Youtube Ripping (File Sharing) The Don'ts Of DJ'ing

I know its not strictly related to sound quality but I’ve found since starting my DJ journey (granted only a couple of months ago!) that by paying for tracks you actually end up with tracks you really love that you will actually use! I use spotify mostly anyway for home listening and never really downloaded anything unless it was unavailable elsewhere, I limit myself to 5 new songs a week and I’m hoping it will mean I’ll build up a collection of music I know really well and ultimately love playing out with. I don’t think you’d get that by just ripping everything, you’re quality control would just be turned off as you’re not paying for it.

Scott 🙂

As said by others: paying for your music makes you think twice, thrice and four times about what tracks to spend your money on, rather than indifferently downloading whatever you can get your hands on. Paying for it makes you let only the best of the best in.

Another thing is that you shouldn’t buy more than about 10 new tracks a month. AND practice one in – one out with your collection. So for every track you do buy you need to take one out of your collection that is less than the new one. This will a) keep your monthly cost in check and b) make you think before you buy “is this track so good that I am willing to let another track in my collection go?”.

Buying so few tracks a month allows you all the time you need to properly prepare them, perhaps make some mini playlists with them and play them often so you become absolutely familiar with them. As you build your collection this way, you will end up with only tracks you know intimately. And that is very important, imho. It’s also info that will stay with you forever.

I remember from my hotel residency days (30 yrs ago!) how most tracks I played frequently were built-up, lyrics, breaks, drum rolls, and lots of other stuff. I can to this day pick one of those tracks without looking at the screen and know where I want to mix in, mix out, do loops, FX, whatever.

So, to paraphrase D-Jam: “Be a quality DJ, not a quantity DJ!”

p.s. I do mostly mobile work, so don’t tell me mobile DJs need every single track out there. Buying regular CD compilations a few times a year will get you the most popular music you need at prices like 20 bucks for 40+ tracks. This should be enough to meet most requests.

I would never rip a track to use in my DJ sets, however… with how strict I am about whether or not a track will even make it INTO my playlist, I am starting to consider ripping merely for the purposes of testing it in a mix (and then either purchase or delete). I play mostly free music released by the artists, but recently, I bought a couple of albums, and of the tracks that were on the albums, literally 2 (of 8 tracks) made it through my screening process to sit in my actual playlist.

The addition of things like Spotify, Apple Music (don’t worry – it will come) and other streaming platforms to DJ software is a great way to listen to new stuff several times in music discovery at home. When you finally decide you do like a track well enough (and after perhaps listening to 10 remixes available as well to see which you dig the most), you go out and buy it. In very limited numbers, so the money can and should never be the issue.

Since there is no way to trust the source (was it actually an original 320 or just a 128 recompressed?), I wouldn’t put my money on it. Also I am not sure what the maximum quality is of a youtube stream.

Edit: A quick Google search yielded the info that Youtube (even when uploaded in high audio quality) will end up as 128-192