What works for you?

How do you classify or label your tracks? This is the most important but the most arduous part of getting your music library organised. Your approach to this will impact the usefulness of your complete library ranging from download to deck-load and the way new tracks are added to your library.

Regardless of the recommendations stated here-in or that from other people, the most important thing is that you classify your music in a way that works for you and your DJ set-up. This encompasses more than just whether you can be bothered to put a structure in place. This is about how the library will be used, where and when it is to be accessed and what you expect to get out of it. This is more important than whether you choose to rename your files in a certain way, or what folder names you go for.

Many advocate a simple structure such as Artist – Song Title for the filenames and group them under genre or folders of various denominations. Others prefer a more comprehensive file-naming convention or the folder structure completely, allowing their operating system or software to take care of it for them. For most software-based DJ systems the classification of track metadata tags is paramount to how the hardware and software tools read your music files and how they allow you to interact with them.

The need to consistently classify your music applies to the folder structure, the filenames, the tags inside the files themselves, and often a separate database kept by your DJ software too. It’s just up to you to determine the level of detail and classification you want for each of these. This is important because it will only work if your library is classified in a consistent manner that is adaptable for these differing purposes. I prefer to classify my music library using:

Title – Probably the most important tag is the name or title of the music track. As DJs, we know that there are different flavours of the same-titled track, known as remixes or refixes. You may wish to separate the remix in a different tag by adding the remix or refix in brackets after the title e.g. Davido – Fall (DJ Refix).

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Artiste – Knowing who produced or made the track can help you find tracks by the same person or group. When artists collaborate then you may want to know who the individuals are. It’s often simpler to have the main and featured artists together in the artist tag. For example, Kida Kudz Feat. Teni.

Year – It sounds obvious but this should be the year the track was released. Sometimes this can be complicated by tracks being released or found on compilations years after the original release date. This particularly helps if you play songs released in the same year and also know-how further back you want to take your D set. It’s up to you.

Album – A DJ should think of this as the name given to the single or set of tracks under that single release. This will ensure that different mixes are contained under the same release and that you can group associated tracks accordingly. Consistency in the way you name sequential releases also helps to sort your library.

Genre – With musical styles changing and evolving. the problem is that genres can be very subjective. Tracks from a decade ago may not fit its description today or that of tomorrow. Having too many sub-genres makes some tracks difficult to place and reduces some of the variety in track selection. You can, of course, decide that you will attribute this field to your opinion of what a genre is and this is fine so long as you know what it means and are consistent with your classification.

BPM – Also known as tempo. With music such as Trap or R and B, the tempos can often be inaccurately measured as either half or double what they are. It’s advisable to use your DJ software to correct this before you start sorting on the BPM field. If you only play a certain style of music the tempo of these tracks is likely to be within a specific range of 120-140 BPM, and this makes it easier to spot errors and find tracks that don’t fit.

Key – Another really useful tag for DJs who mix harmonically. Popular DJ software analyses your tracks and determines the musical key automatically to have some key information in your music library.

Comments – This is where you put your thoughts on the track, describe its structure or anything to help you recall how the track sounds and what it might mix well with. This tag is also usually accessible from other applications but checks with your software before committing to using a specific field or format.

The system presented here works for me. The same system probably wouldn’t work exactly for you. The single most important thing of all is that no music organisation system is a substitute for actually knowing your music, and knowing it well. Preparation and knowledge of why you’re doing this in the first will help you to work out where you should do your organising.

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