iTunes, from what Ive heard.

Itunes is the animal I choose to use alot of people think itunes is difficult but its really easy to manage a huge library using itunes. Instead of crates you have playlist the big thing I like about itunes is that I dont have to know were my music is cause itunes keeps it organized in its own way by writing an XML file telling itunes were the music is located on the hard drive. So rebuilding your itunes library from scratch literally takes about 5 min. Just re import the itunes data file and there you have it your library is just as it was before.

All in all do what works for you we all have different methods of sorting music

ok so say i import all my mp3s into itunes and use itunes. how can i access those folders that have the few songs id want to mix with. i would have to make a playlist and put those song i wanted to mix with into a playlist is that what yur saying?

I would organize your music how you want to organize it. Following someone else technique might hurt you. Just like school, trying to use someone else organizing technique, could hurt you not help you.

+1 thats whats so cool about crates and smart crates you can customize to your style

I like to use scratch tools and just manage folders and putting MP3s into their folders. I personally hate itunes (and find ipods useless and macs are okay...) and i like to keep installed software to a very low minimum. All the extra update services and ipod helper services just waste resources.

Exactly!
There is no point following somebody elses set up for crates, it needs to make sense to you so you know exactly where to look for things.
My crate structure would confuse a lot of people that do a few mixes for me, to me though I know exactly what it all means and what is located where.

Codes

Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Enter

do that key combo when crates are loading.. it unlocks Jazzy Jeff mode, with super crates

wtf, it didnt work

freshprinceraves.ytmnd.com

Damn, Wish I never broke my down key. I need those super crates!

You guys are freaking hilarious

hahha

+1

lol

yo i remember sixxx had a great organize his stuff. he did like he said up top by code. like in comment section put (ns) for new shit or (cb) for club banger. now when u type them in ull get all tracks related .

i use itunes with a combination of playlist, smart playlist , and playlist folders with sub-playlist inside.

ya that sounds like what im gonna do. Like I understand what you guy mean by organising my stuff so I know where it will be. I was thinking of sorting folders like rap rock disco ect. and putting music in them. Then on top of that make a special folder with all good music in all of those catagories. The only thing is sum mixes go good with differant genres so its hard to sort music just by genre.





Bumps

I thought it was CTRL ALT DEL for PC and SHIFT COMMAND ESC for mac.

I hung out with AM for a bit and figured out that He was an amazingly organized DJ. He would actually trash his entire itunes library and set up his playlist for each and every show. He knows what song he is playing next almost to the point of what beat the mix is going to start on. He would keep all his music well organized on an external hard drive to copy as needed.

I have learned from this and am not willing to trash my whole lot each time. However, I do have three folders, one for club music, one for mainstream, one for dj tools (scratches and samples) and the last for organizing sets for each gig, that get trashed and replaced all the time. (I begin the gig folder with a underscore like _gig so it stays at the top of the list) Each of those folders have sub folders further organizing the music into genres and music groups. When I am in Serato I can hide the folders that are not relevant to the gigs.

Others I have seen spend way too much time looking for stuff. That would drive me crazy since I am a quick transition-er and do not like to play a song for too long.

lol

Riiiiiight. AM was one of the DJ's that would play shit in the same order over and over.


lol @ "trash his library"... yeah, he probably did but everything was so memorized by then.

what happens to NS when a couple months go by, you go back in re tag them?

Tell Me You Got A Palm Pre. Hence The Unlock Code For Dev. lmao @ everybody that tryed that hahah. rmao

This topic keeps popping up every now and then, I've read a lot of them and the main point I keep reading is there's no specifically set way to organize music, it's personal preference and whatever way makes it easiest for you to find the music you want.

I'm not a professional, and I can only imagine how professionals keep all their music organized. The way that works for me is keeping MP3 files organized by genre (a folder for House/Electro, a folder for Hip-Hop singles, etc.). I also have a separate folder to keep subscriptions (Promo Only, Funkymix, etc.), a folder for Whitelabel tracks, a "Decades" folder that breaks down 70s, 80s, and 90s...you get the idea. My folder structure looks like this:

Serato
----Decades
--------70s
--------80s
--------90s
----Electronic
--------House/Electro
------------2010
------------2009
--------Dance
------------2010
------------2009
--------Dubstep
----Downloads
--------Whitelabel
--------Crooklyn Clan
--------2010
------------May 2010
------------April 2010
--------2009
----Mashups & Blends
----Subscriptions
--------Promo Only
------------Mainstream Radio
----------------2010
--------------------May 2010
--------------------April 2010
------------Mainstream Club
----------------2010
--------------------June 2010
--------------------May 2010
--------Funkymix
--------Urban
------------Dirty
------------Old School
------------Party Breaks
------------Singles
----------------2010
----------------2009

This isn't everything, but I hope it gives you an idea. This way (a hybrid of genres and dates) lets me keep adding tracks but keep them organized so I can find whatever I've added in a certain genre most recently.

Again, this is just for organizing the files themselves. But I find my Serato crates tend to mirror my folder structures most of the time. I add a few extra crates for my favorite hot tracks for the month, or what I used in my radio show that week. Having the folders set up this way has definitely made it easier for me to find tracks to add to Serato crates, especially if I don't want to just dump a whole folder into a crate.

Long story short - there's no right or wrong way to do it, just do what works with you. Find a system that allows you to keep adding new music as it comes out, and makes it easy for you to find it in Serato when you're working.

Hope this helps!

I basically do what joefresh does....I keep them all in genres I can identify easily. I make my own up aswell.

eg:

Hip-Hop
Classic Hip-Hop
Electro
Rock
Pop
Charty Hip-Hop/RnB
Shit I hate

Makes it easier for me to think of a track I would like to play and being able to go straight to where it belongs in my crates.

For example...Showbiz & AG-The Next Level will be in Classic Hip-Hop...and anything by Drake, Lil Wayne will be in Shit I hate...quite a simple but effective way I think.

I keep my crates & folders kinda simple...

i39.photobucket.com

i39.photobucket.com

LMFAO!!!! select, start if you want 2 player!!!

i haven't even looked around yet....but is there some way to put smart crates into sub-crates or something similar

I just have a folder for every genre.

Ctrl-f
[ur
gets all my urban tracks...
I don't even have 1 crate besides the "all" crate...

i would stay away from itunes...... just organize everything on the hard drive / external or internal.

organize by genre.....for example
make a crate that says detroit techno then in the inside have crates by artist that does detroit techno.

i think itunes is great for a stand alone program.but not to use with serato.i would organize everything and not depend on extra software.
the serato team has said on many occasions that itunes will be fazed.

i'd be pissed. serato smart crates aren't anywhere near as customizable as itunes smart playlists.

If you like to do things the old fashioned way and just manually add tunes, i wouldn't use itunes, but if you rely on tagging and smart playlists to do the organizing for you, iTunes > Smart Crates right now.

Smart Crates are still only on first version for SSL at the moment so I'm sure they'll improve with time.

I sort all my music by BPM

100-110
111-115
116-119

that kinda thing. I try to make 'eclectic' sets every time I play out. So I'll do shit like Lady Gaga - an old Madonna song - Talking Heads - Zapp & Roger. I can't play contemporary Top 40 hits alone, I'd go crazy. Besides, i don't wanna sound like everybody else either. If you bring stuff the right way, you can get away with playing a lot of crazy/old school shit that a non-open-minded crowd would never accept otherwise. And if you feel like you're loosing the crowd, just throw on an uptempo Usher song or some shit again.

Before I go gigging, I'll make sets for that night from those crates. But I usually fall back on the main crates after a while.

I've seen a few people sort everything by BPM, I never got the point when you can just go into the all crate and sort that all by BPM.

I loose oversight when doing that. Also, I usually fux with CD rips, and I just wanna have the whole album. If I know I am prob. not ever gonna play a certain track, it's not going in the special BPM crate.

the short answer is no.

However I heard somewhere that it will be coming soon!

i guess that depends on how big ur library is huh?

The people I've seen that do it though it literally everything just arranged into crates that way, if your breaking down what goes into those crates it makes sense.

I am a "professional DJ" and I endorse sixxx's code method as the structural backbone for navigatig my tunes. No misquote.

I use a PC, so I don't use ITunes. Pretty much despise ITunes. I just name my folders and subfolders in My Music the same as my crates and subcrates. My organization looks like this:

CLUB SET
2010's
-Pop & Dance
-R&B
-Hip Hop
2000's
-Pop & Dance
-R&B
-Hip Hop
1990's
-Pop & Dance
-R&B
-Hip Hop
1980's
-Pop & Dance
-Funk & Soul
-Hip Hop
1970's & Disco
1950 & 60's
PARTY BREAKS
TRANSITIONS
SLOW SONGS
REGGAE & HAWAIIAN
JAZZ & LOUNGE
ROCK
INSTRUMENTAL & ACAPELLA
-instrumental
-acapella

CLUB SET crate is always refreshed every few weeks as new stuff comes out.

everything i sort is by BPM, and im starting to make crates with genres and stuff like that, transtion crate.. you know.

A few DJs I know make a new folder for each show, put in a guideline of songs. Some plan the song order completely, some use it as a reference for what to play in no particular order. These guys are the 1 hour set DJs though. I couldn't imagine pre-picking a 4 1/2 hour 250+ song set...

However, I'd like to use this method for peak hour sets, because it allows you to make sure you play all the songs you wanted. A good example is last night, I realized I played a few songs that weren't all that great late, but forgot to play 2 of the biggest songs. Not that anyone really noticed, but after I realized I missed those 2 songs, I realized I could have played a way better hour of music if I hadn't been freestyling the entire show.

I do the same thing a lot, on the way home or the next day start thinking "I should've played ____"
A lot of the time while I'm going through my music/updating before a gig I'll make a crate of tracks I really want to play. Not to be used at any particular time or any particular order, just a crate I can check from time to time to see if anything I really wanted to play fits in with what's currently playing.

+1

thats how i do it, i make crates at 5 BPM intervals ex: 80-85 then in that crate i sort by key

tru

Yup.. what ever works for you.

Mine is mostly organized by source.. PO folders.. DL folders.. plus a smattering of style or time period folders. Kind of a mish-mosh to be sure.. but again, it works for me.

Plus.. the search tool is so amazing even if you have many thousands of tracks, you can find any one by searching 'all'......

I've been doin this for 5 years. This process needs to be treated as a PROCESS!!!!

1. IDENTIFY ALL THE THINGS THAT WASTE TIME!! Searching, tagging, using the laptop mouse etc..

2. CREATE A FLOW CHART. UPDATE THE CHART WITH TIME SAVING TECHNIQUES
AND UPDATE THE CHART ACCORDINGLY, continuous improvement!!! BE ANAL!

3. use i tunes for tagging, playlists. NOTE, WHEN IN SERATO --->> YOU CANT CHANGE ORDER OF TRACKS IN A ITUNES PLAYLIST BUT...!!! YOU CAN DRAG / COPY ALL TRACKS IN AN ITUNES PLAYLIST TO A SERATO CRATE, THUS MIGRATING YOUR ITUNES DATABASE PROGRESS TO SERATO DATABASE . (THIS HELPS ALOT ESPECIALLY IF I TUNES WILL BE FAZED OUT)
4. KEEP YOUR ROOT MUSIC FOLDERS IN GENRES <--- MAKE THOSE GENRES AS SUBFOLDERS FROM YOUR SOURCE THAT YOU DOWNLOADED THEM FROM. THIS HELPS YOU TRACK YOUR PROGRESS AND STAY ORGANIZED HEAD TO TOE. IF ANYONE HAS SUGGESTIONS PLEASE LET ME KNOW.....

ALSO - RAPID EVOLUTION KEY ANALYSIS IS A GOOD IDEA AFTER YOUR LIBRARY IS WELL ORGANIZED, THUS YOU CAN BE ORGANIZED WITH DATA - TEMPO -- CHOICE-- AND RHYTHM. IN 12'S WE TRUST---NATO

5. Get your caps lock key fixed.

I do what works for me, I wanted to do sixxx's way but I couldn't figure it out( to hard for me) that's when I started organizing the way I could and the way I wanted my music in my crates. All my music is in iTunes all over and in serato it has there crates. But at the end of the day I know where my bangers and songs I want to play are at, that's what matters.

This week I've been trying something new, because I wanted to find a better way to have one library for DJing clubs, bars and nightlife, while having another for formal and private events.

Basically I use iTunes to organize everything ("Keep iTunes media folder organized" is checked in my iTunes preferences), so every track I have is in iTunes.
Then in Scratch Live/ITCH, I have picked only the tracks I use for clubs to put into crates.
For adding new tracks, I create a temporary playlist of them in iTunes, enable "Read iTunes library" in SSL, and drag tracks from the playlist to the appropriate crate.
I then disable "Read iTunes library" so only my crate tracks are there.

This way, only the tracks I really use in clubs are in crates, but when I do formal events, I can just enable "Read iTunes library" to see everything.

So far I'm finding this to be a much easier way to deal with the 40,000+ tracks I have. It keeps the formal tracks out of the library for when I'm doing club gigs, but I can easily turn them back on when I need them at a formal gig.

It's also helping me with the multiple versions/copies of tracks I have. A search for "Rihanna - S&M" used to bring up 12 different tracks (different intro's, remixes, etc.). Now it just brings up the one I most often use because that's the only one I put in a crate.

Btw my main crates are still genre-based, meaning at top level I have CLUB, HOUSE, HIP HOP, INDIE, ROCK N ROLL, etc., and below that are more specific categories, like Vocal, Newest, Peak Hour, Warm Up, Mashups & Blends, etc.

Hope this helps you, at the end of the day just do what works best for you. If you're like me, you'll find that change every now and then, but it's all part of the job.

I have never used the itunes feature. I may have about 100 crates, about 50 music and about 50 videos. Since i do not do clubs, I tend to make a crate per event. so if its a wedding everything for that individuals wedding is one crate with a subcrate for each function such as garter removal, garter toss, cake cutting etc. I have a Marine Ball coming up, I have a dinner music crate, slow dance music crate, sing along crate, dance music crate and low dance crate. Some crates may only have 2 or 3 songs in them. But my main crates are 80s, 90s, rap, r7b, reggae, salsa, line dance, pop, slow, miami bass, techno etc.. I have a bunch of them to many to list. www.facebook.com!/photo.php?fbid=10150339523031673&set=a.78259231672.85915.504426672&type=1&theater Hope you can see this screen shot.

<---- ORGANIZING AND UPDATING CRATES ---->

Organizing our music has been almost a decade in the making. We have 30,000 tracks. Every song has been gained to 92db & keyed. ID3tags are 'Artist - Title' After title we have some abbreviations to help with searching (C) (D) (DV) (Club Banger) (Rock Banger) (Latino Banger) (House Banger) (Beat)....ect 'C' is for clean, 'D' is for dirty, 'DV' is for dirty video middle fingers and profanity, 'Beat' is a great old school song with a beat mixed in, ex: Billy Joel Uptown Girl.

Here is a breakdown on our file structure:

MUZAK (main folder, used to minimize creates with a click in Serato)
Bible Music (has 26 crates funk, 80s, polka, themes, slow alternative...)
Booty Music (has 8 crates club anthems, rap & pop, mashups, tech house...)
Ceremony Music (has 5 crates prelude, unity candle...)
Reception Music (has 10 crates cake cutting, 1st dance, bouquet toss...)
School Series (has 7 crates this stuff is squeaky clean)
Easy Listening (has 14 crates r&b, ballroom, jazz, lounge, chillout, cocktail...)
Mix (has 4 crates acapella, instrumentals...)
Music Videos (has 18 crates visuals, halloween videos, 80's Pop Videos, 2010...)
Categorize (explained below)

Every weekend we will do about 5-10 events. We will purchase all the songs for those events If the song is rap or has questionable lyrics we will listen to it and pop up the lyrics to see if it is clean. Once it's tagged with the (C) or (D) we will then gain/key and then upload them into the Categorize folder. We then run the itch-sync.jar program to refresh the crates (it takes seconds).

End of the year, we take all the songs (usually about 1200 of them) and drop them into the folders on the desktop with the same name as the ones we will transfer them too. Example if it is a Flo Rida song, we will create a Rap & Pop folder on the desktop.

Once all Categorize songs have folders. We then run Tag&Rename on them to save the Genre & Album as the folder we put it into. We then create a .cvs file from within Tag&Rename with all the tracks (this is uploaded onto our website music search database). We update our website music search area yearly with the tracks from these .cvs files.

The last step is to cut the files from the desktop and paste them into the actual folders (so Flo Rida would go from Desktop > Rap & Pop to Music > Bible Music > Booty Music > Rap & Pop. Then we do a refresh on the library.




<---- SMART CRATES ---->

First of all, I wish we had more control with the smart crate rules. It would be great to have conditions within conditions. I really enjoyed the VirtualDJ filters, I was able to create some pretty unique filters (like the one below) that give me songs from specific folders 145-149 bpm, same key that are not dirty:

bpm>=145 and bpm <=149 and keydiff=0 and title doesn't contain (D and (filepath starts with "/Users/Reno/Music/Bible" or filepath starts with "/Users/Reno/Music/Booty" or filepath starts with "/Users/Reno/Music/Categorize" or filepath starts with "/Users/Reno/Music/Music" or filepath starts with "/Users/Reno/Music/School" or filepath starts with "/Users/Reno/Music/Top")

We can't do that with Serato, the best I could come up is the use of the BPM feature. Some of you asked earlier why would you use the BPM when you could just go to all songs and use sort the BPM column? Well if we were to do that, then we would get BPMs for polkas, acapellas, and dirty songs too. So we added the phrase 'add to BPM' in the comments of only dance songs we would mix (about 3/4 of all our music) and created a smart crate that sorts by bpm, looks for 'add to bpm' in the comment section, and avoids songs with '(D' in the filename.




BTW, this is done on 4 mac book Retina's... intense

what mean Bible music?

djcerebro - How do you gain and key tracks? I never cared about proper tagging before but now I understand and I've been experimenting with different tagging programs; but I'm still looking for 'the one' that will solve my problems. I'll look into tag&rename if they have a mac version..

yeah pretty interested in the gaining tracks part

Almost done updating my codes system. Will post it when it's ready

nm

I now have a headache, lol!
I really need to be doing more of something like this.
I need to beef up my computer savvines...
Not sure what half of that means, but I certainly do know what it's like to stress during a gig because of poor organization.
Hats off to you and 6.

Here you go: Freshly updated:


eyeam6.blogspot.com

Very nice. My compliments.
I use the crate and sub crate method and have so, so results. As you mentioned, too much to search for and a lot of it depends on memory. You still have to know what that crate has in it. As much as I try to label my crates with as much detail as I can, it gets daunting sometimes, trying to find a good track to mix in next, keep the party going and talk to people involved in working the event.
I get by, but streamlining things so I can sort through the library only makes sense.
Seems like the hardest thing to do would be to memorize te codes, which would happen naturally through using this system.
Let me apologize in advance for asking what will be some basic and probably dumb questions, but this a weak spot of mine, ( computer programs, differences between them, which to use and when and general file maintenance and organization).
Also, if I ask here, maybe someone else who is tracking this thread can benefit.

1. I have an external hard drive as my master copy of all of my music. I use my internal and external HDs when at a gig. I have to rename all of my files in my "master" HD? In other words, re tag the files ? I have a MBP, is there a program I can use to do more than one file at once? Or does each file have to be done separately?
2. Any tips on starting this dawn ring task on a library with approx 1/2 terabyte +? (I'm sure there are plenty of duplicate.
3. If I'm not exactly sure as to some of the info (eg: year, genre (I still have a harder time differentiating between east or west coast hip hop, what exactly trap and twerk are... Not really my thing, and after my time), is there a source to find this general info that you know of?

Thanks in advance. Appreciate you work on this, and again, sorry if these questions are elementary. I'm sure there are more to follow.

Ah, one more question.
Right now, my crates mirror my hard drive, (OCD way, I know). With your tagging system, you can sort your HD by alphabetical order for artist if you wanted and not have to worry about folders to mirror the crates right?
I do that because I got tired of lost crates and other mishaps, or making changes to the folders while out of Serato.
This way, if I lost a crate, I just imported it back in to Serato and did not lose out on all the work I put in to organizing that crate.
Thanks again.

You can, and I would advise you to, but it's not necessary. See, I actually have an external that has my entire library, but I only play (for the most part) with one of my two internals on my MBP (it's a 1TB). What I do is, everything that isn't for gigs but it's just on the main external has the code (KEEP) and everything that is on my internal drive that I play at gigs has the code [PARTY]. So, I can see exactly what files belong where.



iTunes will let you do more than once. Your best bet is to use iTunes but also use scripts (look up Doug's scripts). There are scripts for just about anything.




Use the (KEEP) [PARTY] approach. First, try to get rid of duplicates, but they will also weed themselves out as you sort through them and add codes. What I do every week is that when I import new songs, I automatically label them (KEEP), then as I sort through them, they are labeled [PARTY] or trashed completely.



You can always wiki the song. You can type the name of the song plus wiki and it will give you info about the song. They usually show the genre there.




You're welcome.

nm

The two attributes that I use to sort my crates are genre & year.

HIPHOP 2012
HIPHOP 1990s
HIPHOP 1980s

TOP 40 2013

ROCK HITS 2000-09

I still find this really complicated as i wish that i didn't have to sit and try to figure out how to organise my music i recently got serato an i am stuck as i have all my music in folders already du to the fact that i used to use vdj so afar having so many song already i now have to sit an try to figure out how to set up this new data base gosh all now i can't find a good structure or is it that in approaching this thing wrong ?????

I have a similar setup. In addition, I have Current and ReCurrent folders which will have all the newest bangers and recent bangers (last 1-3 years). I will also have Smart Crates for specific Sub-Genres (like Freestyle, Old School Hip Hop, New Wave, etc...) and custom crates for specific gigs. I'm debating on whether to replicate this setup to make Audio only and Video only trees.
In this day of 20,000+ libraries, being able to find songs quickly is key.

I think iTunes helps a lot. My music is organized by folders... as detailed as possible, but once I open Serato, is a bit more detailed. Everytime I use Serato, I organize it a bit more as I go.

Vinyl Vixen nice to see a sexy female DJ..!

If the fact that it takes effort is a problem for you, then yeah, I'd say you're approaching this thing wrong...

Been 4 years and they haven't touched smart crates.

boo.

Resurrection time. This is a pretty important thread to keep alive.

I used to use iTunes and it was a great organization tool. However trying to keep things in sync when things changed was a huge PITA (say a BPM changes, or I wanted to update the artist, etc).

Right now, today, I am working solely in Serato. I created a very simple master genre folder setup

Classical
Country
Dance
Hip Hop
Holiday
Instrumental
Jazz
Latin
Others
Pop
R&B
Reggae
Rock

From there I it's usually /artist/album/song

It's not perfect. There are times that a song is in the wrong master genre category and it's times like that I wish for iTunes back to just let it manage the structure. But then I get to thinking about things being out of sync and I hold back.

I've also created a simple code system that works for me so it makes searching for songs, and replacing the star rating system from iTunes:

SRT1-5 is my star rating categories
CLN XPL is of course clean or explicit
DNC are wedding approved dance tracks
FLF are floor fillers
CLB are club tracks
C&D are wedding cocktail and dinner tracks
SLW are slow tracks

I put these codes in the composer tag field.

I've tried to start code systems before, but I don't get anywhere because of the sheer number of tracks I would have to choose for the system to be off any use.

Also @ParisCreative have you ever thought of using smart crates? A simple crate system like yours would probably work well with that

I have, but the smart crate logic is very limited. And it's refresh slows down Serato overall. I have some smart crates that can't be converted into shortcodes well (decades for instance) but the shortcodes have helped tremendously overall.

6 years later, and smart crates are still exactly the same :-\