Setting cue points on songs

Have you ever noticed how songs on the radio play without the gaps you hear on streaming music services, MP3s and CDs?

Or how a jingle plays exactly where it should at the start and end of a song?

These smooth segues are made possible with markers known as cue points. Adding cue points to songs, imaging, promos, commercials and even news items and interviews tells the playout software what to do at specific parts of the audio.

Cue points are easy to set and normally take a few seconds when adding new audio to a playout system. Setting up cue points on a large batch of audio or even an entire music library can be laborious, but it’s often worth it for a cleaner and smoother station sound.

The exact approach to setting cue points depends on the radio automation or playout software. The terms can vary too. A ‘cue out’ in mAirList means the end of the audio and the file will be ejected in live-assist mode. A ‘cue out’ in PlayIt Live means the track will start to fade out.

There are some common cue points which appear in most systems:

• Cue In: Where the audio should start (trims the silence at the start)
• Intro: Where the vocals start (so a presenter can talk up to them)
• Hook: Where the hook of the song is (useful for creating ‘coming up…’ imaging)
• Outro: Where the vocals finish (so a presenter can start a link, or move to the next item)
• Cue Out: Where the audio should stop (trims the silence from the end)

Many automation systems can set the cue in and cue out automatically. The software uses thresholds to detect the silence and add the cue points when the item is imported.

However, this doesn’t always work. When a radio station plays a song with a hard ending, rather than a fade out, listen out for the the end of the song. Some stations crash into the next song or imaging during the isolated words at the end of “King of Rock’n’Roll” by Prefab Sprout or “Need You Tonight” by INXS.

This can also cause issues with interviews and pre-recorded reports where a final word can be lost, or on a commercial when it seems to fade into the next one before it has completely finished.

Automated cue points can be useful if you don’t have time to go through your music library. They also help specialist music presenters who might import songs to play just once and don’t want to manually set the markers for 20 or 30 songs. They can also provide a starting point so that cue points can be adjusted rather than set from scratch.

How to set cue points or markers on a song

For this example we’ll set the cue points on a song in radio automation software mAirList. The layout and cue point names differ between different playout systems, but the principles are the same.

Cue In

This is the very first cue point. It’s used to trim the silence from the start of the audio. The cue point should be set at the very first point at which you can hear the audio.

Intro

Most songs have an introduction before the vocals begin. This part of the song might be talked over by a presenter doing a link. This cue point often results in a countdown being displayed on screen so that the presenter knows how long they have left before they will hit the vocal.

Where a song has no intro at all, such as “Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)” by Squeeze, an intro cue point can still be set. This will explicitly show the presenter that the song has no intro (0 seconds), as opposed to the possibility that the cue point hasn’t yet been added on this song.

Some playout systems provide for more than one intro cue point. This is useful for songs which have a long intro which builds before a second part of the intro. A rock station might set two intro cue points on “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd.

Hook

The hook is the catchy part of the song. There is more than one cue point for the hook. One will be used to start the hook and another to end it. Software like mAirList allows for a hook fade cue point as well. The length of the hook depends on the song and possibly the radio station format, but it should generally be quite short.

Outro / Extro

At this point the vocals have finished and the presenter can use the rest of the song to start a link. The presenter can also use this point to know that they can fade the song early and go to the next item, such as another song or a commercial break.

Fade Out

The fade out cue point sets the point at which the playout software should fade the song out. This is sometimes used to start the next item in the playlist or log. The fade out point is useful for automation, but allows the song to continue all the way to the cue out in live assist mode if desired. The duration of the fade and how the playout system handles the fade out may vary between systems and even radio stations.

If the fade out point starts the next item (or the cue out point below), always set the cue point on the end of a line of the vocals. This sounds much tidier than crashing out halfway through a line, especially in ballads and love songs.

Cue Out

This is the last cue point to be set and is used to trim the silence from the end of the audio. It should be set when the audio is no longer audible. The playout system might completely eject the item from a player once this marker is reached.

Fade or End?

Another important tag for songs is the ending. This doesn’t apply directly to a position in the audio of the song, but rather describes the end of the song.

Songs which fade out are normally tagged as having a fade, or with a letter ‘f’. Songs which have a hard ending would be tagged as ending, or with a letter ‘e’.

This tells the presenter how the song will end, so they can consider the following link or imaging.

If the playout software is configured to fade songs to meet a specific time marker it will know it can safely fade these songs. Fading “Song 2” early by Blur would sound odd, but it’s something which could be done with “Girls and Boys” in order to adjust timing for commercials or the news.

Testing cue points

Although you can hear the cue points when setting them up in a playout system, it’s not the same as hearing them in action.

Once you’ve set the cue points on all your files (e.g. the new songs being added to the database that day), or a selection that you’re working on, see if you can drag them all into a playlist. If the playout system supports creating a mixdown you can do this and then skip to the point at which each song ends and the next one starts.

You might notice that the point where the playout software starts a song jars too much. In this case the point can be updated on that particular song. It’s worth mixing up the playlist with imaging and your commercial break intro and outro (e.g. promo or ID) too.