Schedule Christmas music that turns itself on and off

You upload your Christmas songs in November, and in July one of them comes on. Without a date window that can happen, because the library shuffle can pick any song when rotation runs short (when library tracks still play). Switching to Christmas by hand fails the other way. MusicMaster, which makes music scheduling software for radio, wrote in December 2020 that it gets calls every year from users who "have Christmas music scheduled on December 26th": they had activated a holiday grid by hand and forgot to re-activate the regular one (MusicMaster).

Two tools do the switching on set dates. The schedule changes what a whole hour or day plays. A date window on the songs lets them sit in your usual playlists all year and air only between two dates, with no playlist edits. A small AutoDJ station can start with the window alone: one tag, two dates. On a station that keeps its format through the season, we'd use both.

The window fixes the July problem. In CloudRadio's AutoDJ, it takes one tag:

1. Create the tag with its dates.

   In the Media Library, open the Tags tab, click Create tag and name it christmas-hits. In the Airing section, under Dates, click Every year, then set Starts airing on to November 20 and Last airing day to December 25; the Dates line then reads "every Nov 20 to Dec 25". Leave the hours and months alone: all of them start selected (tags). Click Create. Dates follow the station time zone.

2. Tag the songs.

   On the Tracks tab, select the hits, click Tag, type christmas-hits and click Add christmas-hits to N tracks (media library).

3. Put them where your music comes from.

   A station that only shuffles its library needs nothing more. For rotation playlists, make a playlist of the hits at Light rotation (weighted rotation). For a clock (a playlist with Randomize order off), add a christmas-hits slot (tag slots).

4. Leave it in place after Christmas.

   Outside its dates the playlist and the slot have nothing to play, and the AutoDJ moves on to your other music. The library marks songs outside their window with Outside airing window, so you can check before November 20 that the hits are waiting.

Sean Ross, writing on the blog of scheduling software maker Powergold in 2020, called "dozens of Christmas clocks" "a real headache" for many programmers (Powergold). The tag slot in step 3 avoids them.

• Weak: Upload the songs on November 20, add them to your main playlist, and set a reminder to delete them on December 26.
• Better: Tag them christmas-hits with the dates November 20 to December 25 and put one slot in your clock. The dates repeat every year.

Changed: nothing depends on remembering, and the songs stay uploaded.

• Every year repeats a month and a day at each end, both days included, so the window returns each season without edits. It can run across New Year, from December 15 to January 6 for example.
• Specific dates carry a year and suit one season only, such as a promo for this year's event.
• Months come back on their own too, but only as whole months: with only December selected, a tag airs every December 1 to 31.
• Dates, months and hours combine. A song airs only when all three allow it, so keep all months selected when you use dates. If no selected month falls between the dates, the form warns that the AutoDJ never picks these tracks.

On mAirList's forum in 2020, a user asked: "I want my Christmas Jingle to enter rotation on 8th December and exit rotation on 6th January, every year" (mAirList community). In CloudRadio that is one tag set to Every year, from December 8 to January 6.

To build Christmas up toward the day, split the songs into two groups with two windows. That follows advice from two consultants for stations that keep their format, in a 2024 Barrett Media roundup. Gary Berkowitz advised starting the Friday before Thanksgiving with one or two Christmas songs an hour and adding more as Christmas nears. John Lund, whose firm calls 156 of the 250 songs on its Christmas list secondaries, advised holding those back "until the last week before Christmas". For 2026, with US dates:

The first group is the christmas-hits tag from the steps above. For the second, tag the rest christmas-more, give it a window from December 18 to 25 and its own slot or playlist.

Suffolk Radio, the internet station of Suffolk County Community College, announced its 2020 holiday season in a similar order: three holiday songs an hour from December 3, five from December 10, seven from December 17, and holiday music around the clock from December 21 to 25 (Suffolk County Community College). The first three steps add songs to every hour; the last replaces whole days, a job for the schedule.

Mike McVay's "partial plan" in the same roundup included a weekday "Christmas Shoppers Lunch" from noon to 1 p.m., promoted as "music to shop by". Here are that lunch hour and Christmas Eve and Day on the schedule:

Berkowitz's advice in the same roundup was to "always use Christmas imaging in front of Christmas music", meaning Christmas IDs and sweepers (the kinds of radio imaging). IDs and promos often say a date out loud, so they go stale on a set day: "Shop with us until Christmas Eve" is wrong on Christmas Day.

A promo that must stop on a date gets its own tag. Keep your usual promo tag, which the clock's promo slot plays, and add promo-christmas-eve with Last airing day set to December 24. On December 25 it leaves the slot and the shuffle, with nothing to delete. Keep the dated tag on the file afterwards, or the promo could come up in the library shuffle on any day.

• A window never makes the stream go silent.

  When no track in your library is inside its window, the AutoDJ plays the song that has gone longest without airing, whatever its window (how stations prevent dead air). The cost is an out-of-season song: a station that holds only Christmas music, such as a separate Christmas stream, keeps playing Christmas songs, and its expired promos, after its window closes.

• Live hosts aren't affected.

  Windows decide what the AutoDJ picks. While a host is live, the AutoDJ's IDs and tag slots don't play, so hosts need the Christmas IDs in their own software, or on Cloud Booth's cart wall: an owner, station manager or music controller can put them on the shared Station wall for every presenter (the cart wall).

• Songs are checked at airtime.

  The AutoDJ checks each queued song against the time it is expected to play, so a song queued at 11:50 p.m. on December 25 to start after midnight is judged as December 26 and doesn't play.

Where each tool puts the dates, in our reading of its own documentation and forum, as of November 2026:

RadioBOSS sets a start and end date per track, both required, and they apply only when its Playlist Generator or a Track List picks the track (RadioBOSS manual). They carry no year: its developer wrote in 2025 that the feature "exists to add seasonal songs (e.g. Christmas)" and stores "only month and date" (DJSoft forum).

PlayIt Live gives each track a Valid From and an Expires date, and Expires is the first day it can't play (PlayIt Live FAQ). For a season that returns yearly, it suggests a seasonal clock grid with "Ignore year on dates" ticked (PlayIt Live FAQ).

mAirList has "Don't schedule before" and "Don't schedule after" dates on each item (mAirList documentation). We found no month setting there or in the 8.0 changelog up to October 2026 (mAirList changelog).

AzuraCast can schedule a playlist "between a certain date range" (AzuraCast docs), and its scheduler compares the dates with the year (AzuraCast source). The dates sit on the playlist, so, in our reading, promos with different last days need a playlist each.

LibreTime plays music in shows on a calendar, and a repeating show can have an end date (LibreTime docs). Its playlists manual describes no dates on tracks (LibreTime docs).

Start small: create the tag, set its two dates and tag the songs you already have. Then add the lunch hour and Christmas Eve and Day to the Schedule if you want them, and give any ID or promo that names a date its own tag. With Every year dates, next autumn needs no changes.