Hard to find songs. Where to get them, and how to assess the quality?

[MrWalzak]

Hi guys.

I'm very new to Djing so I'm still in the process of building my music collection.
I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out. Listening to other people's mixes has introduced me to so much great music.
I currently buy most of my music off Itunes, but am having a lot of trouble finding rare songs, old songs, original versions etc.
How do you guys find high quality digital copies of rare songs that aren't available on the major distribution platforms?
Furthermore, how can I tell if the songs I'm downloading for free from platforms like soundcloud are "club quality"?
I provided some examples of songs I'm having trouble finding below. Some are classic house, some are more recent, and others are hard to find remixes.
It's frustrating because it's clear that some of these songs were available for free on platforms like soundcloud or facebook when they released, but now the links are dead.
Keep in mind that I'm in Canada, so some of these songs might be even harder for me to find than for someone in the states because of cross border copyright weirdness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-0GFQolV-I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6TvqFaNio0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS0mqFWZzUg

Sometimes Itunes has copies of the music I want, but not the original copy. Like my Itunes copy of Pete Heller's Big Love is not the original 10 minute version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHFhMwDq9eA
It's the 6 1/2 minute version from the "DJ Irene Progressive dance mix 1999" with some catty girl talking about guest lists and stuff during the outro. :(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OiQBUEzE9o

Does anyone else have tracks they can't find, but want to add the their music collection?
It sure is frustrating to have so much music that I can listen to easily, but can't realistically play through my controller.

[djnotapplicable]

Check out HTFR. They are in the UK and have vinyl, but you might find what you are looking for and can rip the vinyl to digital - I have done that with all of my vinyl.

[Uncle Q]

Me Myself I'm subscribed to a DJ pool which is BPM Supreme. In my opinion they are one of the best dj pools out there. They have most new music as soon as it drops as well as extended mixes, dj remixes, music videos, and curated sets. all you have to do is pay a mothly fee and you recieve unlimited downloads. For me its the most bang for your buck.

[KirkMcD]

Sometimes Itunes has copies of the music I want, but not the original copy. Like my Itunes copy of Pete Heller's Big Love is not the original 10 minute version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHFhMwDq9eA
It's the 6 1/2 minute version from the "DJ Irene Progressive dance mix 1999" with some catty girl talking about guest lists and stuff during the outro. :(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OiQBUEzE9o



Well, you can go to a place like Discogs. Search for the song and version that you are looking for and see if a physical copy is available in the marketplace. Then you rip it yourself.
For instance: https://www.discogs.com/Pete-Heller-Big-Love/release/969

[djnotapplicable]

I also use BPM. I have tried a lot of pools and feel that is the best one to suit my needs. I also have to buy tracks because the pool does not cover that genre, but it works.

[dlove]

hi, no clue if this is the track you mentioned (you might have to work with the 3 minute version til you find what you're looking for) but it's worth browsing bandcamp anyway ;) good luck and happy hunting!

https://ministryofsound.bandcamp.com/track/pete-heller-big-love

[light-o-matic]

Some older tracks just aren't available in digital form. But a lot are.

As it turns out, the first track you linked is available on Juno Dowload:
https://www.junodownload.com/artists/Secret+Service/releases/

I buy a lot of my music from bandcamp.com, there's also Beatport.. which is popular but I don't like them (big evil corporation, whereas BandCamp works with artists and smaller labels directly). There are many legit online stores.. avoid shady sites that want your credit card....

As far as "club quality" (I assume you mean sound quality), Juno offers it in several different formats:

192K MP3, 320K MP3

These are LOSSY files.. they do not sound as good as the original track. The higher the K, the better they will sound, but never as good as the original.
But they cost less.

Since Juno charges the same price for 192K and 320K, and 320 is better quality, clearly it would make no sense to buy 192.
Is it "club quality"?? Some people say it is good enough, but I'm not one of those people. If you are playing small places or just practicing and aren't serious yet.. and want to save some money, 320K is not bad. But if you are serious about going pro and you plan to play these tracks you are buying now.. then don't get MP3's.

AIFF, WAV, FLAC, ALAC.

These are all lossless formats, meaning they are going to be the original quality.. or if it's an old, analog recording, the best quality the mastering engineer could get off the old recording. So these are all "Club Quality".

You should get whatever format works best with your software. I collect my music in FLAC format because that takes up the least space and it works with all the software I use. I then use Foobar2000 to convert the tracks I want to play out into AIFF format because some models of CDJ don't play FLAC (only the newest models). If you have a mac, it might make more sense for you to collect your music in ALAC format.. which is what Apple uses. Because these are all lossless formats you can convert between them without losing quality.

Re downloads from soundclound.. if you are using one of the programs that can download anything from soundcloud.. then NO, that is not club quality. They are fine for personal listening or practicing. Music downloaded from YouTube using various programs and plugins are also bad quality. In general anything you download from a streaming service using some kind of tool that lets you download when you are not supposed to, is going to be fairly low quality.

If you mean artists who offer a free download link for certain tracks.. well, it is up to the artist what quality of file to offer. You have to download it then look at the file to see what it is. Music players like VLC Player and Foobar2000 have an option to show you the encoding and rate of the file you are playing. Anything lossless is ok, in this day and age I would say that anything less than 256K MP3 is a definitely NO GO for club play, 320K is acceptable, but really if your goal is club play, then I would suggest getting lossless for everything.

HINT: Uncompressed (WAV, AIFF) lossless formats are going to give you a file size of around 10MB/minute.. so a 6 minute track will be around 60MB or so. A compressed lossless file (eg FLAC) is going to be about 2/3 that size.. a bit less or more depending... But figure around 30MB or more for that same track.

Anything smaller than that is not lossless.

[David Bowman]

Since Juno charges the same price for 192K and 320K, and 320 is better quality, clearly it would make no sense to buy 192.
Is it "club quality"?? Some people say it is good enough, but I'm not one of those people.




Mp3 is only here because people still need to save memory space, and because people will pay less thinking they're getting the same thing. There is no such thing as "club quality", when the music is played by a system that is designed to forgive defects in return for more power and more volume.

In short, your sound quality is only as good as the weakest link in your system Those using online ripping from soundcloud / youtube / etc are just polishing turds.

[MrWalzak]

Hi guys.

Sorry it took me so long to respond to this. I've been super busy, and was away on a work trip last weekend.
There's a lot of great advice in this thread. Thanks for taking the time to help me out!
I'm going to check out a bunch of the places people recommended for buying music.

As far as "club quality" music goes it seems that the quality of the music is related primarily to the quality of the recording, and the quality of the encoding.
Low quality recordings aren't as much of an issue in Dance music as almost all of it is produced in high quality on a computer in the first place.
It's still possible I could get a low quality recording in high quality encoding, but it's more likely I would get a high quality recording with low quality encoding.
Does that sound about right?
More to the point, is 320k MP3 good enough to play at the small club in my town that fits 50-100 people?
Assuming I decided to go pro and was successful at what point would my 320k files not be good enough, and how would I know?
If I played a 320k MP3 on a huge soundsystem, at a festival with thousands of people how would it sound different than a lossless .wav file?

As for the music from Soundcloud, I'm not ripping it from the website. I just mean downloads made available for free by the artist.
Here's a few examples:
https://ia601501.us.archive.org/29/items/DiscoHouseMinimix/DiscoHouse%20Minimix.wav
I recorded that in .Wav so it should be lossless.
VLC is telling me that the first track is 320k MP3, the second is 128k MP3, and the third is .wav
If I get a gig at the local club should I not play that second track? It's one of my favourite tracks in my DiscoHouse collection, and I haven't been able to find a better copy. :eek:


Also in terms of recording from vinyl to digital can I plug an analog turntable into my controller, play it in Traktor, and record it in Traktor?
Do I need any equipment to do this other than the analog turntable itself? If so, what?
I assume this the highest quality I can get for songs that were never digitally recorded? How does the sound compare to 320k MP3 and .wav?

[light-o-matic]

Well, to simplify things...

#1 There's "How good is this song.. musically?"
There's "Does this song fit my style as a DJ and the taste of the people I play for?"

Those first two questions have NOTHING to do with sound quality, they are questions only you can answer as a DJ, that is your job to know that... You need to figure that out yourself. If a track does not fit musically then you don't play it, no matter how much you like it. It takes practice to develop this judgement skill.

#2 Then there is "How good is the production quality"?

That depends yea on the production skills of the original producer.. some producers have great musical ideas but they are bad at the technical skills and their tracks sound muddy or are too cluttered with sounds.. and so sometimes I will find a track that I really want to play because it's musically great but because of the production it does not fit in with the other tracks, so maybe I won't play it. It depends. Again, this is something you have to learn to decide for yourself.

#3 Then there is "How good is the sound quality of the copy I have vs the original?"

And that comes down to the encoding. If a track is encoded in FLAC, WAV, AIFF, ALAC then it is basically (not always, but usually) very close if not identical to the original production. If it is lossy compression (mp3, aac, ogg) then by definition it does not sound as good as the original. and you have to decide whether it is "good enough" for you to play. As I said, lossy files vary, a 128K MP3 of some track is almost definitely not good enough to play out in a club, a 320K MP3 of the same track might be. Some tracks compress better than other. If I have only a 320K of a track and can't get that track in uncompressed format, then I will listen to it with the good quality system I have at home and decide if the track is good enough (musically) that a slight loss of sound quality is worth it.

So yea basically the answer to your question has not changed. You asked "what is club quality"? Well, when you say club then that's a pro venue, you are expected to perform like a pro, you use pro gear, the sound system is pro. So yea, you would use lossless files because that is pro. Maybe a 320K mp3 is (usually) pretty close in quality, but it is less.. and a pro will use the best they have available. And since lossless files are easily available, they will use them.

Now you are asking "well what if it's a little 100 person club in my town".. well, how would I know??? If it's a crappy little place in a small town, more like a bar with a dj than a real dance club, maybe they don't have particularly good sound system anyway.. then sure maybe you can play lower quality and nobody will notice or care. It's really up to you and what standards you want to meet. If you want to use lesser files then go ahead and use them. It is totally your call as a DJ to make this decision.

[MrWalzak]

That's really helpful to know. I'm glad I started this thread.
It seems like there are lots of people out there (including friends of mine) promoting the idea that it's impossible to distinguish 320K MP3 from FLAC.
When I was buying my controller I listened to a friend who told me that music from Itunes is 320k MP3, and that it is of high enough quality to play live.
Now that I'm looking into it more, it sounds like some of my files from Itunes are actually encoded around 260k, and even the 320k ones might not be good enough to play live.
I subscribed to the BPM DJPool, a great service that will save me lots of money. However even the music sites that are specifically for DJ's often have 320k as their highest available encoding.
Where are some good places to get music in FLAC encoding?

It looks like I'm going to have to remove all the songs with low quality encoding from my playlists, and try to find them in higher quality.
If I have the opportunity to test how a Flac vs MP3 sounds on the club speakers, what am I listening for? Just a general emptiness caused by the removed frequencies?
What is the low end cost for home speakers that would allow you to do this type of test at home? Can I do it on my AudioTechnica ATH-M50x headphones?
Thanks again for the help. I want to make sure I'm really ready before I start playing in front of people.