how do you organise your digital music for djing? #2

[spin]

sorry couldnt find the original thread?

and i know alot of people have switched to serato type things in the last couple of years,

doing my nut in processing all my recent purchases, bloggins and rips...

anyone using itunes with serato? or use any of those tunes sorting apps?

[spin]

some interesting points here,

http://www.djforums.com/forums/showthre ... t=id3+tags

[youthful_implants]

badly.

[Direkt]

I label everything in iTunes and then import and organise within Traktor or ITCH.

I make sure I first list everything correctly... I.e. "Hip-Hop" and not "Rap" or "Hip Hop" - so when I do a search on "Hip-Hop", I don't exclude anything, or have it sorted as it shouldn't.

I know most pro DJ's will then make up genre folders from within their DJ programs, and then sub-folders with either sub-genre's or by BPM breakdown... I guess it depends on where/how/what you DJ.

[mrj]

Hmmm

I mainly focus on making sure I have genres right in iTunes like Direktor. Then I tend to be able to find things pretty easy in Traktor. Traktor has the nice functionality of the set folders so i tend to use just those though. Kinda move a whole bunch of tracks across to that, then roll.

[Kaiproject]

^this

traktor organisation is pretty easy.

i have all my purchsaes/downloads in genre folders dy date (just make a new one each time i get enough to warrant importing and analysing). then once in collection make a playlist for these new tunes by genre, then also add them if i cbf to big sub-genre playlists (irrespective of date) like bootybreaks, prog, trancy, acidlines, banging, peaktime, deepdubstep, heavydubstep, techfunk etc...

cbf with id3 tags and labelling that much. i remember ill.Gates at his workshop last year had SHITLOADS of descriptive tags for each track, really takes a lot of time. for one tune he'd have in the FILENAME (not just id3 , actual filename) stuff like:
"dirty girls pirate rave hippy booty electro hip-hop glitch dub techno ska sex" blah blah blah

insane.

[*catalyst]

Genre folders into Traktor, use search box.

Sub-genre's if need be, so:

"Dubstep" as base directory, then "Dubstep\Chilled" "Dubstep\Party" etc. Helps narrow it down a bit.

New tunes imported to Temporary folder named by month-year, cue points/grids set, played for a week or so from that folder then organised with the rest.

Good mixes either recorded or HTML playlist saved for future reference.

I'm sure there is WAY better ways to do it, but they are all time consuming, might aswell just use Abletron. My next big adventure is really going hard on setting up all the cue points and shit to make life easy.

[mrj]

Genre folders into Traktor, use search box.

Sub-genre's if need be, so:

"Dubstep" as base directory, then "Dubstep\Chilled" "Dubstep\Party" etc. Helps narrow it down a bit.

New tunes imported to Temporary folder named by month-year, cue points/grids set, played for a week or so from that folder then organised with the rest.

Good mixes either recorded or HTML playlist saved for future reference.

I'm sure there is WAY better ways to do it, but they are all time consuming, might aswell just use Abletron. My next big adventure is really going hard on setting up all the cue points and shit to make life easy.

When i buy new tunes the first thing I do is once there are all d/l is open traktor, sort by import date so all the new ones come up, then drop them all in and set gride + cue points. Not majorly inventive cue points just start, major changes such as rhythmic changes such as the drop of new hats or claps and starts and ends of breakdowns. Only takes about a minute per song and I usually only grab 10-15 new tunes at a time so its done super quick. about 20 minutes max most times.

but yeah going back historically through collection and setting up cue points etc I still haven't done. Tend to do it everytime i drop a new tune in that I haven't done it before though.

[Livewire]

Yeah I still havent nailed it. I always get wav files so its a pita to convert to mp3 just so I can use metadata. Someones really gotta make a high quality format with metadata soon, data space isnt an issue so I just dont get it....
My digital collection is as unorganised as my vinyl unfortunately

[Extortion]

Buy in FLAC if you can. It is 1000x better than wav imo. has metadata for tagging and better compression. i dont buy digital music but i have seen links for flac around. i'd also recommend using ogg instead of mp3. mp3's are bad (tho they seem to be standard so we have to put up with it).

For organising, i sort into genre then label. i dont understand a need to organise into specific bpms and such.