This video is a big deal. Especially so, with Traktor Pro 3 being available, and the entire new lineup of MkIII hardware on the way. I'd been stuck in my ways for a while, and that didn't cut it when I came back into mixing after some odd years. Everything had changed, and my hardware vastly improved from what it was before when I was doing this. I don't know how long these "smart playlists" have been around, but cheers to you Jay Dolan. This helped me immensely.
I'm JUST getting started in the world of mixing, and this video just changed the way I was going to approach my music library COMPLETELY. I didn't own any 'music for mixing' until last week, so as my brand new music library grows. This methodology is going to be very easy and very very useful to apply. Thank you so much for taking the time to create this and give us new dj's a way to focus on playing good music instead of wrestling with an unorganized library. Respect awarded, my friend.
OMG, I never even thought about using the check box column for music management in iTunes, just hearing you mention your use of it has given me a few ideas for how I can move forward with my music management. Thanks. (Roughcut: DMC Finalist 1989)
HI Jay. Thank u for this awesome tutorial. I have been saving all my 2500 songs in folders and then using it in traktor tree under explorer. I am using for the first time using iTunes. Thanks again bro.
Main issue I have with only using iTunes playlists in Traktor is Cruise (Autoplay) cannot be enabled, in case you really need a bathroom break. Still, if you use iTunes... rather than typing into the search bar, I recommend creating smart playlists based off of your genre playlists, for 'groover', etc.
if every DJ watched your video before they ever started creating music libraries it would save everyone HOURS upon HOURS of classifying our entire library after the fact.
Hi mate , I have a problem whit Rating in Traktor using iTunes managment, when I am doing rating in iTunes is not visible on my traktor playlist from iTunes library . Any idea why and how to fix this ?
Hey you mentioned traktor searches the whole collection is a bug - it's by design. If you just want to search a single folder try tab on the left of the keyboard. Thanks for sharing your tips!
hey there,nice lesson!! really good info!how about the first initial part?before going into iTunes, where do you download your files to?what folder? how to set up the original folders on the computer?and how is it broken down?or is it just one massive music folder?please!
Excellent video! THANK YOU for your insight! I have two quick questions... 1) I can seem to locate my playlists/music folders under iTunes in Traktor so I'm forced to Load directly from designated storage folders on my HD. 2) How can I program my interface to make the Key visible on the main screen/Deck with the rest of info about the track (BPM, Remaining Time, Truck Name, Artist, Album Art etc.) Thank you for your time!
Many thanks I will sort in next few days thanks for reply. I see many people have been asking for dynamic smart playlists built into Traktor as a priority. Anyone who is serious about digitising there music collection should know about Smart Playlist, they are so much better than normal ones. Thanks again :)
Thanks for all of the positive comments and smart questions. I'm glad this video has helped a few people. I wanted to mention that, as of late, I've been playing with the new RekordBox 4.0 release on a Pioneer DDJ-SZ controller. At first, I was hoping to use the SZ with Traktor, but the mappings just aren't really up to par, and Traktor Scratch DVS doesn't work either. I was very disappointed, but after evaluating both Serato and RekordBox, I decided that RB4 would suit my needs. On top of that, this classification system and workflow I've used for years made transitioning to RekordBox pretty painless. So I'm still happy to answer Traktor questions where I can, but this Traktor user is now a RekordBox user. Anyone want to buy my S4 MK2? ;)
This is a great tutorial! one final question. do you always import from the itunes treeview into the collection or do you simply rely in traktor doing that? in other words: do you only select from the itunes folder when adding a track to player A or B?
Hi Martin. I would import all tunes from the Traktor smart playlist folder before playing a set. That way, Traktor will analyze them all ahead of time, and I can adjust beat grids, etc. And then I know anything I grab from my Traktor collection will be good to go.
Great video thank you! I wanted to ask if you remember all your tracks in your head or you'r just picking songs by scale or stars without knowing exactly?
Great question! Until I've played a track and tried to mix it a handful of times, I'm just making an educated guess. But eventually, I do find pairs or triplets of tracks that work really well together, and those do stick in my head. So if I'm making a prepared mix, for a yoga class or something, I'll lean heavily on those pairings that I've memorized. For unstructured gigs, it's all just thinking on your feet, reading the room, etc. And not every transition has to be a perfect, drawn out metamorphosis :)
Great video thanks! Very useful. I have a question: If you add more tracks to existing smart playlists in iTunes, how do you get Traktor to update and recognise these changes? The way I organise my music is to paste text into comments field on iTunes and set smart playlist to pick this up, some tracks might be in 3 different playlists. I have a iMac where all my music is fully organised by smart playlists in iTunes. I now have a new MacBook Pro for portability that has a 512GB SSD inside and my intention is to copy just my Traktor folder (like yours) from my main library on my iMac into ITunes on my new MacBook Pro then import this to Traktor. But then moving forwards I will buy a new track on Beatport, tidy up the metadata on my iMac in iTunes as this is my source library, then maybe use Dropbox to transfer to my MacBook, drag into iTunes, any tips or advice? Thanks again!
Hey Shaun Hutchinson , great question. That's the beauty of Smart Playlists -- they are dynamic in nature. So if the contents of your SPs have changed, simply refresh the iTunes node in Traktor, and the SPs will reflect their latest contents. Then right click on the SP itself, or Command/Ctrl-A to Select All tracks within the SP, and > Import into Collection. Easy!
Great video man, I recently started using Itunes to manage my collection and now I am still in the process of sorting all the required metadata. Some of my tunes have already been imported to my Traktor collection, however, are missing the categorisation. I do all of it on Itunes at the moment and can already see the benefit. My question is whether there is a way to simply update the metadata on the already uploaded in Traktor files or do I need to re-import them? Thanks in advance.
AKSO Official Sorry for the delay, just saw your comment this morning. So, yes. You can update any meta-data you want in iTunes and then simply run a "Consistency Check" on your track collection within Traktor. I'll be totally honest with you: sometimes it will lose track of files. It's a bit flaky. But that's okay, simply remove the ones it identifies as "Missing" and then re-import your "Traktor" Smart Playlists folder. Since Traktor's meta data (key, BPM, grid) are written to the file itself, you won't actually lose any data this way. It's just a hoop you have to sometimes jump through when Traktor gets confused by renaming tracks.
Thanks Jay, organising of itunes has alway been an abstract concept for me you have really put some clarity into it for me! Do you know if i can use this same system with serato? Cheers
+adam hoss Ayres Almost. Serato _inexplicably_ does not support iTunes star ratings (seriously WTF). And so while you can navigate the smart playlists, search the comments for texture and energy level, etc.. you can not rely on the star ratings while in Serato. Pretty infuriating. I briefly tried Serato when I bought my new DDJ-SZ controller, and that glaring omission was enough for me to uninstall it after an hour. Rekordbox 4.0 does support iTunes star ratings, and everything else in my classification system. I'm now actually a RB4 user. Cheers!
Many thanks for the great tutorial Jay. I have organised my music in the way that you have described and I wanted to ask a question. How to I organise ordered playlists for different events? For example, I am DJing a wedding and I want to map out the mix from start to finish, but I don't understand how I can do that in tracktor, given the way my music is organised. Does that make sense? Thanks
+Kathryn Danson Hi Kathryn, great question. I think the answer depends on whether or not you're mixing harmonically. Because iTunes does not expose the Key ID3 field, creating set lists in iTunes can be challenging for DJs who mix harmonically (I hope you're in that group! ;)). So if I'm preparing a set ahead of time, I will create a Traktor playlist in the Traktor library directly, and use Traktor's search and sort functionality to select my tracks. I typically do this in two phases: first, I'll pour through my collection using search and sort, and add a whole bunch of tracks I'm keen on to the new playlist, without worrying about order. Then, I'll switch views to the newly populated playlist and start sorting things out based on energy level and key. Inevitably, I'll find "holes" in the set where I need to get from Am to Ebm, and so I'll search / sort out a couple of tracks to bridge the gap. That's how I do it. Hope this helps!
Great video thanks I finally understand smart playlists thanks to you! Question: Do you have to retag all your star ratings in traktor? For me if I have 3 stars on a track in itunes when I import into traktor it shows no stars?
+Ollie J Star ratings are hit-or-miss. They are not part of the ID3 data that lives within the file, unfortunately. They are stored separately in your iTunes Library (XML). I find that, typically, Traktor would pick them up correctly on the initial import of a track, but any subsequent changes in rating would have to be mirrored manually in both applications. I'm not sure why Traktor isn't even grabbing the ratings on initial import. It should. FYI, Serato doesn't support iTunes star ratings at all. That alone was reason enough for me to not use Serato.
Great video Jay! Just got my Kontrol Z2, this is what i was looking for! Amazing vocabulary and explanation as well, top notch!, One ? this means everything is imported to itunes first? What order do you use , MIK, itunes , traktor? thanks
+drumndirty Right on, man. I started using MIK again about 6 months ago (had stopped for a couple years when Traktor added their own key analysis). So my workflow is iTunes -> MIK -> Traktor. Be sure to disable key analysis on import in Traktor.
Hi Jay, thanks so much for this great tutorial - VERY HELPFUL!... One question though (and my apologies if it's been asked already): In your Progressive House smart playlist, how did you create the ' "Any" of the following are true: ' tab, and then sub-tabs?... I'm using Itunes 12.10.4.2 on Windows (the latest version). If anyone could help me answer this, would be very grateful! Cheers!
Hey buddy, great video. Thanks. So in traktor, I import my iTunes playlist (smart or regular) by right clicking 'import to collection', now when I add new tracks to my iTunes playlist I manually add news ones to collection right? Is there a way to automate it?
+Dj Rishi As of Traktor 2.7, you can actually see key information and other Traktor-specific metadata *in* the iTunes node within Traktor. So there's actually no need to import iTunes playlists at all anymore -- you can simply browse the iTunes node right in Traktor. In fact, you can even assign iTunes playlists to the Playlists Favorites area in Traktor's UI. See here: postimg.org/image/ffz9ah7wb/ Hope this helps!
well my collection is now analizing after reinstal windows.. but. before i had same problem. why tracks are not analyzed in itunes folder in traktor. for example house smart plaist. track are in colection analyzed but not in itunes folders. and i find track in fly through smartplaylist not collection. and i need them again analyse after puting them from smart playlist to deck.. any sugestions?
I am having problems playing my tracks from iTunes in Traktor. This happened as soon as I updated to the newest iTunes. I do have Apple Music. I still have older songs which I didn't get from Apple Music in my playlist and it still won't play the old tracks I had before I started with Apple Music. Do you know how or why this is happening? I didn't have this issue before. I would appreciate any help you can offer.
I have heard horror stories that, when you sign up for Apple Music, iTunes will actually physically delete files from your hard drive that it determines are available via Apple Music. I've read that it doesn't even consider file size, bit rate, etc. So DJs with 320kbps .mp3's are losing them if Apple has a 160Kbps .m4a of that track available. Kinda scary stuff. I'm not saying this is what happened to you, and I sincerely hope that's not the case -- I'm just saying, fucking cancel Apple Music, man :(
How might you move your Traktor key tags into iTunes? No key field exists in iTunes but I would use maybe a Sort Show field to store the info. I attempted to drag a group of songs in a key to iTunes and then label the sort field, but it caused duplicate songs. Any ideas?
Ah, great question. iTunes sadly, after all these years, still does not expose the Initial Key ID3 field via their user interface. It's really frustrating. So to answer your question, I do not currently have a way to target keys via iTunes Smart or regular Playlists. I do my harmonic arrangement in Traktor, RekordBox, etc..
Cliff Coulter I use mixed in Key for keydetection and let it write the key into the key text-field and in the beginning of the commentsfield, that way it's easy to sort in iTunes :)
Great video, thanks very much ! I used to create my playlist on itunes and using them directly into traktor until my laptop crashed in a party because of the fact traktor have to analyse each track when we use the itunes system and the CPU works a lot.. Is there a way to analyse all the tracks of your 'TRAKTOR' folder once and for all, the same way we do outside 'Itunes' in the regular traktor files system ? Thanks in advance
+Guillaume Laloy Are you letting iTunes manage your music library? Unless you're re renaming files, Traktor should only ever analyze them once. Do you often find "Missing tracks" in Traktor when you run a Consistency Check? There are two iTunes preferences I recommend everyone use to minimize issues like this: 1) Let iTunes organize my library for me 2) Copy files into iTunes when they are imported. #2 means you can delete the files from your Downloads folder once you've added them to iTunes, of course.
Thanks for the video. I have a question though, when a load a track into a deck it says unknown format. How do a convert the format so my itunes-library becomes playable in traktor? :)
did you use cue points? did you keep playing from the itunes directory in the browther or did you import to collection or playlists in traktor? looking to have a good system between itunes->traktor->rekordbox (or rekordbox->traktor). did you use rekordbuddy? thanks
There's no need to import the playlists into Traktor. Several versions ago, Traktor would not display key data directly in iTunes playlists, which was a real drag. But that has worked for quite some time now, so there's really no need to actually import the playlists themselves -- just import the tracks. Rekordbox, unfortunately, does require that you import the playlists if you want to save the playlists to the top navigation / bookmarks area, or if you want the Recommended Tracks functionality to limit recommendations to the current playlist, etc. So in RB, I do import the playlists whenever they change. Slightly annoying, but I haven't found a workaround yet. Yes, I do use cue points, but have not tried RekordBuddy. I basically re-analyzed, re-gridded, and re-cued all of my tracks when I made the switch from Traktor to RB. I don't plan on going back to Traktor -- not that it wasn't a fine piece of software, but RB works infinitely better with my current hardware (DDJ-SZ). Hope this helps!
Great video! A couple of questions: 1) Where do you keep your files on your computer when you import them? 2) What do you do with .wav files? 3) What is your process of importing a song onto your computer?
+djcuisine Thanks! I let iTunes organize my music, and I tell iTunes to "Copy tracks into library on import." That way, I can just delete the downloaded copies from my Downloads folder, Beatport Library, etc. Both of these settings are available in the Advanced tab of your iTunes Preferences pane.
Jay - thanks so much for this. Quick question- I used this method for about 7 months and it worked perfectly. A few weeks ago i imported batch of tracks into itunes, assigned genre / star ratings as normal, but i cannot get traktor to recognize this data at all. The tracks show up and can be analyzed & played, but the genre and rating info from itunes is missing. I tried refreshing itunes, checking consistency, nothing. Do you have any ideas? Am I forgetting a step?
Hi Josh. It doesn't sound like you've missed a step. Is there a Traktor update available, maybe? I'd probably try removing and re-importing the tracks entirely. As you may have gleaned from the other comments, I've been a RekordBox user for the last few years now. Of course, it's not without its own issues. The good news is, this classification system and workflow fits it just fine.
question? when importing from iTunes to your collection does this duplicate the track? meaning you have one in your iTunes folder and the other in your traktor collection?
Dj Dolan, I could really use some advice? I want to create a very organized HOUSE folder with Smart playlist underneath for more specific genres of HOUSE. For example (My House Folder with smart playlists underneath : Electro House, Bigroom House, Future House, Deep House, top 40 house etc. The problem i am having is that plenty of my songs fall into multiple genres. For example (Wallpaper-Best Song Ever.) I would consider this song a dance pop song, but it also has characteristics of house song. So in the genre column, i label it as Dance Pop. And in the comments sections i write house. I would like my House Folder to pull all of my songs that have House characteristics in them. he problem i am having is that my smart playlists are not pulling all the songs i have labeled as house, even though i tagged the song in my comments section. Sorry this is confusing, But do u have an feedback?
jeremiah baumgarten There's no reason you can't put multiple genres (e.g. comma separated) in the genre field -- I do this all the time. That said, there are several ways you can accomplish what you're after. One of the criteria you can set in Smart Playlists is "Appears in Playlist..". In other words, in your "child" playlists, one of your criteria can be that the tracks must also appear in your "parent" playlist (House). This way, you would only have to specify the parent playlist criteria once. So try something like this: Parent SP House: * Genre contains "House" * Rating >= 2 stars * Checked is true Child SP Tech House: * Appears in Playlist "House" * Comments contains "Tech" Repeat for each subgrenre. Good luck!
Uplifting Downbeats | DJ Jay Dolan Where is the option to "appear in playlist"? How do i make one folder the parent folder and another playlist, the child playlist?
jeremiah baumgarten They won't have a parent / child relationship, per se. But you can make the "child" playlists depend upon the "parent" as I described above. The "Playlist" criteria is the one you're looking for. A bit confusing, I know -- Steve Jobs is turning over in his grave ;)
Uplifting Downbeats | DJ Jay Dolan Yupp steve is definitely pointing and laughing at me right now lol ! OK so i tried adding multiple genres in the genre column. For example (Melbourne House, Classic House, Trance House.) When i create my smart playlist i start by using the criteria, 1. Genre-Contains-House 2. genre contains Melbourne House. When my Melbourne House smart playlists populates, it doesn't include songs that i've added multiple genres to :( (For example, my Melbourne Bounce smart playlist is missing Nervo-Ready For the Weekend, which i've labeled as Classic House, Melbourne House. What am i doing wrong?
jeremiah baumgarten Doh! It is kinda difficult to explain via comments. 1. Create your House SP with the criteria "Genre contains House" 2. Create your Melbourne House SP with the criteria "Playlist is House" AND "Comments contains Melbourne" Hope this helps! Maybe I'll make a follow-up video for this :)
Hello there everyone! Questions for DJs - my iTunes library (with Smart Playlists) has been copied from User/Music onto external hard drive, great. Next question although I can obviously drag and drop to then save the music files themselves independently into another music folder it doesn't store with Comments. I have tried my best to find out more information on this (I would essentially like to make a duplicate, of all the songs in iTunes in all each respective/shadowed files, in say artist category or playlist file, on my hard drive, of course....). I would like to see my Comments there if possible, also. Any insight into this from anyone? I would like the Comments to be stored elsewhere, non-dependent on the User/Music back up from Apple Music on my hard drive... does this make sense. Thanks so much for your input!
I wonder if NI will ever sort out the 'Bat Crazy' Release date field in the browser? Yeh Traktor picks up the release date from the itunes xml file or from the mp3 tag eg... 23/4/2014 it then reverses it and wipes out the day and the month and creates 2014/1/1.... which is useless as every track in 2014 is shown as being released ON THE SAME FREAKING DAY.... this is driving me nuts, as a dj i want to see my old tracks from my new ones... another NI F Up!
+Marc Atkins Yea man, honestly, I grew tired of NI never fixing known bugs too. Depending on what hardware you have, you may want to check out Rekordbox 4.0 with performance mode. I picked up a DDJ-SZ hoping to use it with Traktor, but the shoddy mappings led me to try both Serato and finally RB4. I absolutely love RB4, and Pioneer is improving it just about every month. I'm no longer a Traktor user :}
Hey Jay, Great video on organising music mate. I use Traktor pro 2 with S4 for the moment , with mixed in key. My issue with adpoting your system is lets say i have 20 smart playlists. do i have to delete and re-add them each time in traktor , when i make changes to smart playlist ? (As traktor Collection doesnt update on -fly, as i understand ) The reason i want to do this is so i can sort by keys in key text column, derived from Mixed-In Key (which appear in itunes metadata , but wont appear in Traktor , till imported to collections - as i understand ? Please help .
+DJ Hesh Hey dude, thanks for the comment. So, I know why you think that -- it used to be the case. But starting with Traktor Pro 2.7 and later, you can actually sort the iTunes nodes by key and have color-coded keys and everything (finally!). So I've assigned my iTunes Smart Playlists to the Playlist Favorites area in Traktor, and that's all I look at anymore in order to browse my library. Here's a screenshot of the Playlist Favorites section with iTunes Smart Playlists. If you don't see this section in your Traktor, look for the checkbox in the Browser Details preferences pane. postimg.org/image/ffz9ah7wb/
+DJ Hesh Oh, and in terms of order-of-operations, I actually import tracks into Traktor first, let it guess at the keys, then import those tracks into Mixed In Key, and finally just run a consistency check on the Smart Playlist back in Traktor to refresh the key information. Hope this helps!
+Uplifting Downbeats | DJ Jay Dolan Thanks Jay. updating my Traktor for one :) what i m trying to understand though is will the traktor collection now update on fly from iTunes smart playlist ? so as per what u say, here is what i should do: 1. sort out new downloaded song in iTunes playlist (as it opens in iTunes without using mixed in key) 2.import smart playlist to traktor collection ? 3. then analyse in mixed in key 4.check consistency yes/ no?
+DJ Hesh I think you've got it. The only clarification I would make is: don't import the Smart Playlists. Rather, browse to them in the iTunes Bridge in Traktor, select all of the tracks, and import those. Importing the playlist will create a "static" copy of the playlist in Traktor, which is kind of useless. Because you can sort the Smary Playlists directly in Traktor by the track key (or other Traktor-specific meta data), there's no reason to duplicate the playlist itself into your collection. Just browse it. Make sense?
+Uplifting Downbeats | DJ Jay Dolan thanks again for the prompt reply Jay. Mate what i m struggling with is , if don't import smart playlist from under iTunes bridge(the one with iTunes logo), key text and key columns appear blank n doesnt offer the option for consistency check . if i import playlist (which i shouldn't as u mentioned - as they are static). it doesnt update on the fly. i m lost :( .
