Originally Posted by
mostapha
Yeah. Rekordbox adds metadata. It's easy enough to just not read the metadata.
On the other hand, USB sticks are cheap. How much music are you trying to carry? 16GB sticks are about $10-$20 on Amazon. Buy 8 of them and some utility to keep them in sync (OS X comes with several, including rsync and dd) and you'll easily be able to have 4 prepared with Rekordbox and 4 just raw music organized into folders (or however you want to do it) for about the cost of 2-weeks worth of a working DJ's music budget from 10 years ago. Just put stickers on them or something so you know what's what.
If I were routinely playing places that had USB-enabled CD players in the booth, I'd carry a handfull of USB keys if only as a backup. Considering how badly a lot of live sound guys think of DJ gear and how little regard some bars give their DJ booths, I'm not sure I'd trust CDJs to be linked unless I were playing a festival or a really big night.
$80-$160 is damn cheap for a backup system that robust. You can't get an iPhone for that.
And if you're playing with multiple players (3 CDJs or whatever), 4 USB sticks are a lot cheaper and more reliable than carrying around a hub and a bunch of lan cables.