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Setting up and organising Serato library

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  • November 13, 2015 at 7:24 am #2292701
    Luke Butzen
    Participant

    To Answer your first question, not to the best of my knowledge. If you do, please Share!

    You might try reading the Serato manual as you may decide to let Serato handle everything in terms of management. They encourage that but then you’d want to look into Beatunes to help keep it all straight if you add or play a lot of different tunes.

    If you’re already using itunes, then it’s best to just stick with that as it’s a program you’re familiar with and it works with everything in some fashion in case you decide to switch software.

    There’s also a learning curve with it, but I’ve become impressed with Media Monkey after spending some time learning the program. I haven’t touched on adding the library to Serato in any fashion, but I think it’ll help keep my library organized as it’s showing me duplicates I didn’t know I had & it’ll force me to clean up my phone since I can use MM to sync with my phone.

    As for the second part, I don’t think that’ll be possible since Phil will bring guest speakers and do special things with the mastercourse. Otherwise, people would Cherry pick and not get the full benefit of the course.

    November 13, 2015 at 7:28 am #2292731
    Luke Butzen
    Participant

    I’ll just offer my opinion to hopefully help you out.

    First, get itunes. Yeah it’s becoming full of bloatware but you’d have it figured out in almost no time at all and Serato (& most DJ Software worth its’ salt) will have native support for it.

    Secondly, get a SSD or if you already have a HD in there, keep your music on that and use an external for backups and a full copy of your library on there. (Music & Serato folder) I say that because having all run from an external can do two two things which can cause frustration. One is that since Serato is having to read the track from something outside of the computer, it’s going to be a bit sluggish, which if you’re working at fast BPMs, can mess up your timing.

    The other thing is if you lose the cord that came with the external, you might be screwed or someone at either a club or while you’re out and about, steal you external then you’re really screwed. So having a backup that can live only at your house or a server can save your bacon if you’re computer goes kaput and you lose the HD. (Which has happened to me three times resulting in me having to buy a OS, pay 3 repair bills, and give up on a laptop and thinking I lost my entire music collection (Personal tunes) for about a week) Or the event of theft.

    November 15, 2015 at 11:54 pm #2293991
    Hilary David
    Participant

    I always use external drives and not experienced any sluggish movement
    And this is with Windows not a Mac
    Benefits are that drive is hot swappable with Serato as well

    November 16, 2015 at 11:31 pm #2294791
    robotom
    Participant

    A belated thanks for the replies, everyone. Titan, your advice about using an external for backups makes sense. I have had external drives fail on me before so I think I’ll keep my full Serato library on my laptop.

    November 17, 2015 at 2:59 am #2294821
    Luke Butzen
    Participant

    Word. And as I said before, make sure to keep a copy elsewhere. You never know when a gremlin will come by and screw you over. Ideally, you’d be able to do a full HD backup and have spare room for music and important program flies on the same external.

    Did you ever figure out your main issue which was how you wanted to organize your library? I feel like we got sidetracked.

    November 18, 2015 at 3:32 am #2295791
    robotom
    Participant

    Thanks for your reply, Titan 🙂

    I hadn’t figured out how to organise my library until a couple of days ago when I upgraded from Serato DJ Intro to the full version. Then when I looked through the Serato site further, I found this link:

    https://support.serato.com/hc/en-us/articles/202538530-The-Most-Professional-Way-to-Organize-and-Manage-your-Music-Library-with-Serato-DJ-

    I hadn’t seen that link previously, probably because I was mostly Googling for Serato DJ Intro resources. The method they recommend will mean that I’ll need to duplicate files (i.e. I’ll need to copy music files that I already have in my iTunes library to a separate music folder), but it does at least keep things straightforward, including for backups.

    Speaking of backups, I have encountered a hitch with backing up. I read an article on backing up Serato (at https://support.serato.com/hc/en-us/articles/202305054-Backing-up-and-moving-your-library-to-a-new-computer) that said:

    “Serato will create a _Serato_ folder on every drive you retrieve music from. So check your external drives for _Serato_ folders too. You will need to merge these to collect all your crates.”

    I’ve discovered that in the Music folder on my Mac, I have both a _Serato_ and a _Serato_Backup_ folder. Moreover, I keep my iTunes music on a SD memory card and because I was importing songs from iTunes into Serato, I have a _ScratchLIVE_ and a _ScratchLIVE_Backup folder on that memory card too. I don’t know how to merge all the folders so I think I’ll need to ask Serato about this (unless anyone here knows?).

    November 18, 2015 at 9:55 am #2297661
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Clearly Serato will advise a way of doing things within Serato, it’s good for customer binding after all 😀 .

    The big thing about doing things in iTunes clearly is that you have everything in one place, don’t have to worry about putting stuff in folders and such (iTunes can take care of that for you), the grouping option gives you lots of options of multiple-labels (rather than just one genre tag) per track and you have access to all your playlists and such within all major DJ software on PC, Mac and iDevice (not sure how that works on Android though LOL).

    Backing up iTunes is also a piece of cake.

    Of course everyone is free to choose his/her own favorite method and as with all things DJ, if it works for you … it’s good!

    November 20, 2015 at 8:32 am #2302421
    robotom
    Participant

    That’s a fair point about Serato’s bias towards doing things within Serato, DJ Vintage. Thanks for your thoughts.

    I know that Serato currently doesn’t officially support El Capitan. If there are ever issues with the integration between Serato DJ and iTunes, that would be another cause for concern. But your list of the pros of using iTunes is pretty persuasive too.

    I’ve logged a Serato support request for advice on how to merge all my Serato folders. If backing up Serato proves to be too complex, I might do things in iTunes instead.

    December 1, 2015 at 2:26 am #2307351
    robotom
    Participant

    Just to update: I ended up buying Phil’s How to Digital DJ Fast course and he recommended doing things in iTunes. His system made a lot of sense and Serato never clarified for me how to merge my folders, so I’m going to go with Phil’s recommended system.

    December 1, 2015 at 8:21 am #2307421
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Good choice!

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