Understanding UMix "Failover"
First some background to help this make sense to you. UMix is a "streaming" music service. Streaming implies something very specific in terms of music licensing and how songs can be handled in compliance with U.S. copyright law.
Songs we play at your location are "streamed," or downloaded from our servers. With UMix the streaming process applies to all Major Record Label songs. Think of Major Label songs as familiar songs. When a Major Label song is required by your playlists, our system retrieves it, plays it, and then discards it. The next time - usually days later - that the same song is required, we follow the same process. Streamed songs are not stored on the system's local disk. The reason we use this process is that the licensing procedure UMix uses for Major Label songs requires that songs are not stored on the local systems, but only on our servers.
One unique value of UMix is that in addition to Major Label songs, we offer thousands and thousands of songs by Independent Artists, "Indies." We obtain those songs under a direct license with the Artist or Indie Label. Direct licensing is the process where a rights owner sells a license directly to a music user. The UMix direct license program with Indie Artists enables us to save the songs on the local system's disk. Those songs are the key to UMix "failover."
Stay with us...
One pitfall of streaming technology is the impact of an internet outage. With pure streaming, if the Internet goes down, music stops. We protect against music stopping in two ways.
- Buffer of Major Label Songs - You can set a location specific buffer as you wish. Our default setting is 100 MB - about three hours of music.
- Failover Playlist of Indie Songs - UMix employs our entire library of 100% Indie playlists to solve this problem. If any network outage exceeds the length of your set buffer, your pre-selected failover playlist (Indie Artists) will take over. When internet service returns, your streamed playlist (Major Label) resumes automatically. Failover will continue for up to 30 days!
We have over one hundred Indie playlists. You can select any one for failover for a location.
In short, failover playlists can be a big help in the event your Internet connection is down - avoiding silence in your business.
Notes
- On the Locations page Click the Settings (Gear) in the Action column, then the Audio tab - to find the failover playlist selected for your location.
- On the Internet tab see the buffer.
- Blue dots appear on your reports tab any time three consecutive failover songs play.
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