by Stacy Zemon
I currently have 953 friends on Facebook, most of whom are DJs. The collective knowledge of this group is enormous, so who better to ask questions of than my FBFs?
Recently, I posted this question, “What music management program do you use to organize your MP3s into various categories for use in your preferred brand of digital music controller?”
Many DJs chimed in with answers, and here are a few of the highlights:
My Preferred Program
Steve Cie: Denon Music Manager
Denny McConnell: The Music of my mind
Scott Djbo Woloszyn: Adobe Audition to Edit, MP3 Gain to normalize, Windows folders to organize music by genre.
John Heluk: The native MP3s are categorized by year/genre, then get converted into OTS files, where further categorizing is easy, if needed.
Richard Mills: I’m a dedicated Ots user for many years. I love it.
Johnny Aftershock Mancilla: iTunes.
Allen Howell: MediaMonkey. You can use it to update tracks manually and automatically online connected to the Amazon databases. Mediamonkey scans your music drive if you point to it, and fills it in if the info is in your tags. If not you can update them in the editor, which writes the info back to your files automatically.
Mark Taylor: Mostly iTunes but I am starting to do more of it manually with Windows folders. I file songs under keywords that I associate with them, not necessarily by genre. My system of categorization probably wouldn’t make sense to other DJs, but it works great for me.
Robert Starkey: I separate my music by genre file folders on my hard drives, which are then picked up by MixMeister Pro.
Gregory Zonsius: MediaMonkey for organizing and renaming .mp3 id3 tags. Have Genre field in id3 tag for every track. Then I create a smart playlist in MediaMonkey for the Genres which I can then export for use with other programs. Anytime I add a new track and I categorize the Genre it is automatically added to the playlist.
Gregg Hollmann: iTunes to create playlists, which then show up in Serato as crates.
And the Winner is…
Based on all of this great advice, just last week I chose to move my music from iTunes to MediaMonkey Gold. I’m still working on configuring the program to my specifications, but thanks to YouTube videos and some help from Allen Howell, I hope to be fully “operational” soon!
Publisher & Chief Scribe
Stacy Zemon is the Founder, Publisher and Chief Scribe of ProMobileDJ.com. She is a veteran DJ Entertainer who is widely considered an authority on the DJ business, and has become a distinguished industry leader over the course of her illustrious 30+ year career. Stacy’s mission is to provide educational resources for DJs that support their professional growth and financial prosperity. She is a longtime writer for DJ Times magazine, and author of the world’s best-selling DJ books: The Mobile DJ Handbook, The DJ Sales & Marketing Handbook and The Mobile DJ MBA. Stacy is a self-described serial entrepreneur (Equal parts creativity and business). From her efforts, she has spawned more professional disc jockey business owners than any other person in the mobile DJ industry! Write to her c/o [email protected] or call 877-442-7170.
