Calling all Mobile DDJ's…. What's in your "box"?

Hi,

I fell into the “it’s digital so I can easily carry around 40k+ songs easy” trap when I switched to digital a while ago. Now I am in the process of completely redoing my collection and try to end up with between 800-1200 tracks. All my current tracks (well perhaps ALMOST all) are properly tagged and such, so I can find them quickly enough (I use Traktor but that is not very relevant). In order to make maximum use of the features of your software, it is important to prepare your tracks also by checking things like correct beatgrid (especially for non-EDM stuff the software gets it wrong a fair amount of time), including correct (1st) downbeat of drop point (the exact point the song starts when you drop it in the player), cue points and loops you may want to use. This is pretty labor intensive, so I figure anything over about 1500 tracks is gonna be too much work. Another thing is that I want to know the tracks I have inside out.

So I came up with a “procedure” that I hope will work for me:

1. Define a few playlist for the most important categories (don’t feel like having a zillion playlists)
2. Determine the amount of tracks per playlist
3. Fill the playlists with the right amount of tracks
4. Do all the necessary preparation work on the tracks in the collection
5. Keep all extra tracks on a separate hard disk for request purposes, but NOT as a part of the Traktor library
6. If a certain song gets requested several times, import it to Traktor, make sure it is properly prepared.
7. When adding new tracks, try to “let go” of an equal amount of tracks. This will prevent your library from growing too much.
8. On a regular basis decide if any tracks need to go from the collection because you hardly ever play them (the play count in Traktor is helpful there, guessing VDJ has a similar feature).
9. If I hear a song on the radio, in a bar or anywhere else that I think really should go in my collection, I keep it in soundhound/shazam and later add it to the collection (see point 7 too).
10. Keep a double copy of the MP3’s on CD (for 1200 tracks that would be about 15 CD’s, so twice that is 30, which would fit in one single CD-case) for emergency. (I make sure I can keep playing if my laptop crashes or something else prevents me from using digital files).

I am a mobile DJ too and I like to be able to play a request if at all possible. This way I have the best of both worlds. I keep my Traktor database relatively small and efficient, while I can still easily find any track on the external hard disk through the file explorer.
I guess every DJ has his own amount of tracks he feels comfortable with. In the old vinyl days I would typically carry about 600 7″ and 200 album/12″ records with me. And it was feasible to know all of them rather intimately. So I am guessing the same will be true for a digital collection of comparable size, although I have noticed that the lack of the physical bit (crate browsing) is definitely a minus for me.
As far as using streaming audio, I have on occassion downloaded a song from iTunes while on a gig and played it straight from my iPhone. Not my favorite way of doing things, but I got to play the requested tune.
I strongly believe you should keep your DJ laptop disconnected from any online source, with the exception of doing upgrades/updates while in a known environment (home).
Even if a venue has an internet connection for me to use, I never do. So, no streaming music.
Greetinx,
C.

I have a about 4K. They are arranged into virtual crates ( eg decades) and I love that I don’t have to leave any at home. I also love that when I get a request I can search my entire catalogue and find a track instantly.

i mobile. have about 100 gigs in the lappy. I have to tho. i play at 3 different spots a week and plus private parties about twice a month and believe me, i play everything. i jump genres more than anybody i know and have to play those one offs for the customer/bar owners. now i didnt just dl a big random bit torrent or anything, this is a special, hand picked collaboration charted in various crates that i have been working on for years now. yup

Not that many unless you can form a temporal anomaly hehe
I think I only have 4k on the computer, because I know the “request range” on weddings, so about half of them are prolly only a safety net…
I imagine that one should aim for less than 1k active tracks or less.