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LAUNCHCAST RADIO, LAUNCHCAST HELP, LAUNCHCAST PROBLEMS, PLAYER PROBLEMS

HELP WITH LAUNCHCAST RADIO

Help with General Launchcast Radio Problems

Tips on rating artists, albums, songs, genres
Limitations for non-Launchcast-Plus listeners
Repetitive ads on Launchcast
Using a Yahoo account is advised
ARCHIVE -- Dealing with the June 2004 algorithm change

Help with the Launchcast Player

Launchcast player skips or won't connect
Some songs in Recently Played didn't play
Songs information fails to display

Get Help from Launchcast

Grinning Planet's Launchcast Radio Stations

View GP's Launchcast radio stations
Getting started
Disclaimer
Email us about GP radio

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Help with General Launchcast Radio Problems

Tips on rating artists, albums, songs, genres

If you need help getting started with ratings, see the excellent Launchcast help section on ratings. We can offer some additional advice for those who are interested in maximizing variety and minimizing the number of unrated songs the player plays for you:

First, if you're using the star-based rating system, switch to the numerical system. That will help you fine-tune your playback. The rest of this document assumes you are using the numerical rating system. To switch, use the Options tab on the player.
It's best to X or rate EVERY genre and subgenre if you are trying to maximize control over your music. Give 90-100 ratings to genres you really like; 70-90 for lesser genres; and X the rest. You can try genre ratings of less than 70, but results may be unpredictable. It's important to X all undesirable genres—Launchcast assumes a default rating of 50 if you don't rate a genre. Be careful to rate at least SOME genres or subgenres, though, since X'ing them all will cause the algorithm to randomly pick songs from X'd genres.
Launchcast uses two "bins"—a rated bin (which includes songs played because you rated the song, album, or artists) and an unrated bin (which includes songs played for all other reasons). The player algorithm selects about 80% of the songs from the rated bin, the rest are selected from the unrated bin.

There is one catch to the last item: Songs rated 39 or below are currently pooled in the unrated bin. This gives you an opportunity to control a portion of the unrated bin, at least in theory. Launchcast uses general popularity and your other ratings as factors in choosing songs from the unrated bin, so it's best to assign the under-40 ratings to (a) songs that are generally popular but not things you want to hear that often, or (b) songs that are in genres where you have other songs rated 40+. One final note: If there are lots of unrated songs—i.e. songs without artist, album or song ratings—available within your rated genres, the algorithm will play them preferentially when fulfilling it's unrated bucket quota and you will hear few or no songs rated 39 or below. Recent experience further shows the algorithm to be exluding plays of under-40 songs altogether, at least on Grinning Planet's three song-rating-based stations.
If you want to maximize variety, you'll need to use a tight range for your ratings (both within any particular artist and between artists). Alternately, if you want to hear your favorites often, be stingy with the highest ratings. Also note that ratings of 90+ carry special weight—the ratings scheme, which is non-linear to begin with, is especially non-linear at 90+.
Songs and artists rated 70+ will sometimes cause songs to be played for the reason "Recommended by fans of Xxxxxx" (or reasons worded similarly). This can be a good thing, but some people find it too inaccurate to be helpful. Since the songs played for this reason will always be unrated songs from unrated artists or albums, you can kill the effect for a song or artist that is getting overplayed by giving the song or artist a relatively low rating (or an X, of course).
No matter what your ratings approach, be sure to check the "remember me" box when you log in. If you don't, the system may have trouble installing ratings in the database when you try to enter them from Launchcast web pages.

If you'd like a general overview of how the Launchcast algorithm works, try the Giant Path Power User's Guide to LAUNCHcast.

Limitations for non-Launchcast-Plus listeners

If you don't have a paid Launchcast Plus account, after 3,000 songs in any given month, you hit what Launchcast calls "the stick wall."For more information on how that will impact your listening experience, see this Launchcast newsgroup post. At the beginning of the next calendar month, everything is reset and you start the count-up to 3,000 songs once again. (Note: Skipped songs count towards the total, and the number of skips per hour may be limited.) The only way to avoid this problem is to sign up for the paid Launchcast Plus service (or Yahoo Music Unlimited).

Also note that if you are using a free account, you will occasionally have the player stop to tell you of the benefits of signing up for a Launchcast Plus account. If you can afford to do that—and live in an area where it's available—it's worth it. But if you just want to keep listening to the ad-supported version of Launchcast, just click on the link in the player that allows you to keep listening. That option will be available until you hit the monthly limit.

Repetitive ads on Launchcast

Launchcast can allow people to listen for free by having ads. However, there are sometimes not enough ads in the rotation and things seem to get very repetitive. Launchcast has pledged to keep working on this issue, but your only option for avoiding ads—repetitive or otherwise—is to sign up for the paid Launchcast Plus service.

Using a Yahoo account is advised

You don't need to have a Yahoo account to listen to any Launchcast station, but if you are logged into your Yahoo account when listening, you can use the player's skip button to bypass the occasional song that does not suit your tastes.

If you don't have a Yahoo account, you can get one for free—just click on the "Sign in" link on the upper left of the Launchcast page. If the player is running at the time you sign up for the new account, you'll need to restart the player after you're done. Note that using a free Yahoo account (as opposed to a paid Launchcast Plus account) does place certain limitations on your listening (see above for more details).

ARCHIVE -- Dealing with the June 2004 algorithm change

In June 2004, Launchcast performed a major overhaul of its playback algorithm. Many people found that this change meant their custom stations were less satisfying than before, sometimes disastrously so.

The fundamental change was that song ratings began receiving less weight than ratings for artists, albums, and genres. The effect was that many fewer songs were being played because the songs had been rated. Launchcast subsequently backed off the drastic change slightly so that more rated songs would play, but the number is still fewer than before June 2004. Depending on your overall ratings scheme, the percentage of songs rated 40+ now seems to have stabilized at around half to 2/3.

So, custom stations have lost some song-specific control, but it is still possible to have a great sounding station. The key to success is to reorient your rating system so that it's a healthy mix of song, album and artist ratings, with many of the latter two having no rated songs within them. Additionally, be sure to leave some completely unrated material within your rated genres so you improve the chances of hearing something you like when the algorithm is playing songs from the unrated bucket. With that approach, the percentage of music played because you rated the song, the album or the artist—or because you intentionally left it unrated—should be very acceptable.

It's no longer possible to have a station that plays mostly rated songs, but if you take the right approach and spend some time "reracking" your station, it will still sound great.

Help with the Launchcast Player

Launchcast player skips or won't connect

There can be lots of reasons why the Launchcast player skips, won't connect, won't play anything, etc.—anything from your connection not being fat enough to handle the stream's bandwidth to improper settings in Windows Media Player or Internet Explorer to bona fide problems on Launchcast's servers.

The variety of problems that can cause the player to skip or not stream at all is too large to be addressed here. If the problem is related to trouble on Launchcast's end of things, they usually get their problems fixed within a day or so. If time does not fix your particular player problem, you might try the following:

See the launchcast troubleshooting page for player problems
Join and start monitoring the Launchcast Yahoo group
(NOTE: The group's purpose is not for technical support, but sometimes clues to solving Launchcast problems are posted there. However, it is NOT appropriate to post a tech-support question to the group and expect an answer.)
Email Launchcast Help

Some songs listed in Recently Played didn't play

The symptom here is that you can see songs listed on your Recently Played page that you know you did not hear play in the player. This has been an ongoing issue that has never had a clear diagnosis or fix. It can be occasional and just an annoyance, but sometimes it can be so bad that it makes Launchcast nearly non-functional.

Streaming protocol issues are the likely suspect—i.e. the player and Launchcast server try to talk to each other to start the next song, but the operation fails and the player silently moves on to the next song in the queue.

To solve the problem, try the options below. Ultimately, you may need to work with Launchcast tech support to iteratively tweak your IE and WMP settings to find a solution to the problem.

Songs information fails to display in player

Sometimes the info related to the previous song remains while the new song plays, sometimes there is only a blank screen in the player window, sometimes there is a blank window with an error message in it. Sometimes this problem will self-correct once the next song plays, sometimes it won't. As Launchcast does system upgrades, this problem occasionally appears and the disappears all on its own.

There is no general solution to this issue but it helps to email launchcast to let them know you're experiencing the problem. They may be able to suggest a fix.

Get Email Help from Launchcast

How do I email Launchcast tech support?

If you find that the Launchcast help pages are no help, you can email the Launchcast tech-support staff by clicking "No" on any help page where it says "Is this enough information?" Or, use this link to go directly to the form for emailing them.

Grinning Planet's
Launchcast Radio Stations

Rat Pack Heaven

Big band music and old-time vocalists;
focus on 1940s-1950s

RockSmoothie

Soft rock, upbeat pop/rock, surf music;
focus on 1960s-1970s

DeepStream Prog Pop

Progressive pop and creative music;
focus on 1980s-1990s

DeepStream Progressive

Progressive and psychedelic rock;
focus on 1960s-1970s

WE ALSO HAVE CARTOONS!


OUR CURRENT CARTOONS

	THINGS PEOPLE HATE ABOUT AIRPLANES AND AIR TRAVEL Airplane Cartoon
	THE WORKING PRIVATE EYE VS. THE RETIRED PRIVATE EYE Private Eye Cartoon
	SIGNS YOUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR MAY BE A MARTIAN Martian Cartoon

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Need help getting started listening to Grinning Planet's radio stations on Launchcast? Scroll down for tips on getting started.

Getting started with Grinning Planet's Launchcast Radio stations

Once you get to one of the four pages on Launchcast that serve as "home page" for each of the Grinning Planet Radio stations, the next step is to click on the rectangular button that has the name of the Grinning Planet radio station (i.e. one of rocksmoothie, ratpackheaven, deepstreamprogressive, or deepstreamprogpop). The button will be located to the right of the text that says "Listen to my Radio Station."

All you need to listen to Launchcast is Windows Media Player, which is a normal part of the Windows operating system. (Launchcast will not play using any other player.) There is no cost to listening to basic Launchcast.

If you've never played Launchcast before on your computer, the player will go through a one-time set-up process after you click on the "listen" button. Then the music will start to play.

If you have problems

If you have problems getting Launchcast to work for you, please check the earlier sections on this page for more tips and tricks.

Disclaimer

Grinning Planet has no financial or promotional relationship with the Launchcast or Yahoo! services. When we're working on the Grinning Planet humor and environmental pages, we're usually listening to Launchcast. We enjoy the great music, and we hope you can get some enjoyment out of it too!

Email us about Grinning Planet Radio on Launchcast

Hey, we don't pick
the Google ads! – GP

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