Active DJ Playlists
How to Organize Your DJ Music Collection - Beginners Guide
Digital Music Minimalism - Less is Best.
In the digital age, where we can fit thousands of songs onto a USB pen drive, many of us seem to think that the more music we have, the easier it will be to DJ.
Let's challenge that conventional thinking because the opposite might be true.
Existentialism
Having less music to choose from and being intentional about how you craft your playlists will make it much easier to select a suitable next song when playing live.
The DJ who stares aimlessly at a list of 5000 songs trying to decide what music to play next will almost always be overwhelmed.
When you first start to DJ, it is best to start with a small list of 20-30 songs that share some similarities (genre or feel).
This set will become the start of your active playlists. Think about it like your Vinyl Record Crate. a Crate of 30-50 Vinyl is about the maximum that one person can carry at one time.
Imagine a Vinyl DJ. They have an entire wall of their house at home dedicated to storing their collection of vinyl records. When they want to play a vinyl set live, the weight of their vinyl bag or crate is the restraining factor.
Vinyl DJs, therefore, are much more conscious about being particular when choosing music for their active playlists.
Suppose they go shopping for vinyl's and find ten records that they love before buying just one because they limit how many Vinyl Records they can keep and carry.
By applying the Vinyl DJ mindset to our modern Digital DJ collection, our jobs for creating active playlists, music programming, music organization and music selection become much more intentional. It becomes easier when performing in a live situation.
What separates the good DJs from the great DJs is the ability to organize your music. Great DJs spend hours sifting through tonnes of tunes to build active playlists.
How to Create Crates, Breaking Your Music Into Active Playlists
Housekeeping
Start with a centralized location that you store all my music. The DJ applications you use will always reference this central location because the DJ applications do not make a copy or keep your music as that would be a waste of space.
An external Hard-Drive may be your best bet. The drive contains your entire music collection.
Using an external SDD has the dual benefit of portability and keeping the disk drive on your computer free from clutter, which helps maintain processing power to run my DJ software.
It is critical to have a backup drive that is a copy of the music if you lose or corrupt your hard drive.
Within your music file, have a folder that you name "Active Playlists".
These active playlists are files that are usually 20-40 tracks that have been combined based on sets that you practice with and play live. Some may be named based on genre, while others may be for a specific event.
Digital DJ Crate
You can then put several of these active playlists onto an "Active USB".
Active playlists make up the music that we carry around and play live, and a DJ may only ever bring their entire music collection if we were playing a mobile DJ gig or wedding.
It helps to keep several copies of Active USBs with intentional, active playlists. Usually, I limit the size of the USB to 4GB because that allows me to put a threshold on the music I actively play. I can easily recreate these USBs from my active playlist file from my music collection with all my metadata included, so I do not mind if I lose them while out and about.
If you are interested in learning where I get my music, you can check out this article for some insight.
Music Programming
Music is the number one element of DJing. That is why we get into mixing in the first place. When you first learn how to DJ during your first few gigs and live shows, people will often excuse your lack of skill if you make up for it with a great music selection.
The opposite also applied. If you have exceptional skills but the music selection is not appealing to your audience, you will generally not be asked back for a second appearance.
Being intentional about what music you allow in your active playlists will make it simpler to DJ live and help you prepare your music (Cue Points etc.).
If you collect music like a Vinyl DJ, you will find that mixing becomes more straightforward, and your skills improve and a faster rate.
Remember, less is better when it comes to your active playlists, and you don't have to start with thousands of songs when you start learning how to DJ.
Pro-Tip:
When you are preparing your active playlists, having less music makes choosing your next simple.
Think like a Vinyl DJ when you are collecting music and creating your music crates. Each of your songs should have a purpose.