Advice Needed: Music Library & iTunes

I DJ at a lounge where they don't want any current hip hop or top 40 played, I also DJ at a lounge where they want nothing but Top 40, and then on occasion, I DJ at weddings where you pretty much should have everything just in case.

Now I have about 100 GBs of space on my laptop (I cleared out a lot because I used to have my music and non-music related apps which left me with about 40GB). Before I cleared space, I was bringing a 200GB (small g-tech) drive with me, and for the weddings I have a TB of music (HUGE glyph drive in a hard case). I would love to not have to bring a drive with me at all.....but

Should I make a music library for each scenario? I have a hard time remembering where to keep all these library xml files.

Suggestions?

playlists are your friend :D especially if you're using traktor, or really anything with itunes integration. i have my library with songs I'll never dj probably, but then have a top 40 playlist, dubstep, dnb, etc. then for each gig depending on what you need it's all in one playlist. I've even made one specific one for a certain gig. no messing with library files or complicated things like that.

Yes, playlists are my friends! But if I could have all the more popular tracks on the laptop's hard drive and leave the ballroom/classical/big band/chicken dance stuff somewhere else and just dig it up for weddings I'd have less to carry. What do you think?

You could create different "profiles" on your computer. each itunes will have it's own library depending on which profile you log into your computer as.

having said that, i highly recommend having a 500gb / 1T firewire / usb powered drive and keeping all your music on that and using playlists - and smart playlists at that.

http://www.djtechtools.com/2008/12/0...es-power-tips/

Delete or back up the shit you know you'll never listen to and a 1T should really be enough.

I got more music than i'll ever listen to and I play all styles and it's still only 180GB.

I get rid of proper tat of my computer that i know is just never gonna be heard or played

Here's how I sort my music in iTunes with smart playlists, might help with ideas :)

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h230/Janzak/sort.jpg

All tracks I want to be part of my DJ library and not my private one, I tag with an energy level rating in the grouping tag ranging from 0-5 (S3 for example). So as base for all my smart DJ playlists I grab all tracks that "grouping begins with S" and then I sort it deeper from there using genres and ratings :) keeps all non-DJ tracks separate without having to tag them at all

Oh and you should defo get a larger external hard drive as already said

where exactly can I find the play list file that I have saved...

i don't think the playlists have separate files, i'm pretty sure they're written in directly to the library file.

yeah,

think its all written in the one library file unfortunately.

I think the different Login profiles suggestion is probably the best option in your case and would solve your problem quite nicely.

Set up two profiles just as you would if you were creating an extra login account for other people to use your laptop. Each person will have their own "documents" folder which will be loaded up when that particular 'person' logs in, and in each one will be that persons individual Itunes Library File.

So in user 1 you could only add the tunes that you would normally want to carry to iTunes and they would be called up when you logged in under that name, and in user 2 you could as the same tunes and also your big 1TB HD woth of tunes so that when you log in under that name it all shows up.

k

you can however, go to a playlist (smart or not), and then File>Library>Export Playlist.. and then save it as a text file or xml (awesome!). just an fyi, you may find this useful.