Thursday, March 13, 2008

Spinitron's Online Playlist Service for Non-Commercial Radio

I'm starting to find a few sources for college radio playlists (beyond looking at individual station websites). One resource is an online playlist service for non-commercial radio stations called Spinitron. On Spinitron's website, you can view public playlists for a variety of the stations using the service (17 are listed today, with a good percentage in the Massachusetts/New England area).

I spent years and years in college radio writing paper playlists, so it was truly revolutionary for me when I joined a station in the late 1990s with a computerized playlist system for tracking what one has played. It's a huge time saver and makes calculating "tops" lists (and reporting to trade pubs) so much easier. Back in the 80s and mid-1990s I was responsible for tallying paper playlists at the college stations where I worked and it was a laborious chore, but was the only way to come up with our "tops" lists for CMJ and record labels. To think that MDs rarely have to tally paper playlists anymore. Ah, technology!

I wonder, do most college stations have their record libraries cataloged on computer systems now? If not, do any of you still keep track of music played on paper playlists?

No comments: