Sorting your music

[Cupe]

How do you sort your files?

What is your folder hierarchy?

What works best?

I got an external 1TB hdd I want to use for music, but I don't want to have to shuffle shit around.

How do you sort your stuff?

[Jaz]

when i change the name in itunes it changes the file name and artist etc in the c drive folder then its all good to go for VDJ traktor ableton etc...

thats as basic as it gets though lol

[Cupe]

i fkn hate itunes

[Slippy]

I have a tb ext also Cupe and tbh i have not got around to organizing yet as its going to be a whole Sunday with 6 pack kinda thing I think, but i was just going to go genres, ATM i'm just loading up 2 4gig USB sticks and mixing with them and pulling some stuff off as I put more on. But i am thinking of going dig with tractor or something as I have 400s but i havent looked into it yet

[tubby]

I split into prog house vs trance, then within that I have one folder per year. That is, the year I buy the track, not the year it was released, it sits better in my mind so I can find them.

I setup the folders within traktor in the same structure as the directories oh the disk.

Only have a 320Gb drive, and that also has backups of my non-djing music (ripped as flac) so space isn't a major concern

[LabRat]

i use iTunes when listening to music. all my music is in albums. i HATE having individual tracks. pisses me right off. all my digital tunes are on CD's and my wallets are sorted via genre. im pretty anal about my music and how its sorted. everything has to be perfect

[ill_spector]

all music on i tunes

all dance/edm in genre folders,

cd's- try keep 1 track per disk, title/track/bpm on disk

[Buck_Choi]

1 track per disk.. thats a lot of disks.. :S

[Skank]

cd's- try keep 1 track per disk, title/track/bpm on disk

yer id imagine u have a lot of cds

ill have some cds that are remixes of the one track

[BeatLeSS]

At the moment i've just got folders set up for genres. I'm eventually going to sort them via mood's (Busy, warm up, chill, etc) But i think that's going to be more in my RekordBox with comments/colour, rather than folders/playlists.

But definitely something that needs a lot of attention!

[Tomy]

when i buy from beatport i save it into a dated file every track i bought that day.

then in itunes i make a playlist for every cd i burn (5 tracks per CD for dj-ing)

they are numbered "TOMY_64_05-07-2010"

that way when i loose it or some dumb fuck spills a drink of it its easy to reburn for me.

the CD its self i sort with melow tracks at the start and getting increasingly heavyer towards track 5.

i dont really sort by key but i try to make sure that each disc has a different keys on it so i dont get stuck needing a 5A track when its on the same cd.

at the moment my new Dj CD wallet is up to about 100 disc's after 6months.

[SourceRaver]

MP3s are stored on the hardrive by main genre (ie Trance, Prog House, Polka etc).

I then use I-tunes to break it down further into something like this:

Prog House

1.0 Intro

2.0 Uplifting

3.0 Vocal/Disco

3.5 Club/Funky

4.0 Harder

Trance

5.0 Prog House/Trance crossover

6.0 Mellow

7.0 Intro

7.5 Building

8.0 Uplifting

9.0 Big Room Trance

9.5 Banging Trance

So say if I had to play a five hour set (I wish), I'd start at the top and work my way down the list. Every song has a rating and sorted by date purchased so I can find the latest and best songs at the top of each playlist.

[SourceRaver]

For a long set I would work down the list as the tempo (BPM) increases and ocassionally head the other way to give the crowd a bit of a break. For shorter sets I'd have a look at where the current Dj is playing (say uplifting trance) and then carry on from there. I use the numbers as a quick guide to where a track fits into the evening and I also label my folders on a USB (CDJ400) the same way. I havn't burnt a single CD yet!

(Note: given that I'm a bedroom banger, I havn't had a chance to test my system but it makes sense to me so I thought I would share it with you all)

[LabRat]

cd's- try keep 1 track per disk, title/track/bpm on disk

yer id imagine u have a lot of cds

ill have some cds that are remixes of the one track

some of my CD's have 1 track on em. i only grab EP's so if its a 1 track EP it will go on a disk on its own

[CBG]

on pc its genre>key

cd wallet when i play is in order of popularity. i burn one song to a cd and their respective remixes.

quality over quantity.

wen at a commercial gig i burn shit (non edm) songs into a group ie. gaga, usher, rap anthems etc

[ruggs]

i just make playlists in serato of the songs i think will suit where im playing then wing it

[djarmed]

i just make playlists in serato of the songs i think will suit where im playing then wing it

I sort my files like this.

GENRE>YEAR>MONTH>ARTIST

i find this works very well for me and if you keep on top of it, it rarely becomes chaotic.

[chrismak]

I use the following simple structure:

Root__Tech House__CD1

|............ |________CD2

|.............|________CD3

|

|___Progressive House__CD1

|.............|___________CD2

|

|___Tech Trance__CD1

|.............|_______CD2

Each CD# directory represents a CD that I burn for mixing on my CD decks, with each CD containing 7 tracks. For each CD, I print out a tracklist containing the song title, artist and remix for each track so I can refer to it in the mix.

With this scheme in place I just add CD's to the appropriate music genre directories as I buy more music. The latest CD's contain the latest music. Perhaps further down the road I can add another level describing the year the track was bought in.

[TheReturn]

At the moment i've just got folders set up for genres. I'm eventually going to sort them via mood's (Busy, warm up, chill, etc) But i think that's going to be more in my RekordBox with comments/colour, rather than folders/playlists.

But definitely something that needs a lot of attention!

I'm doing the same thing with itunes/serato. Its going to take a long time to start adding the moods.

It was already hard enough sorting some stuff by genre. Moods are much more difficult to classify because some tracks can have many.

[DjDennis]

Really depends how You want to sort it - not what others want you to have it so they use it

60's

70's

80's

90's

00's

rap

hardcore

techno

beats

club mixes

remix

megamix

fav's

top 10

top 20

really as I said that is what you make it and how YOU create what you want where YOU want

it can also work with CD's, Vinyl, etc etc..

.