How Do You Arrange Your CDs?

[Robert20]

I have been mixing for a while now and for the most part it is just for fun in my bedroom, making mixes for my car and work but now I've been asked by my friends to give them a mix.

The only problem is that ive only ever mixed on cd players that take USB and so I've only ever played from USB. Ive played a couple of songs from CD but Ive never burned my collection to CD.

It seems simple enough but I dont know the best way to arrange my music. By genre/mood/bpm/alphabetical? I'm just curious as to how you guys arrange yours.

[awesome88]

mine is arranged in various piles strewn throughout my glove box, bedroom floor and wardrobe lol

[Hobberz]

I burn one song per cd. Than I label that cd with the following info;

*Track name and artist

*Genre

*BPM

Than it goes into my CD wallet, I am very very fussy and have it organised with different genres from electro, commercial, RnB etc. Usually when my friends touch my CD's I get annoyed if its not put back in the right place. But thats just me.

[pundaddy]

I do some of mine as artist, but now i just put whatever i've got recently, group about 10 or so, then just name them under the month i got them, i.e May 1, May 2, etc.

[Jaz]

1 song per cd, track name at top, artist at the bottom, bpm and or key to the right, cue points to the left

[andyman]

I just have 5 songs and disc, and the discs labelled, "Electro 1, Electro 2, Tech House 1, Dubstep 1" and so on.

If I have a gig, I burn 1 song per disc, so I save time, plus if someone asks me what a song is, I can give them the CD without stuffing up my order.

Works fine so far!

[legunner]

i used to have my whole library, then burn cds for sets that i playd

[street]

I dont label the CDs coz it looks ugly when you handwrite, but if I had a good way of printing on the CD itself I probably would, but for now I just put pieces of paper like this in the CD wallet sleeves:

All have 8 tracks per CD, and just list the artist, song and length. Got all my CDs organised in playlist folders and playlists in itunes too:

[RichoKidd]

Alphabetically, In Artists order then if multiples from the arists, order of release date

I.E

Bliss N Eso - Flying Colours

Bliss N Eso - Running on Air

Choose Mics - Beggers Can't be Choosers

ETC ETC.

[pundaddy]

Someone loves their Iron Maiden

[street]

damn straight

[DJAdumbration]

Most of my songs are now on 500GB HDD's, one for each deck. But when I was mixing off CD's, I'd do one song per cd (if the CD dies, you've only lost one song) with Artist, Track Name and rough BPM on it.

[JonnyB]

iron maiden are the fucking kings man

[legunner]

iron maiden are the fucking kings man

fuck yer

[Skank]

Ive recently delt with this issue as im backing up my tunes from serato playlists

basicly I will have 2 cd folders one house/dance/club tunes

Other Retro/rnb/hip hop everything else

I put around 8 songs to a disk and label as such

song name-artist-bpm-key

try break up your sections like warm up and peak stuff

I also highlight songs on my play list print out if the song is a banger helps when you need to pull out a great tune really quick

[legunner]

yeah good point about the warm ups and stuff

[FabDJ]

Used to shoehorn as many tracks on a burned cd as I could of the same genre and write the songs on the cd and on a printed playlist.

Was useless as I was usually too fucked to read what I was playing and the audience was the same and danced to anything.

[legunner]

Used to shoehorn as many tracks on a burned cd as I could of the same genre and write the songs on the cd and on a printed playlist.

Was useless as I was usually too fucked to read what I was playing and the audience was the same and danced to anything.

too bad if one of your disc snapps or gets scratched.

[dim]

Like streetcleaner I have all my playlists in itunes: it's a great backup and a really versatile storage system coz you can have the same song in loads of playlists without needing actual multiple copies.

Plus traktor syncs with it too.

Before I had traktor I would get itunes to burn each entire playlist and then I'd print the playlist using itunes too and label cds and playlist printouts the same way street cleaner does i.e. funk 1,2,3, electro 1,2,3 etc.

Most playlists need spreading across several CDs (itunes will do this) and so I cut the print out at relevant points and stick this to the sleeve each CD will go in. The number of songs on each CD depends how long they are, basically an audio CD is about an hour long so 20 songs at 3 min each or 7-8 songs if they are 12" vinyl style edits.

You can set custom settings in itunes print so it shows exactly the info you have shown in the itunes browser columns, which for me is: song name, bpm, time, comments and artist.

Finally I would burn a 2nd copy of all discs so that if i was playing a track and wanted a track from the same CD I could still play it from the spare.

BTW: maiden, yes.

[J0rdz]

I DJ purely off CDs nowadays, so im constantly burning tracks.

I have the majority of them split into genres: Prog, House, Breaks, DnB, etc.

Due to the amount of music I have i usually burn a CD with about 60 mins of tracks. Anywhere from 6-12 tracks per CD. Most of the time i'll burn the same CD twice, so I can mix between the same CD.

And then I house them in one of these puppies:

Have just recently ran out of room in the fucker, so had to start culling some music (goodbye oldschool trance CDs haha). I found it great being able to carry around that amount of music with me to clubs and parties. Have had plenty of times where iv been booked for a gig to play a certain style, and ended up playing something totally different. So it's great being able to adapt to situations like that

[andyman]

UDG is brilliant.

I use the sling back with the CD wallet inserts.

[J0rdz]

UDG is brilliant.

I use the sling back with the CD wallet inserts.

Ooooh, am interested! Link?

And totally agreed, UDG make really fantastic products. The only DJ bags I've ever used (aside from my hardcase Vinyl boxes)

Have a pair of these too:

Owned them for a good 6 years now with no sign of breaking

[andyman]

UDG is brilliant.

I use the sling back with the CD wallet inserts.

Ooooh, am interested! Link?

And totally agreed, UDG make really fantastic products. The only DJ bags I've ever used (aside from my hardcase Vinyl boxes)

Have a pair of these too:

Owned them for a good 6 years now with no sign of breaking

One of these:

With this in it:

And 2 of these:

[MolzaBoy]

I work out my sets on iTunes and then burn each set to two separate discs

[street]

these days I seem to be assigning the best tracks on each CD at track 1 and as track 8 for some reason. just a habit I guess.