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Thread: How many is enough?

  1. #1
    Dinosaur Excalibur's Avatar
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    Default How many is enough?

    Inspired by the question by Allan in the ipad playout thread.

    How many tracks do we need?

    Quote Originally Posted by Casual77 View Post
    I'm still building my collection from the ground up and currently only have about 4,000 songs. This is slightly off-topic, but how many songs are in your full collection and, if you did a bit of a spring clean to delete any songs you can't see yourself ever playing, how many songs would you consider that you would need to keep to cover most eventualities?

    I'm thinking that 10,000 songs that I could fit on the iPad would probably be sufficient for me to feel that I had all my bases covered.
    Some weeks that would be 9,500 tracks too many, as Martin alludes to below.


    Quote Originally Posted by funkymook View Post
    Depends on which 10,000 songs you have

    This has been debated many times on here - some believe a wedding and function DJ can get away with around 500 tracks others think you can never have enough music.

    Personally I’m always adding to my collection (and most of my work is for retro music, never mind keeping up with current music as well).

    Your collection will grow the more you DJ - just make sure you can cover most of the popular genres at the moment so you don’t get caught out with the obvious stuff.
    And sometimes, it's 10,000 tracks too few.

    I think this may be a rich vein for discussion. There are no right answers, for a start. When you've been collecting music for the job for over 40 years, the collection's going to be a reasonable size. It's also full of filler and irrelevance.

    Nowadays, it's easier to create a collection that's " all killer, no filler ". Now, Mastermix, Prodisc et al mean you can pick the important stuff without accruing too much clutter. In the old days, it wasn't unknown to buy a double album to get one track.

    I'd say that the size of the collection is determined by your likely work. If you only do weddings, and they're always run of the mill, you'll need less tracks than if you did more varied work.
    Excalibur. Older than the average DJ.

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    You can probably get by with as few as 500 tracks but I wouldn't want to try. Sod's law that if you were to do a library cull, somebody would ask for at least one of the tunes you got rid of. Storage has never been cheaper & music has never been cheaper to buy.. so why not?

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    Dinosaur Excalibur's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by juski View Post
    Sod's law that if you were to do a library cull, somebody would ask for at least one of the tunes you got rid of.
    You've just reminded me. The young ones won't remember this, but back in time, we carried milk crates full of vinyl. When you could neither fit any more in, nor carry it, you culled the records you hadn't played for years.

    And a week later, someone asked for them.

    Quote Originally Posted by juski View Post
    Storage has never been cheaper & music has never been cheaper to buy..
    Nor lighter.

    Quote Originally Posted by juski View Post
    so why not?
    We know why, don't we children?
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    Resident Antagonist Benny Smyth's Avatar
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    Mine's bigger than yours.

    So ner.

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    ahh the wonders of lugging 4 boxes of 12" and 1400 7" singles. then the 200 cd's that came along later. oh how I miss that. and you would always just use the 1 box of 12"s and possibly 1 row of the 7"s.

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    Coming in to this business only recently I've been able to use download sites to cherry pick the most popular songs in each genre and decade. I've only got around 150 of the biggest tracks from each of the 60s, 70s and 80s but they are all tracks I could see myself using at some time or other. There are very few fillers among them and they are pretty much all singles with very few album tracks.

    I've got around 350 songs from each of the 90s, 00s and the current decade and I'm keeping up with the latest pop releases. Beyond that I've got around 150 popular rock/indie songs, 1500 dance, 100 hip-hop, 100 ambient/chill out songs, 50 Northern Soul, 50 Motown, 50 party songs, 50 R&B, 25 Ska/Reggae.

    In fact looking at that, my estimate of 4,000 is clearly estimated on the high side. I could double the number of songs I have in each category and still come in comfortably under 10,000 songs but I'm not sure there are enough useful songs for me to do that.

    Quote Originally Posted by juski View Post
    Sod's law that if you were to do a library cull, somebody would ask for at least one of the tunes you got rid of.
    Is it generally unacceptable to admit "I'm sorry I don't have that one"? I've had to say that on a fair few occasions already but fortunately I've generally had have their back up choice. Having said that, on my second ever gig I turned up with only the music genres I had been asked for before the night and had to admit during the gig that I had no 60s or 70s music in my collection. That certainly wasn't my finest moment!
    Last edited by Excalibur; 28-07-2015 at 11:35 PM. Reason: merged posts

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    Dinosaur Excalibur's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Casual77 View Post
    .
    Is it generally unacceptable to admit "I'm sorry I don't have that one"?
    Oooooh! I'll tell you just as soon as I've got behind this conveniently placed

    Right, that's better. Short answer, yes.


    And then again, no.


    I think we nearly had bloodshed the last time this one came up. Perhaps you could try telling them you don't have it because you know what to play thank you very much, and that isn't it, because you're the Professional after all, who can read the floor.
    Excalibur. Older than the average DJ.

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    Quote Originally Posted by funktions View Post
    ahh the wonders of lugging 4 boxes of 12" and 1400 7" singles. then the 200 cd's that came along later. oh how I miss that. and you would always just use the 1 box of 12"s and possibly 1 row of the 7"s.
    I decided I'd had enough of carting vinyl around when a box full of 12" singles opened itself up & tipped its contents down the steps of Cardiff Uni's student union building after a particularly successful gig (hic!). All those poseur DJs with their poncy little record bags made me sick. Wha? You carry as many as TWENTY records at a time?

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    Dinosaur Excalibur's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Casual77 View Post
    Is it generally unacceptable to admit "I'm sorry I don't have that one"?
    Well here's the last discussion we had concerning one aspect of this.
    Linky.
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    Shakermaker Promotions's Avatar
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    I'm probably the same as Martin in that I am always adding to my collection. As well as updating every week (for some reason I pick a Thursday to do it), I am always updating my library with music that I like personally. As a few of you know already, I do regular 'Request' nights and there are regulars that like to try and catch me out. Why is it that some people out there think that as DJ's we should EVERY single track ever made? What I like about those nights is that as well as being eclectic, some of the songs requested have found me searching my music library thinking that I have them when in fact I never transferred them from CD. I knew I had the tracks but forgot to rip them. What this also does is see me grabbing extra tracks from those artists via Amazon MP3 or (very rarely) iTunes.

    An example would be a few months ago. Someone asked me for Sugar Box by Then Jerico. I thought I had it but I didn't and it had been a long time since I played any of their songs. The following day I downloaded the song and around 20 others of theirs with it. The likelihood is that I will never play the majority of those songs out on the road but you never know do you? This happens a lot and with HD storage stupidly big now, it doesn't bother me having tons of stuff on them that I may not play.
    On the other side of that, it's also a pleasant surprise to the customer when they ask you for something thinking that you haven't got it when you have. For example: Someone at a wedding the other week asked me for Terence Trent D'Arby - Dance Little Sister (great track). It's not a track that gets requested but I had it.

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