Wedding Packages with MC Service start at $500!
Wedding Packages with MC Service start at $500!
Music programs are the software platforms and apps that you will use to compile your music and playlists. Some of them come and go. One has been around the longest and is still the easiest to use and provides the best sound quality. That is Spotify. Below is more information about just some of the music programs
Spotify gives you a lot of music choices for a reasonable monthly charge. The paid premium version is really the best option to go with for Spotify to even compete with iTunes. Generally, the charge is $10 a month, but they often have a deal where the first month is free.
With the paid premium version of Spotify, you not only get access to just about any song you will need, but you can make playlists and download them onto multiple players. This means you do not have to have Wifi to access the playlists and having it available on multiple players allows you to have a backups.
With Spotify on your laptop, you can make playlists and rearrange songs on the fly easily. There is a crossfade feature and the volume level between songs is very smooth
There is a search bar which you can type in an artist or a song to search for matches. For example, if you want some Michael Jackson in your playlist, you can type in Michael Jackson, and then click on Michael Jackson under “Artist” and it will bring up the top 5 Michael Jackson songs. You can expand that to the top 10. This Top 5 or Top 10 is according to Spotify and how many times someone has played the song on Spotify.
Type in "Weddings" in the Search Bar at the Top and you will see a lot of playlists related to weddings!
Now for probably the most important tip I can give you about using Spotify. After you have made all your playlists, all your songs are in and ready, before you leave to the wedding venue, preferably maybe the night before your wedding day, you need to make your playlists are downloaded and made available OFFLINE.
This will allow you to use multiple players at the same time and you will not have any issues being able to play a song because internet access has been lost.
This is a two-step process: This first step needs to be done with each individual playlist, while still connected to the internet. Click the Down Arrow next to the Green Play button on the top of the playlist. Once you do that you will see Down Arrows next to each song appear. Be patient and make sure all songs have been downloaded before moving to the next step.
For the Second Step, once all the songs on each playlist are downloaded, go to File (in the 3 dots at the top of the menu on the far left side) and then click Offline Mode. Now your playlists are downloaded onto your computer and you can operate each additional player independently of the computer.
PRINTING YOUR PLAYLISTS:
This is a little tough with Spotify. The best tip is to take a screenshot of the playlist and print the screenshot.
On the big day, here are a few tips for your music settings. Although if you hire Just Press Play Productions MC Service we can help you with these settings.
First, Click on Edit (in the 3 dots at the top of the menu on the far left side) and go to Preferences.
-Click on High-Quality Streaming, you purchased Spotify already for the month so you have the premium version which allows this.
-Under the Social section, I normally turn all these off. It makes it less confusing for whoever is pressing play for you.
-If you have songs available on other platforms you can select these as well. But normally these do not work well in the offline mode, so you will need to be connected to the internet to access these songs.
-Under display options I turn off the first three as again, it just makes the interface more confusing to whoever is pressing play.
Now click on “Show Advanced Settings”
Really the only thing you need to set here is the crossfade. I have found that somewhere between 7 or 8 is the best place. Generally, during background music 7 is the best, and 8 is better during dance music. But if you want to set it and forget it, I would put it at 7.
Compiling Playlists
You can make playlists just like in Spotify, but unlike Spotify, you don't have to make the playlists available offline.
Compiling music in playlists is a little clumsier than with Spotify. You do need to switch back and forth from the store to your music library which can be cumbersome.
“iTunes Music” is similar to Spotify, but still does not seem to be as smooth a process.
Ability to Edit Songs!
The BEST feature about iTunes is you can edit songs. You can edit out a weird intro or shorten a song by cutting out the end. By doing this you save some awkward transitions between songs. Especially if you are Just Pressing Play and letting the music roll.
You can also edit the length of the songs down in order to fit more songs into your playlist. Most songs have their appeal after 3 minutes and guests are ready to move on. And with the crossfade turned on you can hardly notice the song was edited down.
HAVE TO HAVE WIFI TO USE.
Have not used this recently, but in the past, you had to have wifi in order to access the music. I have not confirmed if you can download the music or not.
Also using the venue's wifi can be tricky. The more people that are using it the slower it might get.
Aspects of Amazon Music to Note...
Amazon Music is OK. A little clunky but it has the basics and it will work for your event.
First, you have to sign up for the free 30 day trial of Amazon Prime.
Secondly, you have to download their music player. If you are already an Amazon Prime member you do get Amazon Music for free.
From there it gets a little confusing. I have bought music from Amazon's Digital Music Library in the past, so I have a collection of songs already via Amazon. I have that library and then there is Amazon's library I could select songs from. And it's a little clunky getting from one to the other.
With Spotify, you can just click "add songs" and then start typing in song names and they pop up, under songs, Albums, Artists. But songs come up first. With Amazon Music, it just shows you albums and then you have to click on the album. If you have a playlist already started, you can easily drag these songs over to your playlist which is nice. It is just tough finding the songs.
You don't get every song for free!
There is a lot of music to choose from but some will cost you $1.29. I think Spotify has a lot more FREE songs than Amazon Music. However, one of the downsides to Spotify is that there are a few songs you can't get. With Amazon Prime, you have a better chance of having access to just about any song, you just might have to pay for a few of your songs.
The player itself is nice and easy to navigate through your playlists.
It looks similar to Spotify. It has the shuffle option and the repeat a playlist option which is nice. You can skip to the next song, you can skip ahead in a song, you can change the volume. All features are available with Spotify and iTunes.
One thing I like, as a DJ, is that it has a counter that counts down the time left in the song but also tells you the total length of the song. (This is not really useful except to the person playing the music during your event. )
One thing missing, that iTunes and Spotify have, is a crossfade option. This is a feature that allows you to have one song fade nicely into the next song so there are no gaps between songs. This is a feature we use a lot at our events.
Have not had a lot of experience with this program.
At first glance, it looks similar to Spotify. Don't get fooled by looks. For example, it does not have a crossfade option. It also does not have volume control. It does have an equalizer, which we found not to work well.
It's easy enough to navigate and get quickly to the next song without an unwanted pause.
Had issues with the "Next Play" and "Queue" features. They seemed to not always work quite the way they normally are supposed to.
Nice Feature...Downloading songs on your device means you don't have to rely on wifi.
A nice feature Google Play Music has is you can download the songs onto your device so you can play them without having WiFi access. More importantly, this can be done on not just mobile devices but also on your laptop. Not always the case with other platforms.