAB cart/minidisc libraries in some cases.

RCS Zetta is probably the market leader, at least with large/commercial stations. Radioman, Myriad, ENCO, PlayoutONE, SAM, Tunetracker and probably another thousand systems exist as rivals.

There is/was a domestic Irish system, Radiomation; I'm not sure who still uses it these days.

California Dreamer

Outside of RTE I have never heard of anybody else ever using Radioman.

Randomly met this guy about 10 years ago ago at an event and was talking Radio with him. Apparently he came up with the idea to add the Kit-Kat logo to radioman to signal a break.

As far as I know, KCLR is the last station in Ireland, using radiomation as a main play system

waynescales1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122081945#Comment_122081945

I see, I understood the OPs question to be more about the music library itself. I wondered about this, it sounds like they just have their own digital library of music (mp3s?) which they have to build themselves, either from promos or online purchases?

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122082021#Comment_122082021

Yeah. It is often mp3, really should use something with less impact to sound quality but you will run out of storage using PCM eventually.

I am not aware of a music library sales company still going; the CD ones lasted to the mid 00s if not later - you'd get a crate of CDs and a catalogue book / excel sheet / simple Windows app to tell you which CD had what, and a CD or two every month with new tracks; all for an exorbitant fee but it was the only easy way to do it back then.

ford fiesta

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122078069#Comment_122078069

was this CD system used ?

I always wondered how RTE Radio played their back to back songs without a presenter/DJ, during the 6 weeks RTE strike in early 1992 - each night ending with Abba "Thank you for the music" ?

waynescales1

Digital downloads aren’t cheap. I wonder is the cost involved in building up a music library a contributing factor to why we keep hearing the same songs over and over on the radio.

Which has me wondering about a guy like John Creedon who plays some very obscure stuff. Is he getting a budget from RTE to go out and buy whatever music he wants.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122082111#Comment_122082111

Cost isn't a factor. Record it off Spotify if the label hasn't sent it in…

RTÉ has a huge physical and digital music library and for the rest, Creedon likely has his own.

waynescales1

Record it off Spotify? Are licenced radio stations playing music pirated from streaming services?

Glaceon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122082640#Comment_122082640

As long as they're paying royalties to the publishers, it probably doesn't really matter where they source it from.

waynescales1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122083003#Comment_122083003

Probably derailing the thread now but…

Unless the radio station receive a promo copy then the publisher is owed two payments, one for obtaining a copy of the music and second for their music being played on the radio. Do publishers/streaming services have agreements with radio stations allowing them to rip their music from a streaming service for play on the radio?

TheBMG

radio stations don’t rip music from streamers. Or if they do it’s highly irregular and very bad practise.

Record companies will email new music or make it available via download links etc. Usually linear wav files are available (although I’ve seen/heard many examples where a song has been upscaled from a lossy source).

More Music

Radioman is playout product from Jutel, based in Finland. Mostly state broadcasters that use it.

A poster (California Dreamer) mentioned a Kit-Kat logo in relation to RTE. This was a "Kit-Kat" sticker put on the key that was used to play the ad breaks on the Radioman hot key keyboard. "Have a break……. 😁" See photo below. Presume it was a pilot you met at the event that told you about that.

Radiomation is the name given to a playout product that was designed and coded in Roscommon. There was actaully a whole suite of products under the Radiomation banner - playout, automation, news, traffic, scheduling, accounts, wire services and so on. There was a Radiomation product in probably every commercial station in Ireland during the late 90's/2000's. It might be something small behind the scenes (FTP audio transfer etc.) in one station to the whole suite in another station. They did have customers further afield also. It's probably only in a handful of commercial stations now and also some community stations in Ireland. I understand they have mostly moved on to other radio products.

RCS Zetta has become the standard in Ireland, other systems are also in use.

waynescales1

The extra cost involved in storing WAVs doesn't seem like a good investment for a radio station, as 99% of their listeners would be unlikely to be able to tell the difference between a WAV and mp3, especially under the listening conditions of the average listener.

TheBMG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122083737#Comment_122083737

very little cost these days and there’s good technical reasons for using wav files; especially these days when so much audio is going to get downsampled again when it’s streaming. Start with the highest possible quality to minimise deterioration further down (cascading audio formats)

More Music

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122083737#Comment_122083737

20 years ago I would have agreed, not now. Storage is cheap to buy and a few TB's of hard disk space should not even be a consideration for a radio station's cost. You want to store your source audio in the best possible quality.

You need to keep the encode/decode cycles down to a minimum in your transmission path. To many encode/decode cycles will introduce coding artifacts and degrade the audio. 44.1kHz/16bit/stereo wav (CD quality) or better should be used for library items that will be played long term (music, idents, jingles, ads etc.). A 4 minute song will use about 40MB. I was insistent on this 25 years ago. I allow lower sample rates and mono for short term disposable audio (voice reports, silly FX etc.).

bullpost

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122082107#Comment_122082107

I'm not sure as I was on the Network side of things, but pretty sure it must have been Hard-drives.

Think the company providing the application was (And I see RTE listed as a customer):

https://www.jutel.fi/about-us/

RINO87

More derailment....but this is an interesting thread!!

The "carts" used in the 80's/90's....were these some form of DAT or regular magnetic analogue tape, or a mix of both?!

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122085524#Comment_122085524

Analogue magnetic, mono or stereo with an additional track containing cue tones.

Loosely based on the same origin as the 8 track.