Cleaning music libraries

The topic of cleaning your music library is pretty hot at the moment. I started the work of running through my music a while back, just after I started Digital DJ Tips wrote an article on the topic and now DJ Techtools has posted an article with a couple of tips to sort your music. DJ Techtools also posted a couple of articles some time a go on this and I thought that it would be helpfull for those of you wanting to sort your music, but are not sure on how to do it.

Read the DJTT article here

Other DJTT articles:
Organize your music by track type
Get more from your library
Itunes power tips


Here's what I did

1. I pulled out my entire music library to an external harddrive.
2. Took each and every track and evaluated if I wanted to keep it and if I actually had played this track in the last couple of months and copied them into different folders.
3. The folder structure will be different for each and every DJ. I play a couple of tracks almost on all my gigs, so I had a mainstream folder. Some gigs require more either of R'n'B or House, so I have a HipHop folder and a House folder with several sub-genre spesific folders underneath. I also have some folders for music that doesn't fit the structure and tracks I want to exclude, but still bring along like very commercial tracks or old classics.
4. After I moved the keepes back in to my folders, I whent through my tracks (using Tag & Rename) and renamed the files to the format of "Artist - Title (Remix)", filled out all the ID tags and added images to the tracks.

I loved the way Phil Morse put it: Your music library is like laundry.
If you don't clean it regularly it'll really pile up and be a REAL mess. It's aweful to do it all at once.

My notes on playlists
I (normally) have three types of playlists in three different folders.

1. Profil
2. Music
3. Sets

Profil
Each venue has a different flair to it though often many tracks are played at all the venues. I create a profile playlist for each venue. I run through my track folders that are relative for the venue, and being VERY selective, I put tracks into the profile playlist. Bi monthly I clear my profile playlist and do this over again.

Music
I have one for HipHop, one for chillout, a couple of house playlists and so on... You get the drift.

Sets
I create some set lists for when I'm doing performance pieces or mix tapes. These playlists are sorted after the order I play the tracks in.

I also sometimes import folders as playlists... That's the great thing of using folders to sort music.

Preparation list
While I play I sometimes stumble upon tracks that I want to play that night, but it doesn't fit at the time. I then have an empty preparation list that I add tracks into to not forget to play them.