Organizing Your Track Collection?

[nirian]

Just wondering what is your preferred method to organise your tracks within Traktor.

If I don’t keep a tight system I find myself getting really disorganised, and can subsequently even starting to lose interest.

For Traktor Pro 1 my system didn’t work so I’m trying to get a tight system in place for my Traktor Pro 2, which I have just purchased.

I am going to try organising by Key perhaps. I purchased MIK for this purpose, and will then have playlist for each key e.g 1A, 2A, 3 A etc.

I’m not great with labels to be honest, bar my few favourites ones so organising by key is the best I can think of. But then you find you have so many tracks in each key, particularly the minor keys. So 100 tracks in say 8A isn’t greatly organised either I guess. Maybe sub folders within this broken down into some sort of grading system depending on the type track?

I’m just trying to get a tight system in place from the off, as if I don’t, the whole thing becomes a mess, as happened to me previously.

Would just be interested to hear what methods you guys think works best.

Thanks a million.

[Patch]

Manage ALL your music in iTunes, in a single folder.

Then, carefully tag all your tunes before importing them into your Traktor Collection. Minimum Tags should be: Tempo, Key, Genre. This will allow you to create multiple smart playlists in iTunes to find compatible tracks.

Then, create smart playlists in iTunes, based on your tags.

Then, DJ from the iTunes Node in Traktor. This ensures that recently added tunes show up in the iTunes (DYNAMIC) playlists.

There are LOADS of great articles, and LOADS of great threads on this very site.

But, basically, the tidiest way to do it is with succinct tagging, and Smart Playlsist that use these tags intelligently.


VDJ8 now has a database query function, that effectively creates smart playlists based on teh information held in the VDJ Collection/Library. This is even more powerful than iTunes Smart Playlists, and I hope Traktor will include this in a future update.

[nirian]

That sounds great, let me check it out. Many thanks for that.

[DigitalQw3rty]

I organize all my music by hand. Everything is sorted by artist then album before I use iTunes to organize my tracks. I make sure all of the ID3 information is correct before I even import it though. I use keyfinder to get the key information using the custom code section I convert it from music notes to a modified version of the Camelot scale. I then have smart playlist set up in itunes that sort all my music by genre. Then traktor takes care of the rest after I import the new tunes into traktor. Since I make sure all of my ID3 information is right the first time. If you need to sort by more specific information you can do what patch suggested as well. But that's just me. I've always been meticulous about my music collection since before I started DJing....

[Micah]

Definitely agreed with the iTunes organization. Make sure you clean all your ID3 tags as well, in case you plan on using any other software or CDJs in the future. My process is highlighting any newly imported tracks, right-click > convert ID3 tags > none (this clears out any unnecessary ID3 tags). Then repeating that process, but choosing v2.3 (most compatible with Traktor and CDJs). This way, all your hard work on tagging and organizing in iTunes doesn't go to waste when Traktor chooses to use a different set of ID3 tags when you import your music. Then, run the songs through MIK, so it will write to the proper tag system, and finally import into Traktor using the built-in iTunes folder, which should be synced in the preferences.

It should take a while when you first start to do everything by hand, but you should know your entire library inside and out. Personally, I try not to keep more than 1000 songs at all times, constantly pruning out tracks I don't use for live sets anymore.

[0.0]

I format the titles of all my tracks in Windows Explorer to "BPM - Artist - Title", then I run them through MIK. I have different folders for different genres, loosely organized. In Traktor I sort within those folders by either BPM or key. Vinyl just gets loosely arranged by genre. I'm way too disorganized to stick to a system with records.

[keithace]

I am ruthless about moving tracks out of the rotation on a regular basis. I buy probably 20-30 tracks a month and move them to a folder to get tag and renamed and listened to a few times so I can decide what to do with them. I am a folder guy. I only make play lists for sets or mixes i am working on. If I am diligent about my methods it works great. I know where newer tracks are as well as the older tracks. It helps I have a strong memory. I don't forget much.

[Patch]

I format the titles of all my tracks in Windows Explorer to "BPM - Artist - Title", then I run them through MIK.

I would skip adding the BPM manually, mate. MIK has an option to add BPM to the filename when it adds the key:

MixedInKey6_ID3_Tagging_thumbnail.jpg

"Write KEY and TEMPO".

[SlayForMoney]

Windows Explorer. Use Mp3Studio to clean your tracks from garbage in mp3 ID3 tags, add genre then use free KeyFinder to add Camelot key info to comment field, rename to Artist - Track Name.mp3 then import to Traktor.

[nirian]

Nice one everyone, very helpful ideas. Much appreciated.