Something conflicting in rotation rules (help!)

[shawncochran]

SUMMARY OF CONFIG: I am primarily using one category (80s) and in my tracks rotation I am using "least recently played" for category "music" subcategory "80s" genre "any genre" WITHOUT a sweeper and "repeat rules" checked -- and in the "edit" option dialog box under "repeat rules override" I have "don't repeat the track for 360 minutes" and "don't repeat the artist for 120 minutes" - the other two values are 0 for the global values. ALSO in OPTIONS and SETTINGS under "rotation rules" I have "don't play the same track for 120 minutes" and "don't play the same artist for 60 minutes" and "don't play the same title for 300 minutes"

THIS JUST ISN'T WORKING! I have *clearly* done something wrong. Just this hour, I have had the same ARTIST played within 9 minutes of each other (different songs) -- ONE TWO SEPARATE OCCASIONS (Huey Lewis and Richard Marx both played twice within 9 minutes of the artist); the EXACT SAME ARTIST AND SONG TWICE (Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run; Phil Collins Groovy Kind of Love) played with 45 minutes. Journey is getting ready to play the same song TWICE within 45 minutes.

What am I doing wrong?

[ghm72]

Have you ran a quick repair on the database?

Also try to mix up the rotation with entries from Least Times played/Least recently imported etc... If that still doesn't solve it try resetting play counts from the utilities menu.
That's all I can think of.

[Calypso]

SUMMARY OF CONFIG: I am primarily using one category (80s) and in my tracks rotation I am using "least recently played" for category "music" subcategory "80s" genre "any genre" WITHOUT a sweeper and "repeat rules" checked -- and in the "edit" option dialog box under "repeat rules override" I have "don't repeat the track for 360 minutes" and "don't repeat the artist for 120 minutes" - the other two values are 0 for the global values. ALSO in OPTIONS and SETTINGS under "rotation rules" I have "don't play the same track for 120 minutes" and "don't play the same artist for 60 minutes" and "don't play the same title for 300 minutes"

THIS JUST ISN'T WORKING! I have *clearly* done something wrong. Just this hour, I have had the same ARTIST played within 9 minutes of each other (different songs) -- ONE TWO SEPARATE OCCASIONS (Huey Lewis and Richard Marx both played twice within 9 minutes of the artist); the EXACT SAME ARTIST AND SONG TWICE (Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run; Phil Collins Groovy Kind of Love) played with 45 minutes. Journey is getting ready to play the same song TWICE within 45 minutes.

What am I doing wrong?

Which version? If you're using the latest beta: "There is a new feature named "associated artists" for better handling the tracks which have multiple artists. You can manually update this field on import, or you can run Utilities - Update Associated Artists, which will try to detect the artists. It is very important to not leave the associated field empty, or the artist separation will fail and will result in playing same artists more often than you set in the repeat rules."

[shawncochran]

Have you ran a quick repair on the database?

Also try to mix up the rotation with entries from Least Times played/Least recently imported etc... If that still doesn't solve it try resetting play counts from the utilities menu.
That's all I can think of.

I did run repair on the db. I am running Maria for whatever it's worth. I also reset all the playcounts. Those actions were taken before the post. I am somewhat proud to have come up with this one! I am running 2.0.1.5B

[FreerunMedia]

I did run repair on the db. I am running Maria for whatever it's worth. I also reset all the playcounts. Those actions were taken before the post. I am somewhat proud to have come up with this one! I am running 2.0.1.5B

I recall something simular and it was an easy thing. It sounds wierd but if you have a track called "track-b" and the same track that is called "track b", you have one song with 2 different names. In that case the separetionrules are not working because it sees those 2 tracks as seperate tracks. So the thing you can check is, is there a same track different name issue? Another thing is check what Windows events telling you. If there are not so many tracks, it will reset the playcount to get tracks available again.

[stevewa]

You would need to upload your database file, so someone could run queries against it, to determine if there are inconsistencies with artist names, extra spaces etc that makes RadioDJ think it is not the same artist it is picking from. this would also allow us to "See" date_time_last_played and view rotation rules, etc.

[shawncochran]

I recall something simular and it was an easy thing. It sounds wierd but if you have a track called "track-b" and the same track that is called "track b", you have one song with 2 different names. In that case the separetionrules are not working because it sees those 2 tracks as seperate tracks. So the thing you can check is, is there a same track different name issue? Another thing is check what Windows events telling you. If there are not so many tracks, it will reset the playcount to get tracks available again.

Even if those tracks are disabled?

[shawncochran]

You would need to upload your database file, so someone could run queries against it, to determine if there are inconsistencies with artist names, extra spaces etc that makes RadioDJ think it is not the same artist it is picking from. this would also allow us to "See" date_time_last_played and view rotation rules, etc.

I cannot upload anything over 128KB ... thoughts on a convenient way to share?

[stevewa]

try google drive, then share the link here on the forums, then after it has been shared, examined, etc, delete the file from google drive. or you could also use dropbox, or any other free file sharing websites...

[shawncochran]

try google drive, then share the link here on the forums, then after it has been shared, examined, etc, delete the file from google drive. or you could also use dropbox, or any other free file sharing websites...

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ROQA1DgWZh9FdwSXeJ6DzRHikWvAP2nf

[shawncochran]

In the meantime, it's a disaster so I am changing everything back to random in the tracks rotation

[stevewa]

I just saw this today, unfortunately I am out of office so I won't be able to view your db file until Friday

[stevewa]

a quick search of your text file during lunch, searching for Huey, all artists names are the same, so it's not a case of the database thinking a typo is two different artists...

while waiting for me, try removing all repeat rules, and only have 1 repeat rule that says don't repeat the artist for 60 minutes.
in settings for playlist or rotations (I can't remember which), have it generate 100 rows for the playlist when it builds a rotation.
then you can scroll thru the playlist and look for duplication of artist names (or do another dbase export to text and search the table using a text editor ... faster)

if you have time, start re-adding the other repeat rules, until you notice the artist is being repeated.

also look in your windows event viewer for RadioDJ events, if it runs out of available rows to choose from when building a rotation, it will have an info message "i.e. not enough rows to choose from..."

good luck

[shawncochran]

So here's the really weird thing to me -- I have 1,043 songs in my 80s rotation. If the average 80s song is 3 minutes long (some more, some less, but for argument's sake - let's use 3 minutes) ... that is 3,129 minutes of music. Assuming zero commercial breaks and broadcasting 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. There are 1,440 minutes in a day. Using the "3 minute rule" for songs, that's about 480 3 minute songs per day. This means I should not hear the same song for at least 2.1 days. I acknowledge that artist separation is more complicated -- but the same artist and title should not repeat for at least 2.1 days, correct?

[Chip Douglas Mosley]

Sounds good in theory, but with artist separation rules, title separation rules, and all of the other rules (and exceptions to the rules), some songs will  be repeated sooner and others will go longer than that before repeating.

I have one category with 425 songs that only plays once an hour. In theory, it should take over 17 days before any of them repeat, yet some songs will play once a week and others will play once a month (and I still have two titles that haven't played at all over the last two months).