Without a play queue your station picks again at every record. That works fine, but nobody can say what's playing at quarter past three — not even your station.
With the queue the order is fixed ahead. You can look forward, pin something, and — the nicest part — record a link over the record that comes after.
The play queue with the past hour and what's coming
Switching it on
There's one toggle at the top. Turn it on and your station calculates four hours ahead, topping up as soon as two hours are left.
There's no plan requirement and it costs nothing extra: it's the same music in a written-down order. You can switch it off just as easily.
What you see
Each line shows the time, artist and title, the duration, and where the record comes from — the playlist or the hour layout. The record playing now is highlighted in green. Above it sits the past hour, so you can look back at what just aired.
Two things you need to know
This is your rotation, not your whole hour. Advertising breaks, news and voice tracks come on top at their own moments. If you look for your ad break in this list you won't find it — and that's not a fault, that's how it works. Idents are in there, at least the ones coming from a playlist or hour layout; to the queue an ident is just a file.
The times are estimates. They're added up from track durations, and it's precisely those interruptions that aren't in there. That's why the tail of the list shifts each time behind the record currently playing. Read them as around half past three, never as a start time you plan a live item on.
Each record once
Within a round every record falls once before the rotation starts over. That came for free once the order was written down: if you know what's still coming, you can also know what's already been.
Pinning
Behind a line that hasn't played yet there's a pin. What you pin stays put — even when the list is recalculated. Handy if you want one record at a particular moment and don't mind about the rest.
Removing and recalculating
The bin removes one record from the list; the rest shifts up.
Opnieuw uitrekenen throws away everything that hasn't played and thinks again. What you pinned stays, and so does the record currently playing. That's what you do after changing a playlist or hour layout when you want to see the result now rather than in four hours.