Itunes and Traktor Pro Library Management
I’m sure I’m not the only one using Itunes as a personal music player (and making playlists for sets in Itunes), and then using Traktor Pro to play sets at night.
My question, what do you guys find is the best method? I have over 20k tracks in my itunes library.
I did a one time import to collection in Traktor, and have started beat gridding songs.
What happens when you add new tunes in Itunes and then want them to show in Traktor without manually adding each one? If I re-add the entire library to the Traktor collection will it create dupes for all the ones already in there?
Long story short, what’s your best method for managing tracks, assuming you use both?
I’m a little unclear what the point of the Traktor music collection folder is.
I have one playlist in itunes with all my tracks in 320kbs full version for mixing. I also sort it on the time added so my newest tracks are on top. And further i use the method in the film from Ean where he describes how to import new tracks in your digital collection.
I Havn’t bothered importing my whole itunes library, as it would contain a whole load of crap i’d never even bother with in a booth (classical, jazz, funk, metal etc etc)
What I do is simply import the tracks I want to use, and sort them into separate playlists in Traktor by genre (in crate slots). I also go through a keying process before hand etc, so my library stays organised!
However, i still make playlists in itunes, then when i go into traktor, I can simply import that particular playlist (from itunes) and it’ll come up as a Traktor playlist in the collection. Then I drag that into one of the spare slots at the top, give it the club-night’s name/date and voila - iTunes-Traktor integration.
I’d recommend getting rid of most of your traktor collection if it contains 20k songs, as there’s little likelihood you’ll play the majority of them, and it’s worth organising your music collection in traktor (as it minimises potential to royally fuck up!)
I used to do that with my collection, also. Got around 15k songs, and it just got unmanageable. All the tracks I had that were duplicates, couldn’t remember which ones I had better cue points for until I loaded them, it was a mess.
I’ve scaled it down to around 1800 songs, putting in only what I want, tagging them by genre, sub genre, bpm, etc.. You’re going to need to add manually, but that’s just something you need to keep up with. I’d create a new playlist in iTunes that is comprised of your New Club Tracks, and when you move them into Traktor just delete them from the playlist.
Great tips guys, thanks a lot. I think that makes a lot of sense to keep a specific folder in Itunes for tracks I’ll end up wanting in Traktor. Import it once, then delete them from the itunes playlist after importing in Traktor.
A great feature in itunes, is that if you try to add a track to a playlist that is already in there, it confirms with you first that you want to add a duplicate track, and you can avoid it. Would be great to see this in Traktor.
Sorry for all the newb questions, is there a place to suggest features to NI? Seems like an easy implementation that would save a lot of library issues.
Lastly, a question on track tagging. If I create a beat grid and cue points, and click the padlock, I’m assuming Traktor writes that info to the ID3 track tag and it’s saved permanently. Does anybody know where that data is saved? I don’t see it in any of the visible ID3 fields.
Really the padlock is just an interface thing. It writes the tag when you unload the deck, but traktor works on id3 v2.4, and iTunes is on 2.3, so updating Traktor won’t update iTunes.
When you padlock it you are unable to change the BPM (and, for now, the cue points). The data is saved in the id3 tag, but not that it has been locked.
Traktor won’t add duplicate tracks to your collection, but I believe it will to playlists.
Belchman - sorry I was unable to find the video from Ean on importing the digital library, tried all kinds of search terms. Can you please point me to a link?
