Organising your music

[Sapphire Disco]

Forgot to mention that although I put my music into decades and special genre folders I always keep the last 3 years of music in a separate folder for each year.
I have spent many hours getting my folders how I like them helps you a great deal when you are working, especially on those gigs you don't really know what you are going to play until you get there and see the people.

[Tom]

Thanks for the replys.

Plan to start ripping my CD's tonoght when I get home from work. No produb licence needed yet as this is for personal use at the moment. When I'm ready, I'll buy the right Produb licence for the tracks that I would use and keep for djing.

Got boxes and boxes of CD's that I've kept from years a go so will start sifting through them all.

Tempted to go with CD Pool for the lastest tracks and start collecting music, try and back date tracks that have been popular or well known over the last 5-6 years.

Will be going down route folders of genres/years and specialist genres also. It's going to take a while, but the time and effort put in now should make life easier in the long run!

[Andy P]

Make sure when your ripping and organising you do the music tags as a lot of programs will read these rather than the file name - then there is a load of software that lets you rename files from tags and vice versa which makes them easy to catalogue.

I spent 2 months organising mine before I started - I have a huge sort folder that needs done from the music ive acquired since.

[Tom]

Make sure when your ripping and organising you do the music tags as a lot of programs will read these rather than the file name - then there is a load of software that lets you rename files from tags and vice versa which makes them easy to catalogue.

I spent 2 months organising mine before I started - I have a huge sort folder that needs done from the music ive acquired since.

I plan to tag every track and not use the internet like I used to. Would end up spending more time retagging tracks. Got plenty of times on my hand anyway so not in a rush. Even if I did 20 cd's a night that's 200 if lets say there are 10 tracks per CD. 2-3 weeks and I should be done lol

[Shaun]

Mine is VERY basic. The older stuff are in 'DECADES' folders. Then a few sub Genres within those folders. Then everything from 2006 to present date is listed in a folder by year, then broken down by month. So very little organisation as far as they are stored.

The ID3 tags are filled out pretty well though, as I do my searching, sorting & playlists with the tags. Works for me.

[Nakatomi]

I may be preaching to the converted here, but all this talk of folders has made me think..

If you're not using the metadata features of your DJ software, you're missing a really handy trick IMHO.

Why limit yourself to just having folders & subfolders where the files live? Why shouldn't your tracks be able to belong in more than one place? That's the big beauty of using the database features of DJ programs. I don't know if all DJ programs let you do organise music in this way but if yours doesn't, consider changing to one which does.

For me that's by far the biggest benefit in moving to a computer. The space & weight saving moving to a mass storage device *is* liberating, there's no denying that but the biggest benefit by far is how accessible everything becomes.

It also helps that to organise your music, you never have to actually move anything again - you just change the references to it in your DJ database.

The thought of using iTunes to sort out my DJ collection fills me with dread. I never really paid that much attention to it, but the times I was called on to sync my wife's iPod it had me pulling my hair out. I'm no luddite by any means, but I was beggared if I could figure out how to make it do my bidding.

[dicky]

I do it pretty much the same as juski sapphire and deckstar

Split music into decades - then I separate each decade into two rough genres - and these become my folders

Soul and Dance (or Disco for the 70s rather than dance)

Rock & Pop

'Soul / Dance' also contains such things as Reggae

So I end up with folders:

50s
60s Soul & Motown
60s Rock & Pop
70s Soul & Disco
70s Rock & Pop
80s Soul & Dance
80s Rock & Pop

etc
etc


Mostly I use the mp3 tags which I create to find my tracks if I am searching for something within a genre - eg, Northern, Disco, House, Mod, Rock & Roll, DnB, RnB etc

The most popular tracks in each genre I add the tag 'Good' eg Good Disco, Good RnB etc so I can search for thsoe too

I also have one folder called 'recent' that holds all the top latest stuff

Hope that makes sense, at least it works for me (though my roadie hates it lol) but I am sure there are a dozen good and usable methods depending on your own particular psyche and methodology

Rich

[yourdj]

The thought of using iTunes to sort out my DJ collection fills me with dread. I never really paid that much attention to it, but the times I was called on to sync my wife's iPod it had me pulling my hair out. I'm no luddite by any means, but I was beggared if I could figure out how to make it do my bidding.

The fact you have not paid much attention to it is probably why. I find with anything like this you have to get used to whats where first.

Having said that using iTunes to sync a device is completely different managing music on it and it just showing up when you open the program. Its dead easy (I use Macbook and Serato) - never had any problems and takes minutes to make playlists.

[Nakatomi]

The fact you have not paid much attention to it is probably why. I find with anything like this you have to get used to whats where first.

Having said that using iTunes to sync a device is completely different managing music on it and it just showing up when you open the program. Its dead easy (I use Macbook and Serato) - never had any problems and takes minutes to make playlists.

I think there's something about the way iTunes is supposed to work that I just never 'got'. For what it's worth I did give it a fair crack of the whip. I was only interested in managing music purchases & trying to get them onto an iDevice. I succeeded a few times, but it the times it failed were a major annoyance. It's likely to be very different now - I last tried it a lot of versions ago. Maybe I'll visit it again someday

[yourdj]

I think there's something about the way iTunes is supposed to work that I just never 'got'. For what it's worth I did give it a fair crack of the whip. I was only interested in managing music purchases & trying to get them onto an iDevice. I succeeded a few times, but it the times it failed were a major annoyance. It's likely to be very different now - I last tried it a lot of versions ago. Maybe I'll visit it again someday

They do have a knack of changing it every 6 months and moving things about which is very annoying.
I must say though its much better than it was a few years back.

Having said that i have not ever had a problem with sorting music, but its when they move things about that makes it confusing.
I also don't get on when syncing devices so understand from that point of view.
Its apple trying to keep everything through iTunes that makes it complicated.