Working from a file browser does not scale past a few hundred tracks. You need a catalogue: something that knows what each track is, not just where it lives.
What the library holds
Each track carries title, artist and album from its tags, plus category, subcategory and genre. Play count, last played and date added come along too, so the library doubles as a usage record.
An on/off flag per track controls whether rotation may select it. This is more useful than deleting: a seasonal track can sit dormant for eleven months and be switched back on without re-importing or re-cueing anything.
Importing
Import a folder and it is scanned recursively for supported formats. Rescan later to pick up additions.
Metadata loads lazily. Rows appear immediately showing filenames, then tags and durations fill in from background workers, with rows updating as batches complete. Importing a thousand files does not lock the interface — a real consideration when the machine you are importing on is also the machine that is on the air.
Categorising in bulk
Nobody categorises a library one track at a time. Select many, assign a category to all of them, and set defaults so an import lands in the right bucket to begin with.
The categories that matter are the rotation ones: your power and secondary music buckets, plus imaging categories for commercials, station IDs and voice tracks. Those imaging codes are what drive the crossfade policy — a track in an ADS or ID category is automatically treated as imaging rather than music at transition time.
Why this is the first job
Rotation clocks select by category. Compliance reports measure category performance against targets. Repeat rules count separation within categories.
All of it rests on the library being categorised properly. It is the least interesting afternoon of the setup and the one that determines whether everything built on top of it works.
Search that stays fast
Library, history and playlist grids all use row virtualization with recycling, so only visible rows are realised. A 5,000-track library scrolls at the same speed as a 200-track one.