To make sure that your station sounds as professional as possible, it’s a good idea not to switch to your live broadcast in the middle of a song. This article offers two different approaches to timing your LiveDJ transitions. 

Because of the nature of internet radio, when you are broadcasting, there will always be a slight delay from your live stream to what your listeners hear. This delay can vary anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds. This delay can make mastering the transitions from CloudDJ (AutoDJ or scheduled programming) to your LiveDJ difficult, until you learn the methods described below.

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.

Method #1: Tracking Playout through the Overview page

On your station overview, you will find a progress timer for the song that is currently playing. If you watch closely, you will notice that the progress timer is always slightly ahead of what you actually hear airing on your station. 

In order to time your LiveDJ transitions appropriately, you should start your live broadcast as soon as the progress timer for the current song reaches the end of the total song length.

This will also help to ensure that you don’t start your LiveDJ session halfway through the previous track.

Method #2: Tracking Playout through a trigger Event (audio cue)

If you know the exact time that you want to broadcast live, you can prerecord a custom 2 minute long audio track that introduces your live broadcast, and is followed by some instrumental music that slowly fades out over the length of the track. 

Insert that track into its own Playlist, then schedule a 2 minute long Event for when you want your live broadcast to begin.

Using this method, you can transition to LiveDJ as soon as you hear the music begin during your trigger Event. LiveDJ will override your scheduled trigger Event.

This method is especially helpful if you have a difficult time tracking the progress bar visually.