I have a main “Music” folder with all my music for DJing. Inside this main folder, there are many subfolders, named as the date they were added. For example, a folder called “20191203” contains around 50 tracks that were added on the 3rd of december 2019. A folder called “20200115” contains about 30 tracks that were added on the 15th of January… an so on.
Up to now, this has been the most comfortable way of adding music to my library, because a single new folder had to be analyzed.
However, now I would like to separate all the tracks by genre, so instead of having the subfolders named by date, I would like to name them by genre.
But, if I change the paths of the tracks, does Engine Prime software lose their beatgrid and cuepoints and loops, of all the songs that I already have analyzed?
Also, do you have to go subfolder by subfolder and selecting the new songs one by one that you want to analyze? Or can you do some kind of batch analysis with this genre-folder structure?
In summary, how do you do to organize your music and keep adding around 30 songs per week, without the pain to select track by track each new song to analyze?
Hi, just do it, but you import the directory in EP first. The files will be analyzed. Then you make your playlists/crates manually, you won’t have to reanalyze them.
All my main files come first from itunes library.
I do like you, every week I add a new crate with new songs. Then I rearrange it into playlists/crates/subplaylists…
And after I delete the imported crate. (But not from collection in order not to delete the songs)
You add a Folder (named “Folder A”) to your hard drive with new music. You import the “Folder A” into Engine Prime, as “Crate A”. Then you analyze all the songs in “Crate A”. After that, you move manually each song from “Crate A” to “Crate Hiphop”, “Crate EDM”, “Crate DnB”, “Crate 80s”, and so on. Once all the songs in “Crate A” have been moved to other crates, then you remove “Crate A”. So far, so good.
BUT, do you remove “Folder A” from your hard drive? If you don’t, I understand that you will have your music organized inside EP, but not inside your HD.
It would be nice to have the music organized in crates in the same way as they are in folders in the hard drive… Kind of a “sync” between HD Folders and EP Crates, so one could move songs between folders in HD, or between crates in EP, and the changes reflect on the HD or EP.
Yes after I remove my crate (delete old crate but not from EP collection or it will delete the songs)
But you must not delete the files from your hard disk (for example iTunes) or it will break the database. EP only create links with your files. The real song files are only copied when you export them into an exterbal device (usb key, sd card, ssd…)
I have 10 folders on my SSD drive, all music downloaded goes into either of these folders. They are generic genre folders eg HIP HOP (everything rnb, hiphop etc) LATIN (pop, reggaeton, bachata etc)
Then drag all the 10 into DJ Software.
Sort by date created or added.
Tagging, Fix names (eg removing strange letters TY Dolla $ign becomes TY Dolla Sign), analyses, then crating
But with the tagging system (I tag the files in rekordbox), I’m now leaning towards going crate less altogether (I’ve been experimenting with this over the last 3/4 weeks). I’ve set up my custom tags in rekordbox and enabled it to write the tags to the comments field as well.
The tags can be used by any dj software that can access the comments in the metadata
My advice is that whatever method you decide to go with, I think you should apply your new method to your new downloads and over time go back to your old stuff to move them around.
There is no relocate file function in EP so if you move stuff around …you could end up having to redo everything.
If I need to do a early 00s hip hop set I use the metadata and comments to pull appropriate tracks.