Media Types are a Live365-internal way to organize the tracks in your library. There are 6 Media Types available to choose from. Media Types are predefined by Live365 and are important for implementing the basic AutoDJ track mix.


Tip: You may have access to 1 or more Live365 stations. See our Dashboard Navigation article to learn more about selecting the station which you want to work with. Once on that Station's Overview page, you can then follow along.


What are Media Types?

Types are a Live365-internal way of labeling files in your Library. Media Types are different from Categories (formerly called Tags). Categories are user-defined tags, whereas Media Types are static, defined by Live365. A track can have multiple Categories, but it can only have one Media Type. There are currently 5 different Media Types: Music, Talk, ID, Promo, and Ad:

  • Music - Used for copyrighted content, including music.
  • Talk - Used for live recordings and spoken word content like podcasts, sermons, interviews, and storytelling.
  • Promo - Best used for promotional tracks and tracks only to be aired for a limited time, such as concert announcements, sponsor mentions, seasonal tracks, etc.
  • ID - Used for tracks that help your listeners identify which station they are listening to. IDs are also sometimes referred to as jingles or sweepers. 
  • Ad - You cannot label anything as an Ad, but you might see this Media Type in the search feature. Ads are controlled by Live365.
  • MultiTrack - Used for large syndicated shows or music DJ mixes. With this feature, you can add timestamping to a single file containing multiple tracks. Each track's metadata can now be identified individually, resolving licensing compliance issues where a single file contains multiple copyrighted contents.


Why do you need Media Types?

Media Types are mainly used in selecting tracks that play while you are in AutoDJ mode. You will find the AutoDJ settings by selecting Streaming ➡ AutoDJ ➡ Track Mix.


Selecting Media Types for the Track Mix will enable all of the tracks of that Type that are not marked as Do Not Play. Once tracks are categorized as station IDs, you can also specify how many station IDs you want to air per hour.


Selecting Media Types while uploading tracks to your Library

Upload tracks by selecting Tracks from the Station Menu.

  1. Click the orange Add tracks button on the top right of the Tracks page. For best results, upload similar tracks in each batch because you can only select one Type for all the tracks in each batch.
  2. Once you have clicked the orange Add Track button, a window will pop up with different options for Media Type. Select the Media Type that applies to all the tracks that you are going to upload in the batch.
  3. Choose Tracks from your computer or external hard drive to upload. These will be stored in your station’s media library and will ONLY be available to you. At this time, Live365 does not have a shared music library. Live365 will detect if you have already uploaded a copy of the current track and will not upload duplicate copies.
  4. Once you have added the desired tracks, you can then make adjustments to the Categories and metadata tags of the files. We highly encourage you to process your whole local library through a metadata program before uploading to Live365, but this screen gives you the ability to make adjustments as you are uploading. You only need to edit the fields that you would like to modify compared to the original file. If no additional information is added to a field, the original metadata will be used.
    1)Edit metadata fields.
    2)Select Track Categories.
    3)Finish the upload process.
  5. Whether you update metadata at this point or you are happy with your existing metadata, you will next move forward with the uploading process by clicking the orange Done button as indicated in the image below. Then, wait for the process to finish and you'll see your uploaded tracks appear in your media library.


Note: You should verify the correctness of the metadata prior to uploading tracks. Adjustments made in the upload process will only be applied in the Live365 library and will not update the file on your local machine.


Related article:

Track Categories