Cloud playout automation — scheduling, media management, prep/VT log, voice tracking, advertising, compliance, and network broadcasting.
RunBeat Pulse is a full-featured cloud playout system built for radio stations of all sizes. It handles everything from music scheduling and media management to live-assist shows, voice tracking, advertising, and compliance checking — all from your browser.
Pulse is a multi-tenant platform hosted at runbeatpulse.com. Each station operates in its own isolated environment with its own media library, schedules, users, and configuration. Multi-station groups can manage several stations from a single login.
Visit runbeatpulse.com and choose a subscription tier. You can start with the Community plan (£49/month) or choose the Professional plan for more features. Once you've completed checkout, your station is provisioned automatically and you'll receive a login link.
Navigate to your station's URL at runbeatpulse.com/stations/your-station-slug. You can log in with:
If your station has a custom domain alias (e.g. playout.yourstationname.co.uk), you can use that too — it redirects to your station on the platform.
Every Pulse page includes a "🎓 Show me how" button in the sidebar. Click it to open a library of step-by-step guided walkthroughs that walk you through common tasks without leaving the app.
Each wizard guides you through the process one step at a time, with tips and explanations along the way. You can dismiss a wizard at any point by pressing Escape or clicking the ✕ button.
| Wizard | What it covers |
|---|---|
| 🎵 Upload & Organise Music | Upload tracks, set metadata (title, artist, category, BPM), and organise into playlists. |
| 🕐 Create a Schedule | Build clock templates, add music/jingle/sweeper slots, set rotation rules, and generate a schedule log. |
| 🎙️ Go Live on Air | Use Prep/VT Log for live broadcasting — load your schedule log, preview tracks, and use the mic button. |
| 🎤 Record Voice Tracks | Pre-record presenter links between songs with the segue editor. |
| 📡 Set Up Streaming | Configure your station's stream URLs, copy embed code, and test the stream. |
| 🛡️ Run Compliance Checks | Upload audio for AI compliance scanning, review flagged content, and approve or reject. |
Wizards are a great way to learn the platform — especially for new users or when exploring features you haven't used before.
The dashboard is your station's home screen. It shows:
The media library (also called the Media Wall) is where all your audio content lives. It supports the following categories:
Upload individual files or batch-upload multiple tracks at once. Supported formats are MP3, WAV, and FLAC (up to 50 MB per file). You can upload via:
On upload, Pulse automatically:
Every music track displays a colour-coded compliance badge:
Tracks with a status of Processing, Held, or Escalated cannot be added to the schedule log or scheduled for broadcast.
The track editor provides a visual waveform interface for setting precise audio points on each track:
The full track always plays from cue in to cue out. Intro and outro points define crossfade overlap regions — they do not cut the track short.
A clock is a one-hour template that defines the structure of a broadcast hour. Each clock contains a sequence of items:
The schedule grid is a 7-day × 24-hour table. Assign a clock to each hour slot, along with a show name and playout mode (Live, Live Assisted, or Automated).
To save time, you can copy an entire day's schedule (or a specific time range) to one or more other days. This is ideal for stations with similar weekday programming.
Pulse enforces two rotation rules to keep your output varied:
These rules are applied automatically when the schedule log is generated.
The schedule log is the ordered list of everything scheduled for broadcast on a given day. It is automatically generated from your schedule and clocks, but can be manually edited at any time.
The schedule log displays each item with its position, category badge, title, artist, projected start time, and duration. Timing information updates in real time as items are added, removed, or reordered. The currently playing track is highlighted with a prominent green pulsing border so it's always easy to spot.
| Mode | Description | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Live | Full manual control — the presenter starts, stops, and skips items manually. | Live breakfast shows, specialist programmes. |
| Live Assisted | Automatic playout with stop points — the system runs the log but pauses at presenter-designated points for live links. | Daytime shows with a presenter who wants to talk between songs. |
| Automated | Fully unattended — the system runs the log including voice-tracked content without any user interaction. | Overnight, weekends, or pre-recorded shows. |
Playout mode can be assigned per hour in the schedule, or changed in real time by a presenter without interrupting the current track.
The Prep/VT Log page is the presenter's control room for show preparation and live broadcasting. It provides:
You cannot drag or reorder the currently playing item — this prevents accidentally disrupting live output.
Voice tracking lets presenters pre-record voice links for automated shows. The voice track editor provides:
Backtiming ensures your output hits time-critical markers (like the top of the hour for news) exactly on time. Place a time-critical marker in the schedule log, and Pulse automatically calculates where to begin fading out the preceding music track so that the marker is reached precisely.
The schedule log displays warnings if the log is under-running (not enough content to fill the time) or over-running (too much content before the marker).
AutoHooks let you create dynamic music-based promos automatically. Set hook markers on tracks in the media library (the catchiest 5–10 seconds), then insert an AutoHook promo into the schedule log. Pulse plays the hook excerpts in sequence with crossfades — a quick "coming up" montage built from your own music library.
SmartStation is the contextual information panel that appears during playout. When a track plays, it displays:
SmartStation is configurable — admins can enable or disable individual data sources and set the station's geographic area (UK postcode and radius) for weather lookups.
BPM blocks let you schedule time segments filtered by tempo. Create a block with a duration (15, 30, or 60 minutes) and a BPM range (e.g. 120–140 BPM for an upbeat drive-time segment). When the schedule log is generated, Pulse fills the block with tracks from your library that fall within the specified BPM range, respecting all rotation rules.
A dual-handle BPM slider makes it easy to set the range, and the interface shows how many tracks in your library match the selected range.
The Ad Manager handles all commercial advertising within Pulse:
Create customer records for your advertisers with name, contact email, and notes. Assign advert audio files to each customer.
Each campaign has a start date, end date, and associated adverts. Campaigns automatically deactivate when their end date passes — expired adverts stop airing without manual intervention.
Define named break types (e.g. "morning break", "drive time break") and assign them to advert break slots in your clocks. Adverts are only inserted into breaks matching their assigned break type.
Assign collision tags to adverts to prevent competitors from appearing in the same break. If two adverts share a collision tag (e.g. "supermarket"), they will never be scheduled in the same break.
Set target play counts per hour or within specific hour ranges to meet contractual obligations. Pulse distributes advert placements to meet these targets during schedule log generation.
Pair two adverts so one plays at the start and one at the end of a break — premium placement for maximum impact.
Generate proof-of-play reports for any customer or campaign over a date range. Each report includes every broadcast instance with timestamps and durations. Reports are available via unique shareable URLs — send the link to your advertiser so they can verify their spots aired.
Adverts in the schedule log are protected — only admin users can remove them. Presenters and producers can reorder other content around adverts but cannot delete commercial spots.
AdMaster is a cloud-based radio traffic and billing system used by stations in 45+ countries. Pulse integrates directly with AdMaster so you can import daily traffic logs and generate reconciliation reports for billing — all without manual ad scheduling.
The RunBeat Pulse CSV format uses the following columns:
date,break_time,break_number,position_in_break,ad_id,filename,client,duration_secs,campaign_nameExample:
2026-04-17,08:15:00,1,1,AD001,client_ad_spring.mp3,Acme Corp,30,Spring Sale
2026-04-17,08:15:00,1,2,AD002,local_garage.mp3,Local Garage,20,MOT SpecialPulse matches each ad by filename against your media library. If a file isn't found in the library, Pulse checks a configured ad audio folder. If still not found, the ad is flagged as missing and the admin is notified — a silence placeholder is used to prevent dead air.
Instead of uploading manually each day, configure a source URL or S3 path in your station's Ad Ingestion settings. Pulse checks for new files every 15 minutes and imports them automatically. The import history page shows all past imports with status and any errors.
Each station in a network can have its own AdMaster integration configured with separate traffic logs. Network stations can share some ads while maintaining station-specific schedules — this ties into the Network Broadcasting feature for split ad breaks.
AdMaster traffic log import is available on all Pulse tiers. The full Ad Manager (campaigns, collision tags, frequency rules) requires the Broadcast tier or above.
Pulse integrates directly with RunBeat Compliance — a framework built around Ofcom's rules and the Broadcasting Code. There is no single compliance policy — the Broadcasting Code sets out a series of rules and expectations for UK broadcasters, and RunBeat Compliance helps your station demonstrate due diligence through automated content screening.
Every music track uploaded to Pulse is automatically submitted for compliance checking. The process is fully automatic:
Held tracks appear in the compliance review queue where admins can listen to the audio, read the transcript with flagged words highlighted, and make a final decision. See the Compliance guide for full details.
Pulse includes a built-in failsafe system to ensure your station never goes silent:
For multi-station groups, Pulse supports network broadcasting with local splits. A network station can broadcast shared programming across multiple stations, with each station able to insert local content (adverts, jingles, voice links) at designated points. Station tags enable personalised voice links that reference the local station name.
Listen Again automatically records your station's broadcast output 24/7, segments it by show using your schedule, and makes it available for on-demand catch-up listening. It also satisfies Ofcom's requirement for licensed stations to retain recordings of all broadcast output for a minimum of 42 days.
For full setup instructions, see the Listen Again guide.
Listen Again is available as an add-on from the Professional tier (£15/month) and is included in the Enterprise tier.
The Reports page is a comprehensive reporting hub accessible from the sidebar. It provides 9 report types covering every aspect of station operations, all with date range selection, summary statistics, and CSV export.
| Report | What it shows | Export |
|---|---|---|
| 🎵 Music Log (PRS/PPL) | Every track played with title, artist, album, duration, BPM, year, genre, and timestamps. Use for PRS/PPL royalty reporting. | CSV |
| 📢 Ad Proof-of-Play | Ad plays with campaign, customer, broadcast time, and duration. Filter by campaign or customer. | CSV |
| 🛡️ Compliance Summary | Tracks scanned with decision breakdown (approved/held/rejected), auto vs manual review, and matched words. | CSV |
| 📊 Listener Analytics | Daily unique listeners, peak concurrent, total sessions, listening hours, and average session duration. | CSV |
| 📅 Schedule Adherence | Log completion rates, playout mode breakdown, and failover events. | CSV |
| 🎙️ Presenter Activity | Live plays, voice tracks, days active, and audit trail actions per user. | CSV |
| 🤖 AI Link Usage | AI links scheduled vs rendered vs played, failure count, and render success rate. | CSV |
| 🏥 Station Health | Failover events, engine restarts, stream alerts, and current failover state. | CSV |
| 💳 Subscription & Usage | Current tier, user/track/storage/compliance limits vs actual usage, and active add-ons. | — |
Each report shows summary stat cards at the top and a scrollable data table below. Use the quick preset buttons (Today, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days) to set common date ranges. Platform admins can filter by station using a dropdown at the top of the page.
The Studio now-playing strip and Dashboard now-playing bar both include a MON button. Click it to listen to the live output stream — the same audio your listeners hear — directly in your browser.
When monitoring is active, the button highlights pink and a volume slider appears. This is useful for verifying what's actually going out on air without opening a separate player or tab. The stream URL is fetched automatically from your station's streaming configuration.
The Analytics page provides real-time and historical listener data. Features vary by subscription tier:
| Tier | Monthly | Annual | Highlights |
|---|---|---|---|
| Community | £49 | £490 | 2 users, 500 tracks, 10 GB, manual scheduling, email support. |
| Professional | £99 | £990 | 5 users, 2,000 tracks, 50 GB, full scheduling, Prep/VT Log, voice tracking, Whisper add-ons available. |
| Broadcast | £179 | £1,790 | 15 users, 10,000 tracks, 200 GB, Ad Manager, network broadcasting, priority support. |
| Enterprise | £349 | £3,490 | Unlimited users/tracks, 1 TB, multi-station management, custom domain, API access, dedicated support. |
| Role | Access |
|---|---|
| Admin | Full system access — settings, users, compliance review, Ad Manager, scheduling, media, schedule log. |
| Producer | Scheduling, media management, schedule log editing, clock management. Cannot remove adverts or manage users. |
| Presenter | Prep/VT Log, cartwall, voice tracking. Cannot modify schedules or remove adverts. |
Pulse supports both light and dark visual themes. Toggle between them from the main navigation on any page. Your preference is saved to your profile and restored on subsequent logins. If you haven't set a preference, Pulse follows your operating system's preferred colour scheme.