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DJs- How do you organize your mp3's?

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:02 am
by InternetSlaveMaster
Hey guys,

So I'm getting tired of my current MP3 arrangement.

Basically, I've got my Music Folder, then it goes into Genres (I play Dubstep, DnB, Hardstyle, Trance, and Electro House). From there, it goes into artist names, then albums, then songs. This is can be rather annoying as I've got a large list of artist names, and sometimes only one or two tracks in the folder.

I was wondering how you guys sort your collection.

While my organization makes it easy to find things, I occasionally end up missing big tunes that I wanted to play in the first place.

Ideally I'd have a Genre Folder, then folders 1-5, Folder 1 consisting of my absolute favorite songs, and folder 5 consisting of my least-favorite songs (Ya know, the songs you've got just to fill up space if you're playing a long set. Not terrible songs, but not the ones you'd exactly open with.)

Just thought I'd get some input before I arrange all my tunes and realize the set up doesn't work how I'd like.

Re: DJs- How do you organize your mp3's?

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:14 am
by e-motion
I had everything I played in a single folder. Not very big, was constantly being updated (putting new releases, taking out old).

Outside that folder I had "Style > Artist", if the artist had enough tracks. If it had few, it would be "Style > - Singles -" folder. I also liked to organize remixes like this:

Instead of "Producer A - Track Name (Producer B Remix)", I changed the name to Producer B - Track Name Rmx. This helped a lot -

Re: DJs- How do you organize your mp3's?

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 11:04 am
by RandoRando
when i dj w ableton, i just have itunes open also and drag and drop tunes into ableton from itunes, i got all my little playlists, and every song in my library has song information on the files in EXTREME detail.

Re: DJs- How do you organize your mp3's?

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 1:01 pm
by Alistairr
InternetSlaveMaster wrote:Hey guys,

I play Dubstep, DnB, Hardstyle, Trance, and Electro House


Oh god.....i dont know where to begin...perhaps junk all ur music first and start again from scratch...??! :corncry:

Re: DJs- How do you organize your mp3's?

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 5:53 pm
by InternetSlaveMaster
Alistairr wrote:
InternetSlaveMaster wrote:Hey guys,

I play Dubstep, DnB, Hardstyle, Trance, and Electro House


Oh god.....i dont know where to begin...perhaps junk all ur music first and start again from scratch...??! :corncry:
Excuse me?

Living in a rural area and playing garage parties, I have to have a little bit of everything. I can't just play Biome the whole time, people would leave.

I simply stated my collection of genres to help get across the point that organizing my collection is rather hard. At the same time, I'm not mixing Hardstyle into Skream. The genres stay fairly separated into different sets.

I sincerely apologize for my appreciation of multiple genres of music.

Anyways, thanks you two for your feedback.

I spent two hours organizing my Dubstep and DnB collection yesterday, so my file goes:

Dubstep -> (Subgenres such as Tribal, Brostep, Dungeon, Glitch, Chillout, etc.) -> (1, 2, and 3, 1 being the best) -> Songs

The only thing is, I think this may make it a bit harder to find songs now, but I could see it working and helping when transitioning between subgenres. I'll use this setup and my next party and see how it goes.

Re: DJs- How do you organize your mp3's?

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 7:22 pm
by Sharmaji
by date added. that's it.

Re: DJs- How do you organize your mp3's?

Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 7:34 pm
by CaveLvl
Sharmaji wrote:by date added. that's it.
Same for me

Re: DJs- How do you organize your mp3's?

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 2:37 am
by Dreadfunk
iTunes with smart playlists based on Genre, BPM, Mood, rating, energy level etc. Serato can access all my itunes playlists so it works really well. I also tend to use a lot of search tags so that I can just type random stuff into the search bar while I'm DJing to find something with a particular feel.