Separation Rules

Separation rules allow you to set limits on the amount of times a certain artist or album will play within a specified time period.

Amber Macdonald avatar
Written by Amber Macdonald
Updated over a week ago

Warning: This is an advanced feature, and is not recommended for stations new to Radio.co. Please read the following before attempting to enable separation rules. 

What is separation rules?

  • Separation rules is a feature by Radio.co, which allows you to set limits on the amount of times a certain artist or album will play within a specified time period.

What do I need to know about separation rules?

  • When enabling separation rules, ensure you have enough tracks in your media library to allow the rules to be actioned. If you have artist separation set to 20 minutes, but only have 3 tracks in your media library which are all the same artist, Radio.co will not be able to follow through with the rules set, which may result in your station not broadcasting/other erratic behaviour.

  • If you'd like certain tracks to be exempt from the separation rules set (such as jingles, sweepers, or adverts), make sure they're tagged, then exclude the tag/s by adding them to the 'Allowed Tags' section.

  • Please ensure your uploaded tracks contain the correct artist and album information. If you have many tracks with 'unknown' artists/albums, this will cause issues with the separation rules, which may result in your station not broadcasting/other erratic behaviour.

Getting Started

You can access separation rules within your Radio.co Settings under the Advanced tab. Switch on either Album Separation or Artist Separation to activate these rules.

Please Note: Separation Rules only work on tagged tracks. For example, you will need to have a playlist that uses tags to take advantage of Separation Rules, as they do not apply to tracks that have been added to a playlist manually.

Separation rules

Duration

The duration is set in minutes, you can enter between 10 and 1440 (1 day).

Separation rules duration

Allowed Tags

In this section, you need to enter tags that you want to be excluded from the separation rule. For instance, jingles and promos are usually by the same artist, so you do not want this rule to affect them.

Allowed Tags

Common Issues and Troubleshooting

As separation rules is an advanced feature, there are a few issues which could result from incorrectly set rules. Below we'll run through the most common issues, and how to fix them:

  1. Is your station skipping tracks in your playlist?

If your station is skipping tracks (Tags), then that means Radio.co can't find any track that is allowed to play, as the Separation Rules are blocking all of them. Radio.co will skip the Tag when this occurs so it can move on to the next available Tag, which is allowed to play.

  1. Is your station only playing a certain type of track? (Example, only your Jingles are being played)

Further to point one, if your station will only play one type of track, such as a Jingle, this could mean you have a Jingle tag which has been added to the Allowed Tags section. These tags are excluded from any Separation Rule settings, so these are allowed to play whereas your other tracks are not.

  1. Are completely different playlists playing, and the station is not following your schedule?

If your station can't find anything to play in the playlist because the tags are violating the Separation Rules (eg, everything that is available to play has played within the Duration set), then your station may fall back to a random track from your Media library. This is because Radio.co isn't allowed to play anything from the playlist, and so to avoid dead air (silence), your station finds anything it can to continue playing.

If you continue to have issues after trying these troubleshooting steps, please contact Support.

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