Create a radio station

CSLMusicMod allows you to create your own radio stations either quick and dirty or with fine configuration how your custom station will act. If you only want to extend the existing stations, take a look at this guide.

NEW: CSL Music Mod Station Editor

You can now use a tool to create or edit radio stations. Download it here. Also see the more straight forward and simple documentation of the new tool that covers creating a new station & a music pack.

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Finding the music directory

First, you need to navigate to the CSLMusicMod_Music directory. Everything except extending vanilla stations happens there. This means that you define stations and add music within this directory.

You can find the CSLMusicMod_Music folder in the Cities: Skylines game directory. Create it if it's not there or play at least once with CSL Music Mod enabled to create it. Here is a list where you can usually find the game directory:

• On Windows [SteamLibrary]\SteamApps\common\Cities_Skylines (Steam library is usually in C:\Program Files\Steam)
• On Mac [SteamLibrary]/SteamApps/common/Cities_Skylines
• On Linux [SteamLibrary]/SteamApps/common/Cities_Skylines (Steam library is usually in ~/.local/share/Steam)

Using this CSLMusicMod_Music directory allows you to create stations and add music that are specific to your installation. But if you want to share music or stations with a music pack, you have to use the CSLMusicMod_Music within your music pack folder.

Quick method

This method is the "legacy" method of adding music (older CSLMusicMod versions) and will create a new channel without additional hassle.

1. Put your songs into CSLMusicMod_Music
2. Enjoy

CSLMusicMod will automatically create a channel "Userdefined" that plays all your music. If you want to have talking, etc. in your channel, just follow the naming rule described below.

Your own channel

Example

If you want an example, I uploaded the two example packs I made here on GitHub. Download is available here. Extract them and take a look at the CSLMusicMod_Music folder. Those files set up a simple radio station.

Adding content

Instead of just putting all files into CSLMusicMod_Music, you have to create subfolders that then contain all the music of one collection. A radio station can consist of multiple collections.

Example

Instead of doing this:

CSLMusicMod_Music/song1.ogg
CSLMusicMod_Music/ufotalk1#talk.ogg

do this:

CSLMusicMod_Music/UFOStation/song1.ogg
CSLMusicMod_Music/UFOStation/ufotalk1#talk.ogg

Defining your channel

If you created your collections, you need to define the channel via a configuration. Just create a *.json file (name it as you want but probably it's better to name it like your channel) and open it in a text editor (under Windows I recommend Notepad++). Important: CSL Music Mod will skip config files with wrong syntax silently. Check the JSON syntax with special tools or websites like JSONLint.

A basic file will look like this:

{
    "name" : "Collection 1",
    "collections" : [ "Collection1 Content", "Ads" ]
}

You can see that in the JSON file the name of your station and the used collections can be defined. This will create a channel "Collection 1", loading content from "Collection1 Content" and "Ads" directory.

To example above is completely sufficient. But if you want to define your own schedule and a thumbnail, you can add more settings:

{
    "name" : "Collection 1",
    "collections" : [ "Collection1 Content", "Ads" ],
    "thumbnail" : "Collection1.png",
    "schedule" : [
        { "type" : "music", "min" : 1, "max" : 3 },
        { "type" : "talk", "min" : 1, "max" : 1 },
        { "type" : "music", "min" : 1, "max" : 2 }
    ]
}

This enhanced version does the same thing as the more simple one, but also defines a custom thumbnail (See below for reference) and changes the schedule of the station.

Take a look at the radio station schedule reference for more information how to set up a custom schedule for your station.

Vanilla collections

If you want to include vanilla content into your radio station, you can use following predefined collections created by CSL Music Mod:

• Music: Cities
• Music: Classical
• Music: GoldFM
• Talk: Cities
• Talk: Classical
• Talk: GoldFM
• Blurb: Cities
• Blurb: Classical
• Blurb: GoldFM
• Commercial: Common
• Broadcast: Active
• Broadcast: Warning

All collections are listed in the Cities: Skylines log. Search for [CSLMusic] Available collections in this file. Note that the list is only printed if you load or create a city.

Context-sensitive content

With the "Contexts" feature you can create radio stations that adapt to the current situation on the map. For example you can make a radio station play different music when it's nighttime.

Take a look at the guide for more information how to use this feature.

Reference

You can find a list of all settings in the reference.