Cut my DJ collection down to 636 songs!

I don’t think a day goes by when I don’t delete something. One I add a new track, one has to go.

It’s what we did BITD Haroon, a regular club had a resident DJ who knew how to work his regular crowd…
And yup, a certain selection of choons became that clubs / DJ’S Anthem

Ahhh now i getchya!

Phil Morse, post: 3142 wrote: I wouldn’t for a second say this is for everyone, but is IS for me. (I hope so, I’ve done it now…)

Here’s the article: Why I Just Threw Away Nearly All Of My Music

Emma, I was a resident in the same club for 10 years, and I have to say my set changed gradually, never in one go – people came to hear me play the tunes I played, because they knew how I played them and they knew what they’d get. I think it’s OK to play the same tunes and change only gradually. Only my opinion though 🙂

Hello Phil :);
You have an Amazing History Phil; and to be able to Flourish into Publishing and Still DJ Every Weekend is a Brilliant Track Record; I only asked the Question because I still don’t Understand the Sites like HypeMachine and what they do (although I am Subscribed); I am a Fanatic – in the sense that I have 29 Different Remixes of ‘Martin Solveig – Hello’; but of course if I was going out live and ‘Wanted’ to play that Track; I would only take One Version with me;
I Feel I have to Learn New Ways of Organising my Sets as I just have So Much Choice; but as my Vinyl is in the Attic; and my CD’s on the Shelves; a Seperate Place for Tracks I Want To Keep; but maybe not Play; would be Cool;
All my New Tracks go into Two Folders; and I Try to build Sets from them; but I have to Heavily Dip into the 3,000 other Tracks I have as the New Tracks just aren’t Enough in Quantity; and of course I like to be ‘Different’; and so am Not Ashamed to say that I have Classical Music at my Disposal (and I would rather have it at my Disposal than not); and also Instrumentals like ‘The Sugar Plum Fairy’; it may sound Mental; but Mix that Track into an Underworld Track and it is simply Amazing; and as I said ‘Different’; and also ‘Unexpected’ 🙂

U31, post: 3140, member: 195 wrote: Ask yourself, especially those who have used vinyl, would you willingly get rid of your vinyl EP’s & 12″ or 7″s?
I tend to think the answer is “No” your main collection stays in the decks room at home and your playing out set goes in your record bag or box…

For me its a very similar principle, main bulk choons on an external drive, a very good selection of tunes of a style i would regularly play on a partition on the lappy, then my set selection for the night copied to a folder on the desktop

I’m not putting down Phil’s idea, i can see the merit of a smaller selection of choons that you would get to know every nuance of, and with these building sets of a certain flavour… its just sometimes i’m mixing a pre arranged set and something will pop in to my head and 9 times out of 10 i can search the partition and find it

Yep, agree with this. I have 5000-6000 vinyl records, most of which are stored away with about 1000 of my most prized tracks available to hand. Similarly with my digital collection, they are all stored in folders marked in months, i.e. what I bought in March, April, May etc – out of this I have separate DJ folder which acts as my virtual record box, in which I weekly amend with a 1 or 2 in and out policy. This way I still have access to all my music but in a controlled and manageable way. I know digital music has become more ‘throwaway’ now but I would never delete something I’ve just paid for, it’s not as if it takes up room in the house, just mothball away for another day. I often go back to listen to older music.

I’ve just read your blog article and agree with all the points and recognise the scenarios you outline however I’m still not sure I could chuck stuff out, think I’m a hoarder! 🙂

Paul Tibbetts, post: 23827, member: 2488 wrote: This is the exact reason I’ve recently gone with iTunes match.

For £25 a year I can have up to 25,000 tracks in the cloud, ready at all times.
I did this mainly because I had filled my 160GB internal HD and can’t afford to buy a new one and didn’t want to get external hard-drives. Once synced and ready, my laptop only holds ‘DJing’ music for Traktor (I’m not claiming to be anything more than a bedroom dj) whilst my phone has whatever I want to listen to whilst out and about. I can always download new tracks to my phone and re-download others to my laptop, especially if where I’m going has no internet access, but for the rest of the team I can stream that one album I haven’t heard in a while but isn’t worth taking up HD space.

I know there are plenty of free alternatives but my music collection (all digital) has been specifically curated for the past 5 or 6 years and I didn’t want to lose all my efforts.

(Before anyone starts, I know Amazon and Google have their own alternatives that may or may not be cheaper or have more room but for someone with a Macbook and an iPhone, iTunes Match works perfectly)

hey that sounds like a good system. The only thing i am concerned about is this:

Even better, all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.
http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/

As most of my files are 320 MP3s or WAVS itunes Match would actually downgrade a lot of my music.

I’m planning on going through my vinyl, recording to WAV what I want, and getting rid of it all.

Yeah, I’m sure some will think I’m insane, but I don’t want my future house with my soon-to-be wife to be a closet for vinyl records. As long as I have the music I want, then I’m happy…and I can have it on a few hard drives (in duplicate).

As for my MP3 collection, even that I’ll purge and dump what I know I’ll never play nor have any deep sentiment for. I’ve already tossed out loads of old mixes I’ve made that I never have any intention of listening to ever again.

For a hobbyist like myself, I honestly have no reason to cling to stuff I won’t use. It’s like old clothing or magazines. Even now I am looking at my DVDs in the same retrospect.