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.