Producer + DJ + Professional Rant Artist

One of the big differences between being a traditional DJ that uses vinyl (or CDs) and being a digital DJ is the sheer quantity of music the digital DJ can amass and easily carry with them.

With quick access to so much more music comes the greater headache in sorting and learning the tracks. Not that I’m condoning this behavior, but how many people have swapped entire digital music libraries with one another? In a matter of minutes you can acquire 1,000 songs (or more)!

With so much media, how can one get out from being buried alive under all of those 1s and 0s?

First and foremost, there is no doubt that organizing a music library is going to be time consuming. Especially if you are the least bit anal.

Although there are a lot of tools out there, I have found that none of them are really perfect. iTunes is used a lot, but there’s a lot it cannot do – such as bullk rename tags, enable the user to move file locations, tag from filename, tag to filename, and more. For these reasons I use MediaMonkey (www.mediamonkey.com). It’s like iTunes but a lot more powerful (and dangerous) when it comes to bulk editing of tags. Unfortunately this is a PC only app, but fortunately I have a PC as well as a mac!

Here is a list of handy tools and tricks I use to organize my music library

1. Back your master music library to another device or external drive – storage is cheap

2. Sometimes less is more

Think of your digital DJ library as a crate of records. With real records DJ’s only carry what they play otherwise the crate gets way to heavy.

The more you have in your library, the more you’ll have to sort through, the more time it will take to select tracks.

So don’t be afraid to toss music out of your Digital DJ library – I tossed over 110GB of music. Some of it is total crap, a lot of it I really like but will never play (like the Go Gos).

3. Get the right tools

The main tools I use are
MediaMonkey – like iTunes but better for bulk mp3 tagging to/from filename, and also better for organizing files on a drive, PC only
iTunes – hey it’s free and you can create multiple libraries if you need (Mac tip: hit Option and click on icon to launch, you’ll see)
iPhone – helps me decide what to keep and what to toss
dougscripts.com – indispensable set of iTunes tools – check them out!

4. Decide how you want to organize your folders

I personally hate the way iTunes does the “automatically keep files and folders organized”. I like to keep my DJ tracks in separate folders by Genre. Media Monkey is greatly helpful in accomplishing this easily. Once I get the music organized into the genre folders, I leave Media Monkey and move on to iTunes.

Before putting the music into iTunes I go to preferences and TURN OFF copy to itunes folder and TURN OFF the auto organize feature.

5. Use ratings

I rate my tracks in iTunes as follows
5 stars – something I will definitely play
4 stars – I will probably play it, I like it
3 stars – I like the track but am not sure if I would play it
2 stars – not sure if I like it, maybe has some cool parts, am on the fence leaning towards no, most likely wouldn’t play it
1 star – will not play, delete

6. Use Smart Playlists

This is the coolest feature of iTunes. I use these all the time to focus me on the task at hand.

For example, I set up a smart playlist to include the tracks with the genre labelled “House – Electro”, AND a 2nd rule that adds music that only has no ratings.

Now I have a dynamic list of tracks that I am going to preview listen to each one – typically at the start, middle, build, and end (like a DJ will do at a shop dropping the needle of the turntable at various points in the song). I quickly decide what to rate it. As soon as I rate a song, it gets taken out of the smart playlist, and then I move on.

I have smart playlists set up for 5 stars house-electro, 4 stars house-electro, 5 stars-breakbeat, etc. etc.

I typically wind up tossing the 1 and 2 star tracks (why bother when I have plenty of 4s and 5s?).

I also use static (non-smart) playlists, by genre and song energy level / where it fits in the mix
so I have a list for house-electro intro tracks – here I put tracks that are good to start a set with. They are a little bit mellow, they pick up toward the end etc.

7. Use Option-Delete in iTunes (on the Mac, PC must be Alt or Control Delete)

This is a handy trick I just learned… if you’re in a playlist and delete a track, it’s still in your master library but no longer in the playlist. However, if you come upon a track while in a playlist and want to delete it both out of the playlist and master library, press option-delete (on the mac), and it gets moved to the trash.

I thought iTunes was pretty much useless until I learned this shortcut / tip. Now I love it (esp the smart playlists).

8. Use your iPhone / iPod / iTouch etc to help you rate

If you set up iTunes so it will sync playlists with your iXXX device, you can then use that device to rate the tracks while on the go. Then when you sync again, those ratings will find their way back into iTunes.

Yesterday I took a train from NYC to Philly. I had a huge playlist dumped into my iPhone. I spent the entire ride preview listening to tracks – I was skipping around, going fast, rating the song, then moving on. People around me must’ve thought I had ADD or something.

When I got home, I synced the iPhone. All the ratings appeared in the synced playlist in my library. I selected all the 1 and 2 stars and hit option-delete, and moved them to the trash.

Given that most digital DJ software read iTunes files, having organized playlists makes it a lot easier to find the perfect house-electro track at the right energy level!

That’s it for now. Hope this helps some people out there!