How do you catagorise your music files (digital)

malle eppie · Post by **malle eppie** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 6:37 pm

(I saw a topic this before somewhere but I couldn't find it anymore)

I am probably not the only one around here so addicted to buying music that I forgot what I actually bought sometimes

Now I have just one list on my laptop with all my files in there (about 1200). When I see the names of some tracks I have actually no idea what track it is, how it sounds, if it fits in the set I am playing at that moment (most important thing i.m.o.)etc. etc.

for example:

I have about 15 From Karaoke To Stardom tracks. => I'm playing a set and I see the track titles. some I know what they sound like when I see the title but most of them I don't. I just don't know if it fits in the set I am playing and I don't want to take the "risk" of ruining my set by playing a track that is suddenly too calm for the moment. When I hear the tracks afterwards I recognise them but I want to recognise them by title or find out some way to organise my tracks in a way that I know what moment I can play these tracks.

so I was wondering what ways you found out for organising your tracks and if it helps you

malle eppie · Post by **malle eppie** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 6:38 pm

wrong forum :S might fit better in the general chat forum

thomasjaldemark · Post by **thomasjaldemark** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 7:13 pm

listen and learn?

im prolly the opposite, know the titles and how they sound of tracks i don't have and dont even like that much. discogsnerd ..

don't you hear instantly if the track doesnt fit when you mix? plenty of time to change track if it doesnt, ifnot, maybe you have to practice a bit more?

or am i misunderstanding the point?

thomasjaldemark · Post by **thomasjaldemark** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 7:14 pm

idea 1:
you can always put keywords in the id3tags for how the tracks sound

livecollective · Post by **livecollective** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 7:39 pm

I agree, you should have enough time to listen to a bunch of tracks even if you dont know them while your mixing, you dont even have to dig through crates anymore....

shiaaaaat.

patrick bateman · Post by **patrick bateman** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 7:48 pm

I do 2 things to be able to find my way through my big catalog of files when playing.

First of all, all tracks have been categorized into either deep house, techno, tech-house, minimal, electronica and so on.
This means that I in Serato can browse via genres.

2nd thing is that I have playlists/crates created per month, where I put all new tracks that I receive that month into. This is useful to find the latest tracks of a specific month.

But first of all, have your id3 tagging in order, even though it's a big work, then when it's done, it's great!

punchi · Post by **punchi** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 10:31 pm

Mostly I just organize them by the month I acquire them, which is handy when I have a lot of new stuff I want to crank out in sets. After that my library is pretty messy, which can be a hassle at times..

JackNine · Post by **JackNine** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 11:08 pm

A personal thing I do, only because I'm sort of a perfectionist, is I like to rename artists pseudonyms (read: other names) into their actual names. So for Seth Troxler I won't have to look for Thrill Cosby, Young Seth, or whoever else he recorded as; they're all under Seth Troxler. I do that with everyone.

Another thing is with remixes. A lot of the time, when I'm looking for a remix really fast, I go to the person who remixed it, but it's not where it should be. Why? Because it's always (default) listed under the original artist. So I manually went in an renamed all my remixes to the remixer (which makes more sense to me since it's an entirely new song), with credit given to the original artist in parentheses.

Those are just two little tips for organization that have helped me streamline finding things really fast.