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Lana is electronica (also known as RPM) music director at WMBR. Another music directorA volunteer (elf), whom she referred to as "counting monkey", does all the play counts for her genre so she does not do the CMJ reporting. She'll sometimes make CDs out of music she receives digitally, in which case she has to do all the printing herself (e.g. album art, track list). In addition, she needs to do appropriate labeling (these labels are placed on the CD spine so they're visible at a glance, e.g. black stripe represents electronic elements, green dot represents 60s oriented, yellow dot is heavy metal, red dot is noisy). About nine times out of ten she thinks the music she receives digitally is worth burning to CD and putting in the library, about one out of twenty times does she actually do so.
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- Receives a lot of great music digitally, but the overhead of getting it into the library is too high
- Wants to control what music makes it into the system, but wants an assistant to do the rest
- Process of getting digital music into the physical library is error-prone
6. Calvin (Lead Music Director):
Calvin is the Lead Music Director of WMBR, and he has dealt with nearly all of the incoming music (physical CDs and digital media) at some point during his job. He receives an extremely large amount of digital media in his email inbox everyday (high throughput). He usually browses through the list of digital tracks, picks out the artists he knows for sure are popular at WMBR and burns the tracks onto CDs. However, currently this process is time-consuming and he only does the this very rarely. Most of the time for advance tracks, demos, and singles, he doesn't even bother looking at them and deletes them right away. This is unfortunate because Calvin notes that WMBR take pride in the fact that it is unique (no rules dictating what DJs should play); they play a lot of music from local bands and does not simply play everything that is on the CMJ list. However, local music bands simply cannot afford to send out physical CDs. Calvin estimates that if there is a way to easily file digital media, there will be at least a 25% increase in the amount of music tracks they file.
In terms of the actual importing process, Calvin is concerned about the time-sensitivity of this process because most of the downloadable tracks are only available for a temporary period of time, automatically expiring after a while. Calvin envisions that such a problem can only be mitigated if the importing process was straightforward and quick (Calvin gave an example of just sending the zip file to the database and the tracks get automatically filed). In addition, Calvin is worried about the security of such an import process, whether or not the links will be disseminated without his consent, causing copyright issues. With physical copies, it is not hard to track who has accessed the CDs, but with digital media there is no paper trail at all.
Finally, and most importantly, Calvin emphasizes the importance of keeping up the relationships between the station and record labels. He spends a lot of his time talking to and communicating with companies about how much their artists' songs are getting played, therefore play count information is crucial for him.
Lessons Learned:
- Receives a lot of great music digitally, bu
Elves
1. Ken (Assistant to the Lead Music Director):
Ken is a helper around WMBR station, and mainly acts as an assistant to the Lead Music Director, Calvin. He, again, emphasizes the importance of "schmoozing" with the record companies and keeping them happy so that they will send more music to the station. He is currently in charge of "counting" the plays of music tracks for most Pop/Rock genres and several other less mainstream genres. He walked us through the entire process of his part of the job:
- WMBR currently receives music through 2 channels: CDs (mail) and digital media (email). Every week Ken manually sorts through all the mail and places CDs into different genres by placing color-coded stickers on them.
Lessons Learned:
- Receives a lot of great music digitally, bu
User Classes
Describe the user classes that you have identified, and their major characteristics.
Music Directors: Some variance in throughput levels (how many CDs and digital music they receive) and in competence with technology. Their job is to put the music they receive into the physical library, and do CMJ reporting.
Elves: Deal with hysical physical burning onto CDs and labeling.
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