May 09, 2013 An Essential Guide To Organising Your Music Library. Andre Shenoi May 9, 2013 Read time: 12 mins. And in our case information about the music tracks we own, play and DJ with. These tags are elements we can use or create to describe different attributes of these music tracks. And with Traktor and Virtual DJ also now doing this. Apr 03, 2013 A well organised music library can make your digital files come to life, make your DJ sets more fun to play and richer in content, and become a positive joy to use. But how do you get started, especially when you already have thousands of tracks? Apr 06, 2016 The folder system within Virtual DJ is extremely powerful and when used correctly is truly the powerhouse of my workflow. Folder Types: Virtual vs. Favorite Before diving into the organizing of your music within VDJ, it’s important to understand the difference between the three folder types within the program.
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Our post recommending that DJs stop using iTunes to organise their music libraries recently certainly got a people talking, with about a 50/50 split among fans and haters of iTunes. But I’m aware we left some people who aren’t sure in pain, pointing out what’s wrong with iTunes without fully outlining a preferred alternative.
This post will help. It is designed to empower you, by showing you that as long as you follow the five steps of good music library organisation, you can organise your library any damn way you like, and with any tools you like (and yes, that includes iTunes). The funny thing is, the DJs who had strong views for/against iTunes in our previous post generally all “get this” already… which is precisely why they’re fine with how they do things right now.
So if you’re still feeling music library organisation is confusing you, read on…
(By the way, I’m also asking you to share the way you organise your own music with us in the comments.)
The five steps of any good DJ music library system
OK so right off, then, here they are:
That’s it.
If your music library “system” can tick all five boxes, it really doesn’t matter how you do it or what tools you use. In fact, DJs do this all kinds of ways. Just from recent memory, in real DJ booths and among people I know, I’ve seen DJs:
I really could go on. And while there are of course pluses and minuses to all of the above systems, they all worked for each of those DJs. The reason they work, though, is not due to the system itself (whichever one they’d settled on), but that all of those DJs were – underneath it all – applying (whether consciously or subconsciously) the five steps listed at the start of this post.
That meant they were cool with their music collection. They were confident of finding what they wanted. And if they wanted to switch to a different way of doing it for whatever reason (change of software, DJing on a different set-up, wanting to ditch a particular program they’ve been using, whatever), they would be able to do so with the minimum possible pain, due to understanding and applying the five steps.
How do you organise your music?
Now, I do know this stuff can be confusing, and I know it doesn’t come naturally to many DJs, especially those used to CDs and vinyl (no surprise that the first two methods above are preferred by just such – generally older – DJs). We have always spent a lot of time teaching this in our courses for just that reason. We’re also going to come back to this subject here on the blog soon, in order to bring you more insight.
But this will help too: I want all you readers with music organisation systems you love to tell us below how you do it. Try and keep it short (we don’t need all the details), and try and refer to how your method ticks the boxes above (the five steps). The idea is to let other readers see how you do it to – help them spot similarities, differences, new ideas and potential issues with the way they’re doing it.
And finally, if you’re still stuck about all of this, please feel free to ask any questions – I’ll be happy to chime in and help you out in any way I can.
So, the comments below are all yours: Tell us how you organise your music…
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In 5 Reasons To Organise Your Music Properly, you learned the importance of organising your music library. But where do you start with such a task? Well, your approach should be determined by your immediate and future needs as a DJ, as well as the amount of time and effort you are willing to invest. But first, it pays to know which type of collector you are. Most of us fall into one of the following groups when it comes to the relationship with our music collection. Which are you?
The three types of music collector1. The “new” collector
You were born in the internet era where the thought of physical media is archaic and all your music is gathered or accessed online. You have a small local collection of tracks but rely more on streaming music rather than downloading.
You realise that streaming music currently has its limitations for DJing so you’re keen to organise and grow your library pretty much from scratch. You’re welcome to new ideas and to trying methods out so you can find the one that works for you – it’s easier to get it right now and build on it as you develop, right?
2. The “passive” collector
You remember CDs and vinyl records as the “original” DJ media and may still use them from time to time. You have built up a varied collection of music that includes physical and digital media, but your purchases have been sporadic and isolated. You welcome the transition to digital-only DJing and music listening, and use streaming as an alternative to listening to your collection, or to support your acquisition choices. You’re buying duplicates of your favourite physical media just because it’s easier than converting them!
Your digital collection has reached a point where you’re losing touch with music you bought a few years ago because it’s got lost in the few thousand tracks you have. When you try to DJ with your collection, you stick with the most recent purchases because you know where they are, and you occasionally miss the tracks that were important to you when you initially had the desire to DJ. Your library needs organising and structure, but you don’t know what to tackle first.
3. The “active” collector![]() Virtual Dj Music Mixer Apps
You have always loved music and it’s almost become an addiction to have the latest track and constantly refresh your musical taste as a listener or DJ. You’re pretty sure you know your music well, and although your collection is mostly made up of digital media, you’ve spent time converting some of it from physical sources.
You’ve always recognised the need to have your collection organised and you already have a system in place – but if you’re honest, over time it’s got unwieldly due to changes and inconsistencies in your approach. You stream music primarily to research new tracks before downloading them into your personal collection. You may also choose to separate your library into DJ and non-DJ music based on your preference or needs.
First steps in organising your music
It’s natural to move from one group to the next. But regardless of the group you are currently in, one rule can be applied to organising your library:
Apple mac pro garageband pro. Start as you mean to go on!
It sounds simple enough but it’s easy to get lost in the bigger picture of your whole music library. You understand the desired end state of your entire library as being this wonderful free-flowing, search-friendly, auto-playlist generating, dynamic music revival machine, but you forget that in order to get to that state you must start somewhere!
There is no magical “one button” solution to reorganising your library, because in most cases it has grown organically, as that’s the way you’ve added to your collection.
Starting with baby steps
But unless you fall into the first group, or you can afford to scrap your collection and start again, or you are willing to invest the time in “artificially” starting again, you will instead need to make small but defined steps to reorganising your library. It will still take time but the rewards will be more immediate and useful. So where exactly do you start?
At the beginning of this article I stated that your approach depends on your “immediate and future needs as a DJ”. But do you know what your musical needs are? “Yes” you might say, but when you break it down you’ll start to see why you should prioritise those needs. Take today, for example. What are you listening to while you read this? (Nothing? come on, rule #1 for a DJ – always have music playing… 😉 ) What are you expecting to listen to later today?
Maybe you’ve chosen a playlist that includes new or recently added tracks to your collection. There may be some tracks that you haven’t got round to listening to yet. There may also be tracks that are on your current DJ playlist, those you’ve been using in your sets for the past couple of weeks and that you expect to use for the next month or two. Your immediate need is therefore to organise the tracks that you’re listening to now, or will need access to in the very near future. So this is where you start!
You cannot predict all of this but a large proportion of your current musical usage will be “known”, so start organising here, whether you have 200 or 20,000 tracks in your collection. Once you’ve made a start, the ongoing process of reorganising can be incorporated into your workflow alongside dedicated clean-up sessions that can be focused on particular groups of tracks, import dates, genres, release years, artists, albums etc.
Next time:
Djay 4 demo download. So that’s the big idea. We’ll look into choosing the right file format for your music library in the next article.
Check out the other parts in this series:
Tell us which type of DJ you are in the comments. What’s the biggest issue you have with organising your music collection? Again, please let us know so we can make the forthcoming articles as useful as possible for you.
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