The Airtime Pro team is proud to announce the brand new Radio Page, set to go live on December 12. All current trial and paid stations will be upgraded automatically.

The new specs have been designed to meet Airtime Pro users’ needs, especially when it comes to making your programming more social, shareable and fun to use. This design and functionality release is part of a bigger project to add more features to Radio Page.

Let’s see what’s new!

Schedule page

• We moved the station description to the Home page (Start) so that everyone can see what your station is about right away…
• Which is why Schedule Overview has moved to the “second” page.
• You can now customize your background image.

• Station admins can also try different Color Schemes for their Radio Page.

• The navigation menu has moved from bottom to the left-hand side.

Podcast Page

• We added Social Media Links (under the logo). Station admins can customize links.
• You can help first-time listeners understand what your station is all about by adding Station Tags (category/genre).
• Show Information is a new feature where you can say more about  your ongoing/scheduled shows.
• We gave the Playout toolbar at the bottom of the page a makeover so it looks crisp and clean.

Share track

• We added Automated Track Artwork display.
• Desktop users will appreciate the new Volume bar.
• The Share Track button lets your listeners share Now Playing tracks via Twitter, Facebook, Google +, or their email accounts.  Along with the Social Media Links in the top left corner, this new feature will get the word out about your station!
• The Embed Button takes sharing one step further. Listeners can embed your player widget on their own, wherever they want.

Embed Player Widget

• The new Radio Page comes with responsive design, which will make it look good on all devices, especially mobile ones.
• All the settings and new custom options for your new Radio Page can be found in the new Settings Page (Settings -> Radio Page)

UI on iPhone 6+

Radio Page Settings

We hope you’ll like it as much as we do!

Happy broadcasting (and listening),

The Airtime Pro Team

New to Airtime?

Sign up for a 7-day free trial, no credit card required.

The post Introducing Radio Page 2.0 appeared first on Airtime Pro.

The podcast feed built into your Airtime Pro station can be used as a simple way to distribute radio programs with partner stations. Anything you upload to Airtime Pro can be published to your podcast feed, so this will work if you’re uploading full radio programs you’ve already stitched together into single tracks, such as interviews, or other content you’d like to share such as advertisements or jingles. Since Airtime Pro can also subscribe to podcasts, what you’ll do is get your partner stations to subscribe to your podcast, who will then be able to download anything you publish to your podcast feed. By having stations subscribe to each other’s’ podcasts, you can easy build up a radio network with shared content to help fill out your broadcast schedules.

The first thing you’ll want to do is publish some radio programs to your podcast feed. To find out how to do that, check out our previous blog post.

Next, if you only want to share radio programs with certain people, you’ll need to change your ‘Feed Privacy’ setting. Click My Podcast in the navigation bar on the left, and scroll down to Privacy Settings. Set the Feed Privacy to Private. Click Save, and then copy the Feed URL that’s shown. That is a secret link that allows people to access your podcast feed and download anything published to it, so you’ll need to send this URL to your partner stations.

Copy and paste this link to share your station

Let’s walk through what your partner stations would have to do to add your podcast RSS feed to their library. In the navigation bar on the left, under ‘Dashboard’, click Podcasts. In the Podcasts view, click Add in the toolbar. A subscription box will appear, in which you need to paste the podcast feed URL you found earlier:

RSS feed URL

Click Subscribe afterward, and you’ll now be able to see the feed in your library. By default, Airtime Pro will import any new episodes published to the feed, so your partners will be able to automatically find anything you publish in their track library within an hour or so.

To browse and import individual episodes from a podcast, select it in the Podcasts view, and click the View Episodes button.

How to view the list of episodes in an imported podcast

The list of episodes available for import in the selected podcast. To import an episode, select it and click “Import”. Episodes can be added to your radio broadcast schedule from this screen as well.

That’s it! In this tutorial, we’ve shown how you can use the podcast publishing and import features to publish radio tracks from one station and import them automatically on another station.

The post Share radio programs between stations with podcasting appeared first on Airtime Pro.

Simply put, college radio is an institution, one we’re proud to help drive into the 21st century.

So, in the interest of doing just that, and creating greater access to more powerful tools around the world, we’re excited, even proud to offer a 45% discount for all new academic Airtime.pro plans between now and the end of October. After October, we will be featuring an ongoing discount of 30% to all academic plans. 

How do I qualify?

It’s easy. Be a student or a teacher and have the account affiliated with an educational organization. While we’d love to open this up to everyone, we think that we can have the greatest impact this time around by engaging with academic institutions. We’re not exactly shy with our promotional offers (it’s a hazard of believing so strongly about what you build), so keep an eye on this blog.

Some of the benefits you can offer your college or university with Airtime Pro include:

• Live and pre-recorded interviews with special guests – students, professors, local bands, visiting speakers, local politicians
• Engage your community
• Promote important discussion
• Broadcast critical school updates
• Share the creative work of the student body
• Share recorded lectures online
• Easy, affordable practicum opportunity for public speaking, broadcasting, and presentations
• Go it alone or develop complex team-building exercises

Additional new features can be found here.

As much as we’d like to, we can’t run this promotion forever, so to take advantage of the 45% discount, sign up by the end of October. Ensure that you and your school has the opportunity it needs to benefit from Airtime.pro’s powerful solution and slick, easy interface.

Connect with us, be the next voice, whether you’re Rodney on the Rock or Ira Glass, John Peel or Dr. Demento, get Airtime.pro and be heard.

The post Shape the future of college radio with the new education discount appeared first on Airtime Pro.

Do you need to schedule a show ahead of time? Airtime’s smart blocks make the preparation process much easier.

You’ll need to upload your media files first, so that you can work with blocks. In order to achieve this, you have to go to ‘add media’. It will let you to ‘add files’ from your computer or other data storage. After adding them, you’ll need to hit the ‘start upload’ button to initiate the files transfer. Then you are ready to play with smart blocks.

Head to the Library and find the ‘open media builder’ button on the right side approximately in the middle of the page. Click it and then choose the ‘new’ button. A drop-down menu will appear. From there, simply choose ‘new smart block’.

After you do this, a panel will open and the fun begins. You can name your smart block whatever you want and then add a short description.

When building smart blocks, there are certain criteria from which you can choose such as BPM, genre, label or many others, from which the content of the blocks will be generated. You can then set up the rules connected to them by choosing the right modifier.

For example: Suppose you want an hour-long show filled with music from the contemporary classical genre, but you don’t want to include Steve Reich. Additionally, you only want to play the tracks recorded between 1971 and 2001. Not a big deal. Add a set of rules saying you want to play the tracks labeled with contemporary classical, or modern classical, or experimental. Then choose the composer to be set as Steve Reich and set modifier to “is not”, which will exclude his tracks from being played. After that, set the range to be between 1971 and 2001. Easy, right?

Dynamic or static?

Once you’ve set up your rules, you have two options: set the smart block type to either dynamic or static.

A static smart block will save the criteria and generate the block content immediately. You’ll find your smart block in the Library and before adding it to a show, you’ll be allowed to Preview or Edit it. This a great way to generate a playlist quickly and then fine-tune the order or contents of that playlist.

A dynamic smart block will only save the criteria. The block content will then get generated when you add it to a show. So, although you will not be able to view and edit the content in the Library, it’s possible to add this block to any show (it could be 24 hours long!) and each time it will generate afresh using the rules you set.

After choosing the type of block, hit the ‘generate’ button and then don’t forget to save it!

Is there a way to set Auto-DJ?

Unfortunately, we don’t have a big red Auto-DJ button yet, but judging by the comments we’re getting, it’s something radios would like to see. Worry not, there is an easy workaround on how to achieve this. Simply schedule 24-hour shows, with 24-hour dynamic smart blocks. If you set up a rule telling the block not to play the songs from yesterday, then you’ll keep content fresh for your listeners.

Getting smarter with ads

If the advertisements are part of your broadcasting, don’t worry about adding them to your playlist. There are two possible solutions to this situation that are currently available.

Option 1: make a conventional ad break in Airtime by creating a smart block of genre called ‘advert’ and a dynamic smart block of music genres, one following the other. If the advert smart block length is a multiple of the standard ad length (30 seconds), there should be no fades during the ads.

Option 2: Create a dynamic smart block for the ads which is the exact duration of one or two ads (say all your ads are a standard of 30 seconds, so create a smart block of one minute for two random ads).

Combine this with Airtime’s watch folders and it will scan your library for new ads that fit the rules you set up (e.g. include only those uploaded in last week) and then play them out whenever they are scheduled. To create or find your watched folder, you have to go to ‘system’ and then choose the ‘media folders’ option. This is where you can and add and later choose the folder you want to watch.

What’s the future of playlists?

Smart blocks are a huge leap forward, but they’re still not perfect, and micro-managing complex ads schedules can be tricky. Here are some new feature ideas we are playing with to improve things even more.

• Copy show feature. This would allow you to quickly duplicate shows containing dynamic blocks.

• Content duration rules (play tracks with genre ‘advert’ 5% of the time)

• Sequence rules (e.g. play a file with genre ‘advert’ after each three ‘music’ plays)

What would you like to see? Are you using smart blocks in a totally different way? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter or on the forum!

Want to start a radio station right now? A managed hosting account can save you time and effort. You could be on the air today with Airtime Pro.

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