Beatport track keys vs Mixed in key

[djproben]

I use MIK because I bought it when they offered unlimited updates, and it keeps getting better. The company's owners are cool guys and very approachable for help on the message board or by email; they even seem to do a nice job of keeping their cool when people are being total dicks to them (which I've seen happen on more than one occasion on that board, esp after their mixing contests). And they freely admit that it's not "accurate" in an absolute sense because key detection is not a science -- they had several musicians come in to check the results of using their algorithms and the musicians couldn't agree on what key various songs were in. It's not arbitrary of course but it can be really subjective. To do your job as a DJ you don't have to know what key a song is in - but it helps if you avoid key clashes no matter what key the song is in. So whether you use MIK or beatport or whatever, stick to the one tool because it's more likely to be consistent within itself.

Yes the right way to do that is to listen to your mixes and don't mix songs together that sound like ass -- that's the way I did it for years before I knew shit about key detection and that seemed to work fine for this non-musician (and non-piano-owning) DJ. But the software lets you instantly see some information that will help you decide if two songs might fit together. Just don't rely on it too much - sometimes songs will fit together even if they're not in compatible keys (especially if you mix at points where there's not much going on musically), and sometimes songs with compatible keys will have incompatible rhythms or textures. But having this information gives you a lot more to go on when you're considering mixing two songs you've never mixed before. And for better or for worse - I know some DJs don't like this - it allows you to have a lot more music in your library and make quick decisions among large numbers of songs, some that you know better than others.

[tekki]

I don't really get why people want to use BPM detection outside of Traktor. I've never really had a problem with it.

I just want it in the tags.