How do you guys keep your music organized?

[LiteTrix]

Sort of curious how you guys keep your music organized. I have several computers that I use for lighting, video, and actual mixing. I have external hard drives that hold itunes libraries with all of my music and videos. I hope to one day break free from using Itunes but I just don't have the time right now. For the longest time I have been doing monthly updates to each library and that involves copying over 900 gigs of files between the various drives and I'm just looking for some smart options to use that won't put so much wear and tare on my drives and cut down on the time it takes to update things.


So a few questions....

How many laptops do you use?
How do you keep your music updated?
Do you store your music on an internal or external drive?
Any other interesting things or unique things pertaining to music storage?

Specifically looking for Sween's opinion on this because I know he uses Itunes to keep his music organized but everyone is welcome to chime in.

[Mystic]

1 laptop
Usually by genre
Both. I have an external backup
It's hard to keep everything organized with the amount of genres and subgenres, plus with all the multiple copies of songs due to compilation albums out there, it's hard to sift multiple versions from different versions of songs. Just don't let it overwhelm you.

[ampnation]

by date of maturity?

[RodneyL]

Two laptops and one external hard drive. I have full albums organized by artist names and then album names, singles organized in dated folders.

[Quentin Legend]

Two laptops and one external hard drive. I have full albums organized by artist names and then album names, singles organized in dated folders.

Basically the same as this.

Example: All Artists -> D -> David Guetta -> Nothing But The Beat (2011) -> *List of all the songs*.

But then again I have dedicated folders for Trance, Dubstep, House and Drum & Bass.

My "All Artists" folder basically has all the Top 40 stuff (Including classics blah blah blah).

[Sween]

2 laptops. I backup the main one often. I use iTunes Home Sharing to transfer tracks from 1 computer to the other as well as to my home PC and my iPhone and iPad.

[Dj Cowlick]

So I'm new to the wedding/mobile industry, and have nowhere near 900 Gigs. I do use Serato Scratch while I dj in sync with Itunes which helps me keep my stuff organized.

On the hard disc side of things I just have folders w/ different genres and within that I have 2 subfolders titled Full Albums / or Single. From there all my music is imported into Itunes. I just make sure every song is Tagged correctly. I have the year of released, genres, and in the comment field I note different stuff (I'm still trying to figure out what's best for me). For instance, generically speaking if the song is playable in a wedding, I'll put wedding in the comment field. If it is a good first dance song, I'll label first dance in the comment field. I just learned (probably way behind the game) about the "Smart Playlists" in itunes. I set up playlists with all sorts of parameters which updates my music as soon as I upload them into Itunes. For instance I have a smart playlist of music from 1990 through 1999 that is rap/hiphop and dance floor friendly.

Right now I just have one laptop and 2 external hard drives with everything I have backed up.

[Divercity]

Same: Example: All Artists -> D -> David Guetta -> Nothing But The Beat (2011) -> *List of all the songs*.


But ofcourse I backup my music/samples/vst's in 4 places. No its not over the top :lol:

[Andrew B]

2 laptops. I backup the main one often. I use iTunes Home Sharing to transfer tracks from 1 computer to the other as well as to my home PC and my iPhone and iPad.

This. Diligent use of Smart Playlists keeps everything organized for me.

[Silver Man]

I don't worry about organization of music on the hard drive other than have a music folder and then a folder for each artist -> Album -> mp3. I use Virtual DJ to manage all my music and I have a couple "Virtual" folders for "Crowd Favorites", "Slow Songs", "Oldies", "Christian", "Wedding", "Bride & Groom Songs", etc.. I'll just drop a track in a folder that is appropriate. I don't worry too much as I am mainly a wedding DJ and I play mostly requests.

As for hard drives. I have 2x 1Tb drives in Raid 1 (Mirrored) configuration, I then have two external hard drives that have the duplicate songs, and then a NAS drive at my house that also acts as a backup. I had my equipment stolen so the backups were a life saver.

[DjBlanco]

my folders go genre > sub genre ( v subcrate ) > year range (ie. 1999-2002)
mixshow/sets (clean) [mixshows/sets is usually my radio hits/club bangers]

[djscrizzle]

I use Itunes too, much the same as Andrew B... I use a *lot* of Smart Playlists and that seems to be the best way for me. I also have iTunes organize the folders it stores music in, on an external drive...

[Jonno Soccio]

900gb? If I were you the best way to start organising it would be to get rid of most of it....

I looked through someones collection recently who had 200,000+ tunes on his hard-drive. It was absolutely ridiculous, he had tons of remixes of most tunes and countless full albums of tunes I guarantee he will never play, listen to or have requested. What the hell is the point of that? I would love to know any good reason for a DJ having that amount. He was showing off about it as well. Pirating a shitload of music he will never play and making it MUCH harder to organise. WELL DONE....

[ampnation]

Yeah... I find it hard to believe that Joe Schmoe making $20k a year has a legal collection of 200k tunes. At an average price of a buck a song or even 50 cent (pun intended) that's still $100k. Five years worth of income. YMMV. I may question IP law, but even without it, I would pay for my music.

And think about how long it would take to know each of those songs to be comfortable playing them all. I'm 50 and I'm thinking I would be lucky if I know 50k songs well enough. Truth is, I have around 7k and there are large segments of those I'm not familiar with because they were on compilation albums or they were throw away tracks on an album I bought for 2 or 3 songs. Being a mobile DJ, I keep a lot of songs I don't know in case they get requested (before the actual event usually so I have time to preview) and if I didn't have them in my library, I would forget I had them and end up buying them again in some cases.

Now that said... if I'm loaded with money, I might build a library even bigger than 200k songs. I'd go through and buy albums based simply on things like "Johnny's list of must have R&B albums from the 70's" It could add up pretty damn fast.

[Ntertainment]

I only have around 31k and i'm happy to keep it at about that size. I try hard with mp3tag to weed out duplicates, and keep my tags in a decent order. I've tried a lot of duplicate finders but none some to work that well. They never look at all the characteristics of the music. Such as size, bitrate, length, remix status and if it's ft. anyone. It's frustrating that they've made it so hard to have an organized music collection.

I must say i like having the web at an event so i can buy songs on the spot, it's helped me a few times, but those nights it seems to really help.

[Ntertainment]

But even at that many there is no way i know them all, even half of them. All of my songs at this point have been bought and paid for too. I have stacks of duplicate cds that i need to get rid of garage sale?

[ampnation]

I only have a couple of duplicate CD's and not sure if I have any if you don't count remasters. duplicate songs... that's another story. I have a few i bought online then got another when I bought back catalog ERG discs. Others where I bought a compilation but have two or three already on the original album.

[Ntertainment]

I bought a lot of CDs off of Ebay they said it was 2000+ i'm sure it was more like 3000+, i was hoping they would all be different, but they were from an old jukebox company that obviously had many jukeboxes. I know for a fact that i have over a thousand duplicate CDs, some of them like the tractors, i have 10-15 cds. The company must have been in a large country market because i have a lot of extra country. This collection took me like a month to rip/sort/and organize. It came in a large truck on a pallet, it was pretty intense.

[Ntertainment]

But if your looking for a cheap way to build i large collection Ebay is the way, just make sure they are the original CDs

[LiteTrix]

I really like Sweens idea. I've known about home sharing but never really knew it's capabilities. Do you know if there is a way to have one primary laptop that has all updated music and than have a second laptop you update on occasion? The problem I see with home sharing for me at least is that I might not update the second laptop regularly and do it on a monthly basis and by that time I will have forgotten the music and playlists that I have added. I tried messing around with a bit but I was wondering if there was like a master sync button of some sorts were it would just sync up both laptops so they both identical.