Serato Software Feature Suggestions

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 Serato Software Feature Suggestions
Metadata- Star Ratings and Multiple Genres, Support says we don't want these?
What features would you like to see in Serato software?

Metadata- Star Ratings and Multiple Genres, Support says we don't want these?

alec.tron 6:44 AM - 3 September, 2016
Hi,
I do care about the metadata in my music files and how my DJ packages works (or not) with them.
This is the users' data - i.e. we painstakingly go through and tag every file w genre/ratings/moods/keywords/etc/everything so it makes sense for us and the environments we work/play in...
But, upon asking Serato support once again to support:
- Add ("Star") Ratings to Serato
- Allow more than one genre to be defined in the 'Genre' field
both of which have been regularly requested for years; I got the following answer (which surprised me... hence the post here):

"This is not on the roadmap at the moment sorry.
We try and listen to our customers as part of the method for figuring out what goes on the roadmap, but as far as I know, this is not something that gets requested very regularly."

So, from how that sounds - we, the user base, do not want or need (Star) Ratings or Multiple Genres (= a user defineable value separator... for every metadata field really...)... this, I am pretty sure, is not the case, but we need to raise our voice apparently to be heard.
So if you care about your metadata, Ratings and Genres in this case specifically, +1 this, file support tickets youself (even better...!), and make people who care about this around you post here as well!
In my opinion - since we users have been left out in the cold for much too long and have not gotten the features we asked for (i.e. Ratings AND multiple Genre support), I would even go out and request a fully customizable mapping table as well as value separator that can be defined by the user (i.e. some users use a semicolon to separate values, the next person decided to use commas instead, and the next again uses start/end separators, such as: [genreA] [genreB] [subGenreC] in the comments/genre field - such as this work-around suggestion here from djtechtools - djtechtools.com ).

So, we need something that fits all of us and our existing metadata.
Serato, Traktor and RB all have been twiddling their thumbs on this for far too long!
To re-phrase my feature request and elaborate:

- we need a Ratings column in Serato SDJ (personally I would like to see this feature also implemented into SSL...)! But, every one of uses a different scheme, so this needs to be freely map-able by the user.
Be it the standard POPM values of: 1=onestars=*, 64=two stars=**, 128=three stars=***, 196=four stars=****, 255=fivestars=*****, or a 1-5 or 1-5, or 1-100 scale. All of these should be easily map-able to display in a starts column...

- secondly, we need Serato (again SDJ as well as SSL - I would hope... the later is probably not very realistic though...) to understand value-separators!
These need to be user-defineable as well; the most obvious use case are multiple Genres in the genre field. i.e. if I have this in the Genre field:
Techno; Detroit; 808;
(and I have chosen a semicolon to be my multi value separator...) I want the track tagged as such to appear in the 'Techno' genre, the 'Detroit' genre, and my custom '808' genre...
Same for a tag like this:
[Hip Hop] [2k10] [South] [Trap]
and I have defined [ as the 'start'-value separator, and ] as the 'end'-value separator the above would show in the respective single genres...

Churs.
c.
Marv Incredible 11:24 AM - 4 September, 2016
+1
alec.tron 4:39 AM - 5 September, 2016
Thanks Marv!

Over the years, I saw 100s if not 1000s of people complain on here about no-star-ratings in Serato; and a few dozen or so being vocal about no-multi genres / value separator issues...
So I'm a bit suprised there's this little support, or is it a classic tl;dr case ? -> s163.photobucket.com

c.
Marv Incredible 4:55 AM - 5 September, 2016
I've not personally seen any requests for multi-genres or separator values though it IS something I would personally welcome as I tag my files with multiple genres, using a seperator to do so.

But, there have been TONS of requests for star ratings that's for sure. And the thing is, it's built right into the ID3 spec for MP3 files so it's a total-no brainer. I'm not so sure about certain other formats but even then, Serato has handled that sort of thing in the past by storing the info within their own database file so again, it'd be no hardship for them to do.
alec.tron 10:36 AM - 5 September, 2016
Quote:
though it IS something I would personally welcome as I tag my files with multiple genres, using a seperator to do so.

Just stumbled upon a bug... so a bit of a warning for people with multi value fields...

I was just on a mission to batch-process and re-analyze a LOT of data, and after 12 hrs yesterday, I sync-ed back a good portion. Imagine my surprise when I saw that SDJ overwrote my Genre field with the first value in it, i,e, this Genre tag (on a flac file):
pre-SDJ-analyze:
Tropical; Breakbeat; Dancehall; Percussion
became this post-SDJ-analyze:
Tropical

It also seems to do some value copying between fields (comment to description). I flagged the bugs (trying to contain my anger) and asked for a complete documention of metadata written on analyze, which I couldn't find anywhere.
c.
Marv Incredible 12:04 PM - 5 September, 2016
Oh schnapp! For real? :(

I had a similar thing happen recently. Since Serato don't allow us to see or use the lyrics field, I'd been pastng lyrics into the Remixer field instead (I already use comments for other stuff). I know it's not a multi-line field but I figured that didn't really matter as I would only be searching for keywords and not reading the lyrics by eye.

Everything seemed okay at first. I found I could copy thousands of characters into the field and when I copied them back out again and pasted them into a word processor, all the characters were there.

But, after having done loads of them, I came back to it in another session and found that only the first x number of characters had been saved, truncating all the rest. :-/

So now I have to swap my existing comments fields for another field and go back and redo the lyrics work and put them in the comments field this time.
DJ Zewolfy 12:47 PM - 5 September, 2016
+1
alec.tron 10:05 PM - 5 September, 2016
Quote:
Oh schnapp! For real? :(

Yeh...I did some more testing in order to pass some more breadcrumbs to Serato Support, and only .flac files are affected!
MP3s don't have their Genre overwritten/truncated, nor the Comment field copied to Description... no idea about other formats though, my library is 4/5th flac, 1/5th mp3.
c.
Smonty 7:43 AM - 8 September, 2016
Michael Jackson would name this post: "THIS IS IT".

Fuck, yea. Thanks

+1
alec.tron 9:05 AM - 8 September, 2016
Hah! Thanks.

By the by, there's a separate thread about the flac-metadata-multi-value analyze bug here:
serato.com
(Pun time...) if this bugs you as well, please get vocal in the thread, or even betterer, send Serato Support a ticket about it that this needs to be fixed as it destroys user data.

Churs.
c.
alec.tron 1:55 AM - 25 September, 2016
So, turns out, the official Serato Support statement regarding their user-metadata crippling bug is:
This is not a "challenging thing to implement from a technical perspective;"
but
"there are a lot of users out there accustomed to the status quo",
i.e. the broken / bad implementation.
Upon suggesting that this could easily be driven with a user preference setting to accommodate both needs (= a broken, and a correct implementation), the statement is:
"Given that this is not a highly requested feature, it would be unlikely to qualify for inclusion..."

So, good luck for all of you guys with flac files and multi-value metadata using the official value separators... be prepared that it'll screw up hours/days of your work.
Fun times.

One last, simplistic general 'feature' request:
serato.com

I'll shutup now.
c.
alec.tron 10:56 PM - 16 October, 2016
Good on ya Damien...
Rekordbuddy does proper multi value interpretation for Artist & Genre as well as interrpreting messed up one-string values from Serato legacy... AND it also allows you to define the delimiter/separator sign to use:
Watchvimeo.com
Around 2.30 mark...

Fingers crossed this will get more people interested in this and more people think that this should be done properly in Serato & other DVS programs.
c.
M-2-Alex 8:45 AM - 17 October, 2016
Hey,

good Thread. I need a Star - Ranking too.

+1
DJTyse 3:15 AM - 7 November, 2016
+1
Nogasi 10:04 PM - 17 November, 2016
+1
Marv Incredible 10:54 PM - 26 January, 2017
Bump
alec.tron 11:29 PM - 26 January, 2017
Yea, bump I would too, but I do not have much hope.. seeing the resistance / standard deny replies Serato Support even puts up when it comes to the simplest of things, such as .m3u exports. And this is actually something that's a difficult design decision & critical to get right.

Maybe maybe we'll get something with the hinted at Serato library rewrite... but we're probably still years away.
Either way, people need to file tickets & post here if they care about it (for example, flac support took 8 years and 1000s of people to chime in until it was implemented...).

Frustrated greetings.
c.
alec.tron 2:16 AM - 2 February, 2017
Btw, for anyone curious how/why allowing multi-values & ratings gives you so much more power over your music & playlists/smart-crates, try:
getmusicbee.com

And set something,like these on a few files to test:
- multiple genre values
- rating
- mood
- energy
- and to make things really interesting, a custom 'instrumental' tag value (especially useful for dancehall riddims, hiphop intrumentals & vocal version under different names, grime, or any other version/riddim focused music genre... - once set on 2 files, try middle-clicking any single valuer in MusicBee to jump to a filter for files with the exact same attribute)

Then play around with filters & smart-playlists for the above...
Only down side is, this will make it painfully apparent how much behind the times serato/traktor/rekordbox are with their library & playlist management.

c.
Raphy 3:01 PM - 15 March, 2017
totally agree on that rating stuff...sometimes i go through tracks and it would help a lot if i could rate my tracks...so it gets a lot easier and better visible for me to select...
i don't get why people dont want this, it shows up in all kind of programs available.

serato pls wake up on this one :)
Rockalot 11:32 PM - 8 June, 2017
+1 love the stars!
UKSwagger 9:49 AM - 10 April, 2018
+1
htownholdin 6:59 AM - 27 December, 2019
+1

I've been on Traktor for 10+ years; I've been programming computers for 20. I recently made a "soft" switch to Serato for Video, then liked the vinyl feel so much I decided to put an effort into switching over entirely

There's been a few frustrations.. and most things I attribute to "Serato just does things a different way" and tbf some of that "different way" is really friggin' awesome and that's the reason I'm trying to switch. But then I facepalm into things like this

The stars... People have collectively found the usefulness in stars and they've been implemented in tons of apps. Stars are basic metadata and therefore should be available in the metadata browser. This is not a "me too" support request. This is a legit "metadata is missing" bug. People been askin' since at least the past 5 years

If I were Serato, I'd read into this and think "one of the pain points of migration for a diehard Traktor guy is the lack of stars in the browser... that sounds like an easy fix. We've already got them as a customer, no sense in running them off over an easy fix" -- I can't imagine I'm the only one. I tag things I've played out w/ the crowd reaction so I'd be easily able to see which crates were getting the most love, etc

Hire me at minimum wage, I'll add it and submit a pull request :)

Cheers
alec.tron 9:39 PM - 27 December, 2019
Quote:
People been askin' since at least the past 5 years

It's been 15+ years... you can find threads from 2004 with 100s if people chiming in requesting this.
No joke.
How much Serato folks have ignored core features is the reason I dumped Serato after being my main hub for years, and went back to Traktor again who started to fix some of their long standing issues over the past 2-3 years...
All the bestest on the transition. Eouldn't hurt to have Serato back as an option (for me, as it stands, it just isn't...).
c.
Don Pelleone 7:56 AM - 30 December, 2019
+1
htownholdin 9:32 PM - 30 December, 2019
@alec.tron What kind of latency are you getting with Traktor, and which interface are you using? I noticed with Serato my chirps got instantly better and vinyl felt a lot more like real wax... but I wonder if maybe my Traktor hardware is just super old ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
alec.tron 10:31 AM - 3 January, 2020
Quote:
my chirps got instantly better and vinyl felt a lot more like real wax

If that's the case, and it's what counts most. Perfect.
I don't scratch much at all though, so stability, reliability, sound quality, workflow, library, metadata, etc is what counts for me, and Serato hasn't done much at all when it comes to that.
c.
DJ Marv the Maverick 2:48 PM - 28 April, 2020
+1 On Rekordbox DJ like tagging system (It also writes the tags to the comment section).

In this lockdown time, many folks are currently reviewing their libraries etc.

Having to manually input metadata into the comments section is not only tedious, brings about inconsistencies, typographical errors etc

Just give us a click click option, just like rekordbox.

All the time spent developing apps like Pyro could have been used for something more productive.

Build it as a separate app, if you will, call it SERATO LIBRARY or whatever, charge for it, i will pay.

It will exponentially increase the power of the SMART CRATES as well.
DJ Marv the Maverick 1:17 PM - 29 April, 2020
I don't think much as changed with the core Serato library management since Serato Scratch Live, i could be wrong though.

Smart Crates? Thats about it

I have fired an email to support and the usual response was to create a feature request.

They need to implement something that actually helps dj workflow and makes the mundane task of preparation easier
alec.tron 10:08 PM - 3 May, 2020
Aye, it's baffling how much Serato apparently does not care....or is not able to care for 15+ years - for what should've been a low hanging fruit.
I've given up and haven't played a set in Serato in years now...
c.
Royce 5:41 AM - 4 May, 2020
I'm having some issues with the management of the library, hotcue's, loops, quantize and sync at the moment. Now testing Rekordbox and they are obviously way better on all those things.. and more! Man, it's painful to see how Serato is a lot of steps behind on software as Traktor and Rekordbox. I can't find any reason to stick with Serato anymore..
DJ Trice 1:48 PM - 19 February, 2021
+1