Q&A: Mike’s iTunes Workflow
The Question:
Hey Mike,
First off – thank you so much for your well detailed explanation of how you organize your music on djtechtools. I am going to re-do all my music and incorporate your technique. I have a couple of questions..
1) Once you tag all your songs with the proper genre and sub-genre, are they then placed in a folder with the same genre name? Like on House – Electro would then be placed in its own folder or would you just keep that all in a house folder and let iTunes sort it out in its smart playlists…
2) Once you have all your playlists and smart playlists set and you buy new music – do you then first place them in the proper folder on your computer and then just click on it so it plays in iTunes and then iTunes will sort them to their appropriate playlist? I dj many genres and on any given week ill have different types of house songs and hip hop songs newly added to my computer – where do u place them on your computer and then how do you transfer them to your itunes.?
Thank you for taking the time out to help… Im so confused and need to get my music collection in order.
Glad you liked them. Managing a digital record collection can be a real pain in the ass if you don’t organize up front. I couldn’t find anything out there to help, so I learned for myself and then wrote about it. Using the smart playlists & good tags, you can organize just about anyway you like. Anyway, let me try to answer your questions.
1. Personally, I will just have one folder for house. That folder will contain electro house, progressive house… you get the idea. You could have sub-folders for every sub-genre, but I find it unnecessary b/c all of my digital “crates” are driven by iTunes playlists, not folders. If I need to find a track in a hurry, I fire up iTunes, search for the track, right click it and choose “show in finder”. This automatically open up the folder containing the track and selects the track. I think iTunes has a similar function on PCs, but I’m not sure cause I’m all Mac.
2. Here is how I add new music to my iTunes library step by step:
A: Gather up new music in a folder on my desktop.
B: Select all, drag into iTunes.
C: Edit all tags with proper formatting.
D: Remove new tracks from iTunes**
E: Use iTag to rename the new tracks based on tagged Artist – Track Name.
F: Put new tracks into correct genre folders.
G: Drag new tracks back into iTunes.
H: Rate the new tracks [e.g. 1 to 5 stars]
I: Sit back and enjoy, because the smart playlists pick up the new tracks all by themselves.
** The reason I remove the tracks from iTunes after tagging them is because of a bug in Traktor Pro. If I kept the tracks in iTunes, but change the file names or move to a different folder then TP won’t be able to “find” the track to play it.
FYI: In case any missed any portion of my 3 part series on iTunes for DJing that i worte for DJ Tech Tools, here are the links:
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2 Responses to “Q&A: Mike’s iTunes Workflow”
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Mike,
Nice article on itunes,i rececently had an issue where serato was not working right with itunes after i updated to itunes 9.when i looked on the serato forum i noticed other dj’s were also having problems with playlists not showing up.Serato tech support recommends not using itunes at all,but i have imported my entire collection of cd’s and music i purchased online from itunes and other online retailers.and there is no way to export ur music out of itunes because it sorts ur music as you know for you.
What do u recommend i do?
Thanks Steve
If serato says don’t use iTunes, that bullsh*t. You can’t tout iTunes support as a feature of your product, then tell people they shouldn’t use it.
Anyway, try opening iTunes and serato side by side, then selecting all the tracks in a playlist and dragging them to a serato “crate”. Maybe that would work as a temporary solution.