How to Organize Your DJ Library
To be a great DJ 30 years ago required a serious investment. Having a vast amount of music was essential to rock a party. The days of music pools and buying single digital copies on iTunes did not exist. The only option was to purchase an entire record.
DJs would go through their record collection, line up the tracks they plan to play in the order in which they would play them, pack them up, and then head out for their show. Not only was it costly, it was a pain to transport the records from your home to a party.
Flying across the country for a gig? Be prepared to check in a container entirely of records. The businessman in me cringes thinking about my profit margins shrinking because I had to pay extra to transport the music.
Thankfully, it’s 2020 and we aren’t out here lugging around crates packed with hundreds of records to perform a set. Shout out to the pioneers of the DJ industry for paving the way, and major shout out to the software engineers that have taken that burden away.
Carting around music today
In 1999, Serato came on the map. It revolutionized DJing and gave the community a digital platform that would allow DJs to take digital copies of records and simulate them. The days of records were gone and today it is still the digital interface for millions of DJs around the globe.
In fact, it is my digital interface of choice. When I started my journey as a DJ I assumed that because I did not have to cart around crates the organization was easy.
My lack of preparation made it impossible for me to be at my best.
The disorganization of my library caused me a lot of stress during gigs. I never knew what I was going to play next and I could not take a break because I had to constantly be thinking about it. Entertaining the crowd with my personality? Forget about it. Talking to my people that pulled up to a show? Not a chance. My lack of preparation made it impossible for me to be at my best.
How I organize my DJ library
Let me preface by saying at the end of the day organizing your library should be based on what works best for you. This is just how I choose to organize my own library.
I have crates upon crates upon crates. I break my crates down into 6 categories.
Samples: These are my scratch sounds, voice samples, popular sounds, etc. Anything that I would not classify as a record would go in this folder. These sounds allow my DJ sets to be enhanced by adding creative sounds in.
Genres: This is my main crate. I have all of my genres in here so I can navigate seamlessly from Rock to Hip-Hop over to Funk without having to think what would classify as what on the spot.
Moods: Is the party chill, is the party a wedding, is it a classy dinner, what’s the vibe of the party? That’s what this crate is for. Moods overlap with my Genre crate, but it specifically helps when I’m in a situation and can’t think of what a good dinner song is off the top of my head.
Events: This folder is event specific. It includes songs the party has requested and songs similar. Performing is much easier when I take the time beforehand to do this. For example, if I want to create a set, typically I would save it in this crate.
Recorded: These are all prerecorded sets I’ve made.
Curated Sets: These are from BPM Supreme. Check them out. They make collecting music easy.
Crates can also include… more crates
This is where the work comes in but also where the work pays off. The magic in crates comes in the sub-crates. A sub-crate is an additional crate inside of a large crate. A crate that has sub-crates will show a white carrot (^) next to it. Let’s take a look at the sub-crates in my Genre folder.
Within this crate I have all of the genres I use in my sets alphabetically organized so I can quickly get from one genre to the next. No, some of these are not genres but remember, it’s what works best for you.
Then, within the genres, I break sub-crates into decades. For example, hip-hop means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For some, it means artists like KRS-One, Jazzy Jeff, or Chubb Rock. Flash forward to hip-hop in 2020 names like DaBaby, Lil Baby, Drake come to mind.
Ask an OG how they feel about today’s hip-hop. Quickly you will learn that not all hip-hop is received or viewed the same. This stretches through other genres such as pop, R&B etc. Times change and that’s why I take the time to separate the decades. In an instance I can completely change the vibe of a party.
How well you prepare often dictates how well you preform
As a rookie in the DJ industry I struggled because I was not organized, nor was I prepared. I procrastinated and waited last minute to prep my sets. I thought that my favorite records were everyone’s and I was unable to rock crowds the way I should have because I was not prepared for them.
Do your research, expand your music understanding and have a library ready to entertain any party. It is tough to read a crowd when your head is buried in your laptop searching for your next track.
I hope this walkthrough allows you to prepare more effectively for your next gig and make the art more enjoyable so you can spend more time partying and creating and less time getting lost in a library of unorganized clutter.
How do you organize your music library? We can all learn something from each other.
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