How do you organize your music?
Sup guys, beginner mixer asking a pretty simple question; how do you guys organize your music folder?
Do you do it by genre?
By BPM?
By preset mixes?
I start with the search function. There’s LOTS of threads about this already.
Doesn’t using the search function take away from the whole Dj experience? In regards to constantly looking at the laptop screen instead of your equipment.
by feel…
how do you do it now?
(sorry SirReal…I think it’s time to start picking brains 
)
you have to be realistic about how many songs you are going to play at any given time. NO ONE wants to search 200 plus songs at a time. What kind of music do you play and how many tracks are we talking about?
Yes that was what I was referring to, having a large collection of music in one folder and searching for one track in a 200+ folder is quite tedious and seems like it takes off from your mixing time.
That’s why I was asking how you guys organize your music into smaller increments.
(here we go)
what type of music are you spinning? and are you spinning just for fun? If so…keep all those tracks you love in the main folder. If you are trying to get better, digging for music (no fucking torrenting), reading blogs, going to parties, then you need to regularly move tracks in and out of your main playing folders. No one wants to hear “levels” one more time, i don’t care what remix you have. BUT…it does help to learn by playing familiar music.
I’m primarily focused on progressive trance/house. And currently I am learning the basics with the intention of going as far as I can with it.
I was thinking about organizing the music via genre? Seems like an easy way to locate what type of track I want based on what the venue/crowd desires.
how many tracks are in your main folder? and how many folders would you make to organize them?
i started with: early/middle/late
I was planning on organizing my folder to genres first, and then by key notes.
I’m making a separate folder since my main folder is just too big with all these genres scrambled into one mess
now why are you organizing them by key? you are starting to color decisions…your ear is the best indicator of whether things work or not…
I don’t know it just came across to me as the best way to do it. Obviously my ears are the best indicators and at the end of the day as long as the music is good, then it’s good. I just figured this would help me identify what tracks fit what best.
I have a question regarding playing downloaded/torrented songs, how big of a deal is this? Let’s say the song quality is indifferent to ones from beatport, and can’t be recognizable by the human ear.
please explain your point of reference…
i feel like i am getting trolled now…
Sorry if my questions are coming off as stupid, but I’m not trolling…
so method I use is i have a folder where everything starts and a folder where things end up.
Untagged (everthing starts here where i tag and rename tracks to my liking)
classic trance and house
early (warm ups, slower tempo stuff)
deep funky house (main folder for the street i live on)
tech house (the upbeat tribal tech house sound i love)
progressive house (trancier house)
older deep house (the naked music vinyl rips and that classic hed kandi i love so much)
Cut (when things are moved out of rotation)
I was a club DJ for awhile, so I tend to move thru alot of music in and around the sound i like. I have a “sound” i am looking for when i am digging for tracks. By approaching things this way I end up with alot of music that I can weave together alot of different ways. I have carefully selected tracks not just piles of music.
My rather large listening music collection is stored seperately.
(this is not directed directly at you…this is for all the people that claim to love the music they aren’t paying for)
- If you DJ out and make money by doing it you need to pay for your tunes.
- Supporting the artist that made the music by spending the two bucks on their tracks. Doing this helps you develop a sound you like and make you pickier about what you buy and play.
- Do you really want to sound like everyone else that is torrenting the same music?
- Quality > Quantity
- Alot of us paid between 7 to 11 bucks a track on vinyl not too long ago, 99 cents is CHEAP!!!
- utilize all of the download sites juno, traxsource, beatport, itunes, stompy to find the cheapest prices
I’ve had a couple different ways of organizing my tracks. When I was starting out I used to have one massive folder of songs I was already very familiar with, and one folder called “new” for tracks I might have just bought, never played out, etc. Now my system is labeled like below
1 - This folder is for very minimal, tech house, etc. really “early” or warm up tracks
2 - This folder can still be for warm up but is starting to get things “going” more house, techno, etc.
3 - This is where I start playing some electro/progressive house and things really start going
4 - For when the night is going strong, anything thats aiming towards the 11 - midnight area is what these tracks are for.
5 - End of night, 1 ish to whenever my sets over, dubstep, drum and bass, anything thats rediculous.
I also have two other folders one for acapellas, and one for what I call “one shots” or “samples”
One thing I would say is don’t lock yourself into, “this genre works at this time” style of thinking, there have been countless times I have seen a minimal track dropped somewhat late in the night and worked magic, it all depends on the vibe and how you “make it happen” All my folders have mixed genres in them but what I layed out above is what I would play the “majority” of the time.
In the end, find out how your brain works, and make sure its organized in a way that even in panic mode you could easily decide where to go! Hope this helps. 
While I definitely support buying the tracks you spin, I see these points come up a lot and they just don’t hold any ground. Any track that’s available for purchase is available to be torrented, and a lot more. And any track available to be torrented is available in any quality you could want it in, FLAC, WAV, 320, etc.
People seem to be under the impression that torrenting music leaves you with 1000’s of poor quality tracks, and that doesn’t have to be the case.
That being said, buy your tunes.
I couldn’t find alot of the tracks in my buy list on torrent sites. I’m sure if you play top 40/electro house/dubstep you can find anything you want. Alot of the tracks I play are not in the beatport top 100 track packs you could get from demonoid.
I’d much rather play out of a folder of 75 tracks of music I curated as opposed to having 2000 tracks that I have to sift through.