Dubspot Tutorial: How to Properly Organize Your Music and Create Smart Playlists in iTunes 

Yes. Exactly! It's all about having fun at the gig and finding the right tracks quickly. Its a lot of work at first but saves you a lot of work in the long run.

Dude, full respect for your organisational skills. Some serious Nerdy shit happin !

The beauty of it is the smart playlists organize everything for me, so yes I get a lot more time to play now :)

One trick with the new iTunes is to go to the search bubble, click the little black arrow and turn off "search entire library." This one is a lifesaver!!

smartest guy ever this video has just given me the inspriation to pull my finger out, download new music everyday beatgrid and sort music into folders to hopefully one day be as organised as yours!!

I'm using smart playlists forever but this video showed interesting features I wasn't aware of before. Thanks.

DJ endo is the sickest!! just finished right now and it feels good! never even used smart playlist before in Itunes

endo is a proper organised munchkin, very inspirational :)

your itunes library is perfect... this is a great video!!! thank you so much endo!!!

I have similar playlists to your tutorial, including a folder of 'date added' i quite like a month view of what i imported. What i really liked was the idea of cross referencing playlists to filter out some of the noise and narrow the search down. Great stuff.

thanks so much dj endo, this system is pure genius

That's really creative use of that iTunes feature, having playlists be dynamic and change depending. I just arrange in genre.

Glad you found the video man! Hope it helped you get organized :) Good meeting you at IMSTA!

Wealth of info, always wondered what smart playlist were.. Great tutorial, will have to watch a few more times to grasp everything. Appreciate the vid..

@fuse1921 Yes you can mix 3B with 4A. You can go diagonal in the camelot wheel. This is something they don't tell you on the mixed in key website. If you add or subtract one and change the letter (ex. 8B - 7A) those keys will be VERY harmonically compatible since the notes of the scale are almost the same with the exception of one note. EX 8B = C Major - all white keys, 7A - All white keys except for the Bb so only one note is different. Thats why these keys sound good together

Cue points, loops and BPM are all saved when playing out of iTunes playlists. You can't view Traktor keys or Album artwork however when using iTunes playlists in Traktor. I use mixed in key to write my keys anyways since it's more accurate. To auto import your tracks from iTunes into Traktor, go to preferences - file management - music folders. Add your music folder (ex. User / Music) to the music folders window, then turn on the option "Import Music Folders" and "Analyze New Tracks"

Wow! That was a well documented video! I believe it will take lots of time to organize all my music but this is something that I will definitely need to do for my library... thanks for taking the time to prepare the video and sharing your knowledge brother! :)

We cover this in our online digital Djing with Traktor online course with myself and DJ Shiftee. Thanks for watching!

I really appreciate the video's! I'm JUST making the switch over to digital DJing and I'm still figuring out all these new fangled gadgets lol

the best endo se you,thanks ...

I had a look at this as I'm also fed up updating Traktor playlists when I add music to iTunes. So I loaded new tracks from iTunes playlists direct in Traktor decks, analyzed them, set BPM, gridded them, added hot cues - with no loss of tags. The BPM shows up in the iTunes playlist after refreshing the track (simply play it or open the song information). Traktor's tags are still there after reopening as the track is automatically added to the Traktor collection when it's loaded to a deck.

I would suggest just playing out of your iTunes library in Traktor. Turn on the option to analyze tracks when loading into a deck, or analyze new tracks when importing into the collection and point Traktor to your music folder (where the music is stored on your computer). That way traktor will make sure everything is analyzed automatically. I also always write all my info into iTunes before even opening Traktor so when Traktor first sees the track all of the info is already written in correctly

@deeppeepsmusic I am upgrading my smart playlists every day and since doing this video have done so many tune ups that make my job when I'm DJing much easier and more fun and help me find music that I would otherwise have forgotten about. - Endo

Muy buen tutorial, CONGRATULATIONS!

@walveg Yes, iTunes works the same with an external hard drive. Just make sure its plugged in so you can listen to the music.

6. That's it--all fixed! Artwork will now appear in any app that supports it. Be mindful, however, that this won't work for AIF or WAV files which don't support artwork, but Apple Lossless, AAC, and MP3 will work great. Welcome to the world of Traktor and thanks for watching!

NICE WORK!

You should see my playlists now. This was 2 years ago! Maybe one day my iTunes library will end up in some museum. LOL.

incredible. thank you

Endo, your tutorials are superb. Thought I was pretty dialed in, but picked up some great tips from you here. Just trying Traktor after years on Serato and noticing that iTunes album art doesn't show up. Appears to work if I import into collection, but my goal was to manage all via iTunes so don't want to confuse matters by decoupling Traktor and iTunes. Maybe I'm missing something... still pretty green. If anyone knows, hit me back. Thx again Endo for the rock solid education. Peace.

4. There is a box at the right side of this window for artwork. Drag the image file from the desktop into this box--you'll see the image appear there. This is also a good time to make any other changes you may want to the songs. Press OK when you're done. 5. iTunes will now re-write the audio files and will embed the image file into them. You'll see a progress bar appear while this rewriting is happening.

@gamergrounds Yes, I just found out that some people have to pay for the upgrade and some don't. However its definitely worth it to upgrade.

great work. I thought I was a playlist nut, but I hadn't seen the potential of feeding off other playlists. Now, if I could just find a way of simply getting all the genre and sub-genres correct... :)

3. Select all the songs that should have the artwork. This may be all the songs in an album, a couple tracks from a single or EP, or just a single file. Right-click on one of the selected files and choose "Get Info" from the pop-up menu. This will open the group editor--all changes made here affect all the songs you selected.

I use the comments field for key and comments because you can make a smart playlist attribute for "comments starts with 5a" for example" and "comments contains groover" so its ok to have both in the comments

Hey Endo, Love all of your videos and tutorials - please keep em coming and massive props, thanks! This whole system is fantastic. The only thing I can't get around is the inability to have the BPM and key show up in the iTunes folder via the Traktor browser (even after it's been analysed!) All you can do is 'Import to collection' or 'Show in collection' Any way around this?!

FANTASTIC tutorial. Great content, clear explanation. How does this work in tandem with Rekordbox / CDJs (USB)? Does RB allow you to carry over playlists from iTunes like Traktor?

@gamergrounds Yup! Its a free update too. The new version is incredible!

Great stuff Endo... Now if there was just some simple way to automatically get accurate genres loaded into track info in iTunes... I know, wishing for heaven and earth! lol

@DeeJayEndo your right about the beatgrids and cue points. thanks for the correction.

@DeeJayPickUp you need to go to preferences - File Management and in the "Directories" click the box next to iTunes music library and you need to point to the file called "iTunes Music Library.xml" then it will work

@djstuartj Go to preferences / file management and point traktor to the iTunes Music Library.xml file . It should be located in your user / music / itunes folder

For key I use mixed in key to write in the key (camelot code) before the comments, so I can sort by comment. For BPM if you analyze and beatgrid your tracks in Traktor, then click the lock icon, the BPM will be saved into iTunes, and therefore will be visible in Traktor, unless you're dealing with wav files.

This is badass. This does bring up a huge question that I've never found an answer to- If I use an external hard drive for my itunes collection (well over 1TB) but have my Traktor collection on my internal laptop drive, how can I make use of smart playlists/itunes sync?

Thanks for the great video Endo.. I have a questions i hope you maybe able to answer. Is there an advantage to using the Comments Tag vs The Grouping tags of your" Bangers" "Groovers" type comments? I am thinking the Comments field would be best left for the Key only and use the group field instead.

Good questions. One thing you can do is actually put your itunes library (all songs, AND the iTunes folder thats normally located in music / itunes) on your external drive. What you would have to do is point iTunes on whatever computer your using to the XML file located in the iTunes folder. However don't do this on your buddys computer because you will likely piss him off extremely. As far as organizing, I organize my tracks on my hard drive AND in iTunes. Here's a couple more tips... (read on)

Yes you can use external hard drives with Traktor. Just make sure they are stable and don't dismount!

Great video. Could you further elaborate on how you use colors within rekordbox?

Yes, Rekord Box also has iTunes built into it.

@diggy214 You are correct. iTunes in Traktor is read only. If you want to edit the information simply import the track into the collection (it usually does this automatically when you load the track in a deck - there is a setting for this) and go to the track collection and edit the ID3 info there. Also you are wrong about the cue points and beatgrids not saving. If you beatgrid something from the itunes node or put cue's in the track, they will be the same in the Traktor collection.

1. Click on one of the songs in iTunes. It's artwork will show up in the lower-left window (you'll need to make sure that the artwork window is open...there's an icon with an arrow in the lower-left corner of iTunes to show/hide this window).

@deejayendo thanks for the awesome video. I use smart playlists a lot and use iTunes as my preferred music management software. However I use traktor to DJ and the iTunes view in traktor is read only which means none of the hot-cue's or beatgrids are saved and you can't edit the playlist in traktor. Another question do you import your iTunes playlist into the traktor collection. thanks.

Yeah back up your iTunes folder and all of your music to an external drive. When you want to restore your music and itunes collection, make sure your computer hard drive is named the same thing, put the music back into the same location on your comp, install iTunes, open iTunes, then drag the iTunes folder from your external drive into the music folder and overwrite the folder thats there with your old one. Then everything will be the same as it was.

2. When the artwork is visible, click and drag the artwork to your Desktop. An image file will be created there of the artwork. (NOTE: You must drag from the artwork window that I mentioned above. If you attempt to drag the artwork from one of the cover art views in the file list, it will copy the audio files instead).

Thank you! Is there a way to save playlists in case iTunes needs to be reset and you can retrieve your old lists?

Hey Todd, itunes album artwork currently isn't supported with Traktor and this is apparently an itunes issue, but here is some insider info from the developers of Traktor on the secret way to get album artwork from itunes into Traktor (its a bit of a pain but works).

dj dan rocks

@DeeJayEndo Indeed! Thanks....whats your take on using I-cloud to back up your music and itunes match...i was going to get an external hard drive but this seems like it makes more sense instead of carrying arond an extra piece of hardware. What do you do to back up your music?

Working on that ;-)

@joladehiti Smart Playlists actually save me a TON of work and time. Once they're set up, your playlists are on autopilot!

hey man, great video!. I have a question though, what happens if Im transferring all my library from an old computer to my new laptop? In that case I can't use the added date since it will show the day I make the transfer. Let's say I bought music in 2013 from 2011 but I want it to be in my 2013 smart playlist, how do I do it? Thanks a lot!

The reason I choose "Starts with" is because of the issue that "Contains 1A" would also give you results that are 11A and "Contains 2A" would give you results that are 12A. Ya dig?

@naysiploos Thank you! Its great not having to make playlists anymore. I just tag everything the right way when I buy new music and all my organization is automated!

@DJENDO. Peace. Any recommendations on getting ALL the proper tags on my itunes library? Programs, methods etc. Much appreciated.

Also if your in NYC come in for a lesson and I can set you all up with my system of smart playlists as well.

Real deep, wish there was download for all these settings, then all u have to do throw ur music in

@DeeJayEndo Great tutorial thanks! I have another idea for a group of smart playlists that I'm trying to implement but failing to. I would like an 'unplayed' playlist for each genre (for when I have new music and havn't had time to listen to it when adding to library). My problem is that whenever I've listened to all the songs in each playlist, the number of songs in the list thus becomes zero and after a short while, iTunes seems to automatically delete it as there is no content in it. This is

@m2lawren Awesome. Feels good to have all your crates auto organized for you doesn't it? Enjoy! - Endo

I use iTunes to manage my playlists. I let Traktor import my tracks as I play them in Traktor, but I don't do an auto import from iTunes. I actually do an auto import for this folder on my hard drive called "2011" so when I add anything to the 2011 folder Traktor automatically imports it to the collection. Also before a gig I will make a playlist in itunes and then import that playlist into a traktor playlist so I can use album artwork since album artwork is disabled when using the itunes node

Hey Dj Endo! I saw in the Itunes bar that a lot of your tracks were at least 320 kbps Mp3's? What do you prefer to play live in quality standard? Don't you think that very high quality music (96 Khz, 24 bits) sounds better in huge sound systems? Do you make a compromise between the availability/size of high quality music and the music you choose for a gig?

I have taken this approach to my track collection as I think this a really great idea to order/edit your tunes/ID3 tags. Spent all day yesterday importing to itunes and creating folders & smart playlists. So when I open up Traktor Pro 2 scroll down to itunes 'Click' on the icon and in the little bar at the bottem of Traktor saying Warning: Unknown exception during iTunes import" ??? how annoying!!! is there a fix for this.

Finally someone more anal than myself when it comes to organization - actually anal isn't the right term - it's more about being specific. I think it's been 15 years since I learned something better than what I'm already doing - Endo you are my hero dude! I mean, I get mad when someone sends me a track and the grammar is incorrect. Why go through the trouble of entering the information to iTunes if you're going to type - oh geez, I don't know how about something like this: "Prince - purple rain"! That shit drives me bananas! That or they'll type in the song title with the proper capitalization but type in parenthesis (Todd Terry remix) - in my oh so humble but passionate opinion, grammar is important when filling out the liner note info for tracks.

That's exactly what this video is all about... automated smart playlists.

Great Video!.... One thing though. Does anyone know if it is possible to save the Smartlist SETTINGS? I have been avoiding to update my Itunes because I am afraid that I will have to do all the work with the settings again if I update... Does anyone have a solution?

What you would do is copy your entire iTunes folder to the new computer as well as all of your music, and the import dates will remain the same. My advice would be to name the new computer the same thing as the old computer and put the music files in the same location on the new computer.

See my previous comment on this (in the comments for this video). Thanks for watching!

This is awesome but your mixing right from iTunes playlists which doesn't allow you to save cues, bpm, and now traktor's Key reader as well… etc.. do you somehow have itunes auto import playlists into your track collection? I just dont understand how I'd do this in iTunes and somehow update it to each playlist in my track collection

@bidders77 That's Adium. Its the best instant messaging program for mac. It ties all of your buddylists from facebook, AIM, gchat, myspace, and yahoo all into one so you can have one away message for all of the programs at once.

@DeeJayEndo thanks

Traktor will read your iTunes Library. Your iTunes Library reads the music off your external drive. Its as easy as that! However I would never recommend using an external drive for any DJ who plays out. Too many issues with hard drives coming unplugged or failing. I'd get an internal drive if you can.

I've updated to the latest version of iTunes and my smartlists are still in tact. One annoying thing about iTunes 11 though is in the search window, click on the little black arrow and turn off "search entire library". This will make the search function how it did in previous versions. But I didn't lose any smart playlists with the new version. Only thing thats changed is you can't apple click on the attribute to copy it anymore which is a little annoying.

@dsmrocker Smart playlists aren't just for DJs. Anyone can use them.

@retsofnalanosaj Yes, I agree the audio quality is terrible on the voiceover. I was very unhappy with it. I am pushing to get the voiceover re-recorded and re-uploaded, and we do have a pop filter. I recorded this tutorial on one of these headset / microphones and it came out really bad. Sorry about that guys!

thank god the new itunes has a search bar!!! lol countless days organizing my music files !!! garrr....

This may be a stupid question, but I have all my music on an external hard drive. Are you able to organize your music with itunes the same way even if your using an external hard drive?

@DeeJayEndo Yeah I have the same problem, and that doesn't help fix it. Any other solutions? Cuz when I point Traktor to the XML file it still gives me the error message.

@DeeJayEndo permanently in each playlist)? Thanks! (Now that was a very lengthy post!)

Hey Endo, my star ratings in iTunes don't seem to completely show up in Traktor. Does for some songs and not for most. Is there a way to correct this? I remember it being an issue with earlier versions as well. Seems you have it figured out? Thanks man. -Tomás

I also would NEVER recommend using an external drive to DJ with! If the drive comes unplugged (which they usually do VERY easily) the music will stop and its embarrassing! I've had too many problems with buggy hard drives and loose connections. I recommend getting the biggest internal hard drive you can and putting everything on that. Another tip: Always put your files where you want to PERMANENTLY keep them before even playing them in iTunes or Traktor. That way you don't get missing files.

Hello Endo, does my music need to be on my actual computer or can I have it on an external ? Cheers Dude

Is there a way to synchonise iTunes smart playlists with my Traktor library? I love to work with iTunes within Traktor, but if i want my tracks analysed i have to import them to my Traktor library. When something changes in the iTunes playlist, it doesn't change in the Traktor library and it's SO frustrating.. Any tips?

what is the best way to deal with the 1's and 2's bringing in 11's and 12's is there a way to have iTunes SPLists only pull a 1A into a 1A SPList and not pull an 11A or 12A song into the set..... THX

Yo, at 8.31...... what app is that that has the green duck with headphones on behind the turntables???

there's always been something about smArt platylists I don't understand. For a personally specific method of organization, a few lines of code, (which is what smart playlists are, a piece of software,) for a software that cannot automatically comprehend your personal specifications of organization, it requires so much tagging in the comments section and other Id3 areas that it becomes MORE work to write all that stuff in than just manually dragging ad dropping into a folder full of tracks that meet the same criteria.. For example, for a dj like myself, and most, we differentiate between genres right? Lets say I buy a song from iTunes and in the genre tab it say hiphop, personally I feel that track is pretty much r&b, not hiphop. That song is automatically going into y smart hiphop playlist so I have to manually dig it out and MANUALLY change the id3 genre column to r&b. in addition, I personally also consolidate tracks based on vibe so say I have a folder or playlist for warm up songs vs peak hour songs, I now also in some other tab have to write in where it is in that respect and it just becomes too much tagging to the point where simply having a folder for warm up r&b tracks or peak hour hip hop tracks is much simpler. In that instance, there isn't a bunch of tagging its just drag n drop to the corresponding folder, done. This is why I cannot for the life of my dj library, get into smart playlists

@gamergrounds Have you upgraded to Mixed in Key 5 yet? Its way better! Free upgrade!

I need more music I'm steal building my music library

i really dont understand how to make the possibilities playlist how do u set up which keys its gives u the possibilities for?

@DeeJayEndo obviously irritating as when I add new music to my library I have to recreate the smart playlist. The same happens when I make smart playlists when planning for future imports (eg I tried to make a winter 2011/2012 smart playlist folder as preparation) but these playlists all got deleted as they had no content in them. Can you, or anyone else think of a workaround that would stop playlists with no content in them from automatically being deleted (apart from having to have a song per

how many hours do you think you have spent organizing this? Personally I think to a degree organization is good but what you've done is pretty intense, half the skill of a dj is finding the right song choices and for me that is allowing smart playlist to do to much really.

Serato does smart playlists, but you can chain smart playlists in Serato like you can in iTunes