Most DJs these days manage their music collections in iTunes, good old-fashioned folders, or even DJ software. According to Beatport, up to 90% of DJs that manage a music library use iTunes, and based on most feedback, no one really loves it.. Fortunately, the new version of Beatport Pro provides a good alternative with a dedicated music manager for DJs and producers.
The first version of Beatport Pro was released nearly a year ago and enabled advanced users to browse the popular dance music retailer through their desktop with features not available in the online store. Now, after many months of hard work, Beatport has added full-blown music file management, offering a full package for those wanting to find and organize electronic music in one place.
Why would you want a dedicated program for managing your DJ music collection?
BETTER PLAYLIST MANAGEMENT
- Always present in the left-hand side
- Nested playlists and easy re-ordering
- Automatic integration with Beatport purchases
- Downside is that they lack “smart” playlists for now
BETTER EXPERIENCE FOR WORKING WITH DJ MUSIC
- Full-length waveform preview for songs allows easier digging
- Automatic separation of files by type (tracks, mixes, parts, etc.)
- DJ music-specific tagging fields (feel, room, set time, etc.)
- Powerful multi-filters parse down massive collections quickly
MANAGE YOUR MEGA DATA
Meta tags are the fields in MP3s and other music files that allow us to store information about that file. If they’re accurate, meta-tags provide the opportunity to dig into a deep collection and find the music you want quickly. If inaccurate, they can be misleading and worthless. Pro provides the ability to sync up your songs with their extensive online database and get accurate information on each track including:
- Cover art
- Accurate release date
- Correct genre
- The key of the song
- The correct names
- Even suggested tags like mood and style from other Pro users
After syncing up a song or entering new tags, all metadata is written permanently to the file including WAVs and AIFFs in open ID3 spec. Right now, there is not any software on the market that will natively read “special” tags like set time or mood, but Serato and Native Instruments have indicated a desire to roll that out later this year. In the meantime, Beatport Pro for Mac allows you to write everything to the comments field.
Additionally, it has a metadata manager, which can move pieces of info in bulk from one field to the other. For example, if your key info was stored in the comments, it can be quickly moved over to the correct location or appended to a different area.
LOOK FOR NEW RELEASES IN THE SAME TOOL
The biggest benefit of Pro remains an alternative way to churn through the million-plus songs on Beatport today. Through clever filters and tagging, it’s possible to quickly reveal songs that might otherwise be buried in a pile of new releases.
Negative and positive filters allow you to parse the collection quickly; for example, you can ask it to only show you house tracks, or not to show you anything that’s hip-hop or breaks. You can filter and browse by key, BPM, mood, and even release date.
ALSO GREAT FOR THE PRODUCER
For those of us who have countless loops, samples, and one-shots floating around the hard drive, Beatport Pro also attempts to provide a central organizer with tags specific to production files. With a few basic tricks, it’s fairly easy to round up your samples, apply basic category tags, and make it easy to find that elusive growling bassline in F# minor that was hiding in a folder with Game of Thrones Season 3.
DJ SOFTWARE INTEGRATION
After spending hours taming your wild collection into submission – what about putting those playlists in your dj software of choice? While not offering direct “integration” per-se, Pro does have a reasonable work around. Under settings you can choose to export the collection as an iTunes playlist that is updated with any changes. Then, it’s possible to point your dj software towards this file instead of the real iTunes collection. This will break the iTunes connection but it will accomplish the goal of updated Pro playlists in any dj software that supports iTunes.
OUR TAKE?
I have been working with Beatport Pro for Mac for about a month now, and it’s starting to really grow on me. At first, the idea of tagging and organizing my entire music collection runs a close second to filing taxes as the least appealing things to do on the planet. That being said, if taken in small doses, it’s possible to make a significant dent fairly quickly.
One thing we know for sure: this beats iTunes for music management hands down. I would still advise using a program like iTunes to hold all your music (especially in order to copy those files to a single place on the hard drive), but for building playlists and managing a smaller collection of your favorite dance tracks, it might be time to leave the land of apples and explore something new.
Beatport Pro for Mac launches on April 16. Check out more of its features here.
Further Reading: Sorting Your DJ Music Library and Genre Tagging for Music Libraries
[…] great tool for managing your library and preparing DJ sets. As we have written about in the past iTunes has become less and less ideal for DJ preparation and file management. While not perfect, Beatport Pro has a lot of very DJ-friendly tools that […]
[…] great tool for managing your library and preparing DJ sets. As we have written about in the past iTunes has become less and less ideal for DJ preparation and file management. While not perfect, Beatport Pro has a lot of very DJ-friendly tools that […]
[…] great tool for managing your library and preparing DJ sets. As we have written about in the past iTunes has become less and less ideal for DJ preparation and file management. While not perfect, Beatport Pro has a lot of very DJ-friendly tools that […]
[…] great tool for managing your library and preparing DJ sets. As we have written about in the past iTunes has become less and less ideal for DJ preparation and file management. While not perfect, Beatport Pro has a lot of very DJ-friendly tools that […]
I just tried it… For someone like me, having about 800.000 samples, it’s nothing. Even when I just tried to import a folder with 2000 files, the program was buggy and too slow. Moreover, I can’t import ogg nor midi. Worst: the search! If I search for something, I expect to see the search results in the main window. No, it shows the search results in a tiny window, and only 4 or five, and it says: “Show 93 more”; when I click there, the search is lost and it shows me only one file selected in the main window… Eeewww… NO. No time for this and I don’t want all that stress. I’ll keep on looking for something better.
is there a way to update the changes made in iTunes to beatport pro? seems like it works the other way around, like when i update a song info iTunes recognizes it. but i use iTunes for its other features – remote/airplay, sizzling keys to quickly add ratings while multitasking, syncing playlists with Idevices.. and ideally i would keep using iTunes to make simple changes and refine playlists, while also using BP to further organize the portion of music that i play out. i’d love to know if there’s a way to achieve this before i get too invested in BP pro.
to clarify, the only way i’ve found to do this is to import the library again, but it duplicates all the playlists, and tries to import all my music twice, and makes a mess.
hey everyone i have a big question and hope that some can help me on this…should be mabey easy but i dind not find it yet.
after i import my itunes libary all my playlistst are availible in the bpp2 programm. but when i make for example a new playlist in itunes it dosent update it automaticly the next time i open bpp2. and i dont now how i can do this… the only thing i can do is to import the hole itunes libary again but then i have all the playlist double exapte the new one.
can anyone help me?
Hi guys,
lovely product. And a nice video, as always.
What I have not figured out yet is this: I have created different playlists for the individual styles (house, deep, 120-124bpm for example). Now I buy or add a new track to my collection. How can I update this playlists that the new file is in every playlist, where it should be/suits?
Does anybody know?
Thanks and cheers from Hamburg, Germany,
Figured it out myself. It was easy. Beatport Pro just does it by itself 😉
>> Tangerine Potion factory <<
is that really a true statistic? iTunes bites the big one!!
I think this is the best thing to happen to music-organization since the creation of the hard drive!
It messed up my Comment field too, but i obviously made a backup before i let a “unknown” program write to my data! No offense but NO software ever came out of the closet without a bug.. You can’t expect them to test every single opportunity of failure for their FREE software…
Give them 2 to 3 Updates of time and the errors will be fixed!
Anyone knows how to make BeatportPro just completely IGNORE the comment tag field?
(I LOVE HOW ORGANIZED MY LIBRARY IS THANKS TO THE SYNC FUNCTION 🙂 )
Can someone help me, I’ve having bother trying to import my music, when I choose to add file, some of my music is not highlighted, it’s as beatport pro dosnt know where some of the tracks are, I imported just over 1000 tracks and beatport only shows up just over 500
seems like beatport are avoiding the big question here, Will this be made avilable for P.C and when
I don’t understand why there are still people that come to a web-site which main topic in controllerism and midi controllers stating that djs who don’t buy vinyls aren’t djs. I obviously respect vinyl djs but I really don’t get why people are still disappointed about technology progress 😉
Looks good but i think they have over looked a few vital options or controls. Such as burning to cd and even an inbuilt encoder to change format of files….. Would be completely sold if these were available. Unless I just can’t seem to find these options…..
So do companies believe in instruction manuals anymore? Is there any actual documentation to use this software anywhere?
Hi
How does this software actually get in to traktor not seen anything anyway explaining how to do it. This is what I’ve done so far. I’ve exported my iTunes library to beatport pro I’ve tagged my tracks, set it to export as an iTunes file. I then point to my new iTunes folder in traktor, but this doesn’t give me any key on any of the tracks I’ve done the tagging too. When I play my tracks on iTunes it doesn’t change the tag on the tracks that I’ve made on beatport pro. Does anyone have any suggestions how I get it up and running and fix the key notes
Thanks in advance.
If you buy music on iTunes as well as Beatport your iTunes m4a files will not work with Beatport Pro 2.0. Major thumbs down for that.
And everyone knows its real labour to reconvert msuic with say DB poweramp or Nero, thats why i always buy lossles so the comvertionprocess will be minor.
Ituens are for the average joe listening to all types of music, not for djs
Maybe when Apple release a lossless service, but why shpould they when people want more stuff on their phones instead of quality!
Flac on a Phone is the only choice!
I have some questions that maybe some one could answer rather easy. I downloaded the software from the Beatport site and installed it on my mac which is running OS X Maverick 10.9, how come I do not get the “sych to beaport” window at the right end of the software. Also many of the music I imported from iTunes into Beatport Pro do not show the genre at the Beatport library and many of the song on iTunes lost the name of the Artist. It now show Various on the name field stead of the name after I imported iTune into Beatport Pro. If you knows the answer to any of this issue I’m having please email me at “urquest@hotmail.com” Thank you.
I like the product and hope it continues to improve.
However, I have some old WAV files that are begging to be re-tagged and Beatport doesn’t offer the track for sale anymore (which makes me a DJ hipster, I guess). I’m pretty sure the info is in whatever DB Beatport is using to manage the data… I hope they allow Beatport syncs with these tracks in the future even though they aren’t for sale anymore /fingerscrossed
will there be a pc version? For us who are in the process of getting a mac, but still want to learn the ropes of Beatport Pro
Beatport listen up. I can’t import my m4a files purchased through iTunes. Will this be possible in the future? Why not right now?
This is a pretty big step backwards in the biggest functionality of the old app: browsing the store. Pro 1.2 was fantastic at sorting and tracking songs as they’re released, which is a huge deal to me when get hundreds of tracks in My Beatport every week. My Beatport is effectively just keywords in the search engine now instead of it’s own inbox in previous Pro versions.
– Previously, My Beatport dumped all songs released by artists/labels into one bucket or inbox where I could listen to them one at a time, sorted by track *or* album. Now this bucket is gone, replaced by (I guess?) the New Release s=section which is then *sorted* by “Last N Days”. This is a problem because Last N Days is a rolling target, so tracks fall out of this time period if I don’t look at them every day.
– Previously, I could remove songs from the My Beatport “inbox” after I’d listened to them as a way of marking them “read” and knowing what I have and haven’t listened to. This functionality is completely gone so I don’t know day to day what’s actually new or where I left off in a huge list of new tracks.
– Previously, I could get a listing of only tracks that are by artists I follow. Now, the search listing only displays the expandable albums, which sucks for big 30 song compilations where I have to expand and find the one highlighted track by an artist I care about. This is complicated by the above point because the “played” markers only show up once you expand the album, not in the album list.
– Previously, I got all the information about tracks in sortable columns, and now all of this information is in the sidebar where I can’t look at multiple tracks side by side.
I know that I can go into the Audio section of the store and replicate some the functionality of the old system by creating really specific filters but filters are exclusive not inclusive so I’m missing tracks that would have previously shown up in my inbox.
There’s a bunch of other problems with the new behavior but not having My Beatport as a section is a big loss for me. The old Pro app functioned more like email and the new one functions more like a search engine. If I’m trying to find a specific track the new Pro is fantastic, but I’m never trying to find a specific track. I’m *always* trying to listen to a lot of tracks at once, and this version is dramatically worse for that. Sorting is replaced by filtering.
I don’t need a new way to organize the music on my computer. I absolutely *do* need a way to handle and sort all the music that gets released in the store. I’ll be going back to the old version.
I’ve been using Beatport Pro and its predecessor years for Beatport crate digging and this is a welcome addition to already good app, but sadly it doesn’t support Apple Lossless (ALAC) 🙁
Why do only some of my tracks that i put into playlist on Beat port pro show up on Traktor. the only thing i noticed is that the tracks with symbols next to them show up and the tracks without symbols do not. any help?!
I’ve been messing around with Beatport Pro since it came out yesterday, and I love it. It’s exactly what I’ve been waiting for, a program built for tagging and organizing a DJ music collection. I tried tagging in iTunes and wasn’t happy with it. It’ll take some time to tag everything, but it’ll be worth it when it’s done and Serato can read special tags.
If I don’t use cover arts in tracks, Beatport Pro set up a waveform as covert art. Is there any solution? I hate that…
I can’t manage to log in with my usual beatport username, it says “Login failed. Please check that your username and password are correct.”
And after checking beatport’s facebook page, it seems like I’m not the only one out there to have such problems.
Anyway to fix this?
I use MIK and platinum notes, what workflow do I follow after buying a new track through this app?
Asked Beatport if they’ll be supporting older OS X like Lion 10.7.5. Nope. Which is a shame. I mean I can run the old Beatport Pro + iTunes + a DAW simultaneously so I can’t see why Beatport Pro 2 wouldn’t also work.
Is there a projected date for PC version of this SW? I saw Beatport was looking for PC specific programmers recently.
The App crash my genres today
i don’t see a sponsored post disclaimer anywhere. shame on DJTT ean GOLDen 🙁
I would be okay with just iTunes IF Apple would 1) just leave it alone and 2) fix some of the weird search results you get.
I really like my Macs but every stinking time I turn around somebody at Apple messes up iTunes. Adding features, removing features, leaving out pieces of the interface… ARGH! Makes me want to tear out my hair (and that is tragic as I have little left!).
The other issue is I will search for something that I ABSOLUTELY KNOW is in the meta data for a song and it that song will not show up. C’mon!
Now if I was a DJ that played the stuff that Beatport sells (I don’t predominantly) I would probably be ALL OVER something like Beatport Pro. I like how it will organize a lot things iTunes really doesn’t like to handle (all those bits and pieces).
The fact that Beatport Pro is Mac-only will work against it a bit. The bigger strike against it is that it doesn’t plug directly into the big 3 of DJing programs — Serato, Traktor and VDJ.
I just tested this software on my mac and none of the features seemed to be working properly. Filters were not engaging my library, I could not import select tracks or groups of tracks without it failing, and when syncing tags into tracks that I know are on beatport it erased all of the tags and left the values blank and unable to be edited. something seems not to be right!
Is there any kind of artwork view?? I need artwork and date added in my life. When they removed that from itunes it screwed me. I can hardly remember names of tracks and need artwork front and center. Like VINYL!! If i could have a big grid of singles artwork and arrange them by date added and / or manually i’d be in heaven. Cover flow but from the top ie like flicking through a crate would be dope but i’ll take a list or grid of artwork that is big and readable. Also agree on playlists in seperate windows.
If it could do this i’d upgrade to mavericks and download this… At the moment i’m on snow leopard so can’t even check it out.
Artwork though!! Artwork is so important, I don;t even care if means more loading. Give me that option.
No artwork in itunes node in traktor is a joke. Give me the option to turn it on or off.
sorry to be shit, but I need a tutorial on how to point playlist to traktor and for traktor to see it!
I was really looking forward to downloading and using this 2.0 version until I saw it was for Mountain Lion +. I am on Lion, my computer can’t go any higher. I see no reason why this software couldn’t work on Lion 10.7.5.
Does beatport’s tool overwrite MixedInKey’s work? I’d hate to go from 95% accuracy back down to 66%.
As long as MIK is writing to the ID3 Key field we will read this information. However, we do not overwrite it UNLESS you hit “Sync with Beatport” and have “Key” checked in the “Select the fields you wish to update with the information from Beatport.” option selected.
How can I successfully get the tag added into the comment when importing to iTunes? I’ve selected Key, Energy, Vocal, Set Time, Mood, and Genere but when importing the comment section is blank.
There is no way to do that yet since we didn’t want to blanket overwrite comments fields, but it is great idea to have an option to do so.
Would you mind adding that request to our system?
http://beatport.uservoice.com/forums/180293-beatport-pro-library-manager
Is there any way to use the Date Added from my iTunes library? I usually sort by Date Added.
Been waiting to get away from iTunes for a long time now, this application seems to fit me perfectly.
hi @ all…
where writes beatport pro the *SET TIME* in the MP3-TAG ???
you know? I can not find it in tractor???
greetz chris
with me also,
why you can not decide where it comes out? greetz chris
Hi, I got the problem sorted but not completely…I had to get rid of iTunes since when importing the library file the comment section is blank but on Traktor the my selections do appear on the comments. You can choose the ones that work for you by following this path on the menu: BeatportPro/Preferences/Export/ write the following tags to the comment fields.
The problem I have now is with the Playlist…how can I create a “smart” playlist as in iTunes using the Music or Audio library??…I hate to dump the tunes on each playlist. What will happen each week when a new batch of tunes are added???
If i delete a song it only removes it from the collection – not from the actual hard drive! This is a deal breaker for me as i delete as many songs as i add in order to keep my collection under control – Such a shame because its great in most other respects (love to see proper Traktor integration though)… Is there a “remove from collection and delete from HD” option?
Correct.
We do not move files, delete files, or do any destructive work on your files.
This is quite intentional, but feel free to suggest this feature for future builds at:
http://beatport.uservoice.com/forums/180293-beatport-pro-library-manager
Maybe you can add the UserVoice URL to the website.
Hey Ean, Great Article I have 2 questions 1-can u open a playlist in its own window? U used to be able to do this in older versions of itunes but they removed that feature a few versions ago.
2)Does this program move your music files out of itunes into its own data base or does it just read it from itunes like serato does?
Thanks
You cannot open playlists in their own window, but that is an interesting idea.
Please add that request to:
http://beatport.uservoice.com/forums/180293-beatport-pro-library-manager
We do not move files, delete files, or do any destructive work on your files.
They stay where you put them on your system.
A word of warning: THIS SOFTWARE MESSES UP YOUR ID3 TAGS!!
And it does not tell you in advance. It wrote to more than 10000 files in my iTunes collection (I think all on my NAS that were writable) without telling me in advance. Some data is definitely gone! Looks like it affects the Album Title no. field.
Also it wrote some serious crap into the comment field. So this will be messed up big time if you use it!
KEEP YOUR HANDS OF THIS FOR NOW! YOU MIGHT REGRET IT!
Hi Titlephone. We don’t write to the Album Title No field at all, and we would only write into the comments field if you wrote into the comments field.
Please contact customer support at support@beatport.com to address any issues that you might have and perhaps supply us with one of the files you believe has been affected.
I’m already in contact with support and we’re trying to figure out what happened on my end (Thanks for being responsive!!)
Well, Beatport Pro writes to EVERY file on import (at least that’s what your support team confirmed). This makes iTunes read the metadata from the files again when they’re played from iTunes after they had been imported to Beatport Pro (that’s probably because the timestamp has changed).
I think there’s an issue when metadata from iTunes had not been written to the files before. Which in turn seems to be the case when the file’s ID3 tag is in a version that does not support all metadata from iTunes (TRACKTOTAL is one of the tags that is definitely affected.). You might argue that this is an iTunes Problem. Well, it’s not as long as one does not use Beatport Pro.
Oh, and in addition to that, It looks like Beatport Pro only read (and wrote!) the files on my NAS.The files on my local drive are not in Beatport Pro. They were simply ignored, although they are in the iTunes Library as well.
In short: You ARE IN DANGER of losing information if you just open Beatport Pro as it WILL write to EVERY file on launch. This MAY corrupt your metadata. This is why I don’t think it’s safe to use it as of now. It wasn’t for me, obviously.
Still, it’s a very good idea! It just needs a minor fix here and there. 🙂
I also want to add, that my setup (spreading the iTunes library’s files across multiple Volumes) is probably very uncommon and that this might be the issue. So it MIGHT be safe for most people to use the software. It just wasn’t for me.
🙁 I wish I had seen your post earlier. All of my meticulously organized tags are ruined. I’m pretty devastated …
Just keep the filenames intact, like Artist – Trackname – Comments
And drive em through mp3tag or Tag & Rename, and choose get tags from filname, thats how i run, all the time, a tag batches of tracks all the time, who need mood or energy, if you dont allready know that your a poor excuse for a dj i would say!
It certainly seems to have corrupted a lot of my comments fields as well. It also blanked out some keys when I tried to set them to single letter keys like ‘G’ or ‘D’ and it got the Key2 OpenKey wrong for Dminor, picking 12d instead of 12m.
Also, it has pretty big issues with switching focus if you’ve got something like Mixed In Key running in the background – so be careful where/when you click.
Commentsflield you mean where all the oither analyzing data goes, for traktor, Rbx and Mixed in key, allllllllll righty then!
Thank god for mp3tag and tag n rename then ;D
my mac is too old…crap i wanted to try
Hi, I have a problem – I don’t see the window on the right side, where You can see all the information about the track, sync it with beatport etc… Can You please help me, how to get it back? Thanks and have a nice day.
This is a great idea, but it doesn’t work like it says on the tin.
Finding Orbitals “Chime” labeled as a dj mix loses my vote.
Plus it hangs more than a group of teenagers on a street corner, and crashes like a drunk behind the wheel.
The Sync function – If I want a laugh I’ll watch a comedy.
A “Send to Deck A/B” option for Traktor would be the icing on the cake!
Searching the store using the Filters is a revelation! And a pretty darn clever way for Beatport to drive traffic deep into their world! That being said maybe people will start buying more than just the top 10 now with this system. I know will be digging deeper than usual!
Did not like it. iTunes is much lighter and doesn’t suck up a ton of RAM, unlike Beatport Pro which makes organizing anything a pain and I’m on 8gb of RAM
I might have overlooked it, and I understand it’s not a very “needed” feature at all, but is there a way to play a playlist shuffled that you know of? I can’t seem to find any option about it.
They just released Beatport Pro to the public. Download it at http://pro.beatport.com/
Curious as to if I integrate tunes with Traktor Pro/Trakor DJ will all my cue points and stuff be there? I messed with my library once and lost nearly all of this data and don’t want it to happen again.
I guess it was an older version, but I’ve been using Beatport Pro for a while, and one thing I think is definitely great about it is multiple crates… It really makes it a lot more efficient to sort out future purchases rather than just throwing everything that you want to keep track of for later into the hold bin… that alone makes it worthwhile to me (plus browsing is a lot faster than the website.)
This is cool and everything (kind like my original idea: http://www.djtechtools.com/2014/01/16/genre-tagging-for-dj-music-libraries/)
BUT how does this integrate, into DJ software (aka Traktor, Serato)?
and my last question…when will this come out??! 😀
Tomorrow. 16 April. It’s mentioned at the end of the post 😉
sweet!!! yeah, i didnt read the post, i just watched the video and came here for the comments haha
is it also available on PC.. whats it like to export a playlist to CD/USB
Is the app free?
Yes. The app is free.
Do the playlists you create in beatport pro integrate into Traktor like the iTunes playlists?
It works exactly like iTunes within those apps with the added benefit of folder and hierarchical playlists.
Thanks for the reply. So I can just make my playlists like before and they will show up how the iTunes playlists showed up? I use iTunes now to organize all of my tracks and playlists.
where will the playlists show up?
will it work with my music video collection?
Does is support FLAC? Doesn’t say on product page.
Still wainting for Windows version…
Interesting, and I’ll look forward to playing with this. I’ve been trying to find a way to make my library and crates 100% portable on a thumb drive so I can walk up to any rig, plug in my drive and GO. Maybe the iTunes export? Wheels are turning…
Hi Ron. We are interested in hearing your feedback on how it works for you. That is a use case we have planned for.
btw: iTunes is not Dj only. If you will check the “remote”-app…. you see 😉
i will test beatport pro, for sure. BUT i have the library in Serato Dj as well. I hear daily music with an iPod. I had many columns in iTunes for organize. and i remember that we had some Dj-own signs at Vinyls.
i will take a look at the performance. iTunes looks maybe a bit bloated up, but in the backside there ist still a really good performance. And i had a really big lib
ITunes works for me.
This is a great article on how to organize iTunes for a DJ.
very helpful.
Cheers for that link, I’ve been looking for something like that to get my head around getting iTunes organized.
No Prob!
ITunes is very good music player it is all that I know at this point . Will beatport work with my iPod will it Crossfade my music like iTunes. I have edited all my music to blend while crossfading within iTunes Will beatport have this Basic function for me to have fun with my iTunes player Apple is good with what do!
You what feature I would kill for : Playlist sync between computers. On top of file sync with BitTorrrent Sync.
I often find my self preparing my playlists in my studio for which I have a PC computer and I perform with with a mac laptop.
This would make my life so much easier.
Shout if you would also like that.
I created something like this with GoodSync between my main DJ laptop and a backup laptop so that either machine has the exact same Traktor environment and library. Now that Google drive is $10/month for a Terabyte of off-site storage, I think can push everything to the Google Drive, which then will auto sync to each machine. I can’t speak to whether one can do this between PC and Mac, but I’d wager it’s possible.
Dig it. Feel free to suggest that in the forum.
http://beatport.uservoice.com/forums/180293-beatport-pro-library-manager
It nice to see that you are self consciounous enough to follow the DJ community feedback.
Just posted the suggestion https://beatport.uservoice.com/forums/180293-beatport-pro-library-manager/suggestions/5784082-playlists-synchronization-between-computers-incl
Nice walkthrough Ean. Thanks.
What about folder watch?… What if i move/delete files in my music library folder, will they get updated in beatport pro library? Is it possible to sort files in beatport pro, the way they appear in my music library folder?
Yes on folder watch.
Feel free to organize and move your files physically around your system any way you see fit. Pro will follow along. If you delete, you will have the option to reconnect a file, or remove it from your catalog.
Depending on how you have your tracks tagged, you can certainly mimic and existing sort orders.
Thumbs Up !!!
i always wonder what keep people from beating up ian golden or at least slapping him every time his mouth opens?
People can still revert to Itunes 10 which to me was spot on and nice since the ULTRA SUCKY ITUNES 11, DJ ENDO made a great Itunes organization video for Dubspot that was spot on on how you wanted or could organize your itunes library or how to organize your digital music collection, although I didn’t follow ALL of his steps I did follow his instructions and added my own flavor but to have Beatport integrate with your music by genre tagging is nuts as they aren’t the most on point with genre’s plus it takes the fun out of finding new music… IE: Going TO THE CLUB TO HEAR DJ XYZ play something you never heard of and either “shazaming it” “Recording it” or just going old school and asking for the track, just my 2 cents.
I will give it a shot though in my spare time and see how it works… you never know..
Always a cool read.
V.
Exactly – 10 was decent but the forced upgrade to 11 sucked. Beware – There are lot’s of things which do not work in 10 as Apple really wants you to upgrade and makes sticking with old software painful.
Note taken.. as always, thanks Ean.
People need to understand that it’s labels that pick the genre tags for releases- not Beatport. They are often to blame for terrible genre choices.
Thanks John, I could not have said it better myself.
One thing I’d like to add. Use the app and “fix” the genres as you see fit. This will help inform us what the community believes the genre is for a specific track. In other words. Help the system learn.
Did you not read this post by Turtle Power? • 21 hours ago
“To be fair they are really wrong – as a content provider to Beatport you can tell them what genre to classify a particular track, but they seem to ignore this and choose the classification themselves. The particularly bad side effect of this (from the sales perspective of content providers as well) is that deep house/electronica/indie dance gets very mixed up – a lot of stuff that is very much deep house gets thrown into the electronica category, and thus missed by people.”
Crowdsourcing the genre tags is the ultimate fix and bravo if you can pull it off! The problem with generalized “text field” tagging is that everyone has different spellings and different ideas so you’re looking to find the most common choices and offer it as a pull-down menu. This is where techniques like Google’s OpenRefine (http://openrefine.org/) can datamine the tag cloud to reach a K-clustered community decision, or at least a subset of tags that are commonly used. The same analysis should show you rising genres and suggestions for new tags.
Recently Beatport removed “Happy Hardcore” and added “Hard Dance”, “Electro House” and “Dubstep” as new genres (at the same time that “Progressive House” went to hell, filled with mislabeled Electro tracks.) How often does Beatport rejig the top-level genres?
in a year or two, you even have to look for new songs, you will have a software that looks for you….as this one. You will try to beat match….the software does it for you now a days. Uou the software tells you the key ! so now you only have to put a track and keep the armonic mix……….doesnt seems like work, for me thats been lazy.
if we keep on going like this, In 10 years, djs will desappear. Now a days, in 2 days you have infinitive number of tracks, all orderer for you, in key, the software looks music for you…..man are we sure what we are supporting?
I agree with technology but these is going too far, now a days you only have to turn on your mac, press play, and thats it, you are dj.
This is going too far ! djs are not being respect in my opinion. I ve been playing for more than 20 years, now a days one guy in 5, 6 hours can have all my library in his desktop and played perfect, in key, in perfect sync…….come on !!!!…!!!!! you even need skills…..you can dj with no knowledge ! with no study, without reeeeally looking for tracks !
DJing without looking for tracks !!!!!!! WTF !!!!!
With this program you look, chill out music, that key, that tempo, bum 2000 tracks, download, in 40 minutes you are playing tracks that you even know who produce it.
this is way too much. Hope this kind of easy macdj software doenst go too further.
In 10 years computers will be producing music on the fly. ha No need for DJs or producers. Just walk into a club and hear something new every time and it will be better than any human can produce.
so computers will have feelings? thats the different my friend, a computer will never produce something like a human. Human have feelings ! and thats what music is about ! . A computer cannot express nothing, its something electronic, doesn’t has any kind of mood.
But if we keep on going like this, djs will no longer be respectful, now a days you don’t need knowledge or a record library, you just type House music, 120 bmp, any tag, and you are a dj, so anyone is a dj. Tell your mama, do you want to be a dj? well sit for 1 hour in front of the computer and thats it.
And then digital djs want to get paid….. jajajaj come on ! of course they will play for free ! they didnt had to do anything !!!! how can you charge if you don’t do nothing?
This is going to the wrooooong place for serious people.
I think computers in 10 years will have a lot more than the ability to recreate human feeling. I understand what your saying but 10 years is a lot of time for technology to grow.
And yes the “Digital DJ” will be dead. Or they may be the next rock starts as they are becoming now. Time will tell.
You don’t dj do you. Because this is one uninformed uneducated statement…. Organizing your music is now easy djing
It’s more the fact of the skill that is home how related to picking music.
exactly !
(sorry for my english I’m argentinian)
Ive been djing since 1991, hope you have enough age enough to understand what is digging. Being in a country where vinyl is so much expensive, and so hard to find. Im not from us, or europe……
So you can imagine for me what is looking for tracks….. studying names of producers to find other stuff……. who played the bass to find more about them…… where was mastered, etc…………studying.
Now you just write a name, and thats it ! shazam !!!!! you don’t need even to know a name !!!!! This kind of softwares make everything FOR YOU, so you are doing nothing. You download 4 gigas of music you don’t know, then you open tractor, auto sync, bum you call yourself a dj. Yo don’t have any skills, and you know nothing about music, nothing.
SO….. what are you supporting ? djing? digging? nothing, because you do nothing, you don’t need to. YOu just click on your phone or type some thing you heard…..by this time there are djs that never even been to a record shop !!!!!!! and you call them djs? come on !!!!!!! have some respect ! study !
Smart softwares, dumb people. Its a fact, go to a record shop, study !
what you have to remember matias that, as with any technological developments, it will close some doors and open new ones. Its all evolution.
the thing tho, I buy most of my tracks on google play ( they tend to be cheaper…1.49 vs .99)
only time i get stuff on beatport is if it can’t be found somewhere else. hope that won’t be a problem
Not a problem. It doesn’t matter where you acquired your files from.
how does this works with Traktor or Serato??…how the Tracks are displayed in those platforms?
It works exactly like iTunes within those apps with the added benefit of folder and hierarchical playlists.
Thanks for the info…I view the info on the page after I posted here. Sorry for jumping the gun so quickly.
Wait… This is Mac only?? Never mind then…
I’ve been waiting for software like this forever!!! I’ve tried almost all of them and nothing has been an all in one solution for me. A couple of questions…
How well does this integrate with Traktor?
Do the playlists you create in here populate perfectly in Traktor?
Can you create your own tags for the moods, genres, and filters? I have my own system of organization and I’d like to maintain that consistency with the ability to customize these settings.
Beatport Pro integrates with Traktor the same way iTunes does.
Yep, Hierarchy, folder structure and contents will populate perfectly in Traktor.
Yep, you can create your own adjectives for all the tag fields (and in the process help the community learn and grow these tags).
Great article, very informative. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for to manage my music files.
im wondering tho…is this gonna be free?
It states that is a free application, so assuming they aren’t gonna have something up their sleeve, yes it should be free.
Yep. The app is free.
please awnser this…does it support flac (that would be so sweet) and can we burn cds from it?
regardless, im looking foward to it!
Is it available now or not yet? http://pro.beatport.com/ says “coming soon” – what is the deal!? Frustration, as this looks really promising!
Another thing I would like to know is how “smooth” the transition would be from Itunes to Beatport Pro? Would my star ratings remain? or would I have to “rate” them from scratch?
What about Mp4 files? I VJ and I would hate to find out that Beatport doesnt play nice with mp4 files and ends up corrupting my tags or collection….
Seems like a nice alternative, but Im good with Itunes atm….
Yep, your star ratings remain (as long as iTunes has written them back to the file).
Beatport Pro will not corrupt your files. We’d be interested if you gave it a try with a few test files and commented in the forum: http://beatport.uservoice.com/forums/180293-beatport-pro-library-manager
What about comments? I have Mixed in Key write keys to the comments metatag and I’ll add my own comments as well. Any chance those will get overwritten by your “Purchased on Beatport” comments?
Yep, if they are trying to be a one stop shop for DJ’s and everything DJ related then this needs to work with Traktor much like iTunes already does. I noticed at the bottom of this page: http://pro.beatport.com/ it’s states “Compatible with iTunes, Traktor, Recordbox, & Serato” so I assume it will work, but still not confirmed.
Hi Chris, It works exactly like iTunes within those apps with the added benefit of folder and hierarchical playlists.
This doesn’t seem better than iTunes at all, and actually looks like it would add more work and complication for a working DJ.
Most complains about iTunes seem to be from a lack of information, or a simple bias against all things Apple.
iTunes is not a bloated music player. In its current status, there is an included “store” icon on the left sidebar, which is not much different than this beatport player.
You say the filters “kick iTunes butt” but the smart filters in iTunes have been doing that for ages, and actually seem to be more powerful than the Beatport filters. The iTunes smart playlists have more variables to select from and you can get very detailed.
Sorting your DJ library away from your “at home” library is very simple. I ONLY rate tracks that I DJ with, so any playlist that is automatically generating to pick from is required to have a star rating.
Additionally, when you use iTunes, the smart playlists immediately work most DJ softwares that I’m familiar with, making you do less prep time between gigs as long as you sort music as you upload it. With this beatport software, it looks like you’re just adding another un-necessary step for things to get messed up in. It wouldn’t have stood out to me so much if there weren’t so many claims of it being “better than iTunes.” Different? yes. Better? No.
These are all great suggestions and your right – a few less mentions of “better than Itunes” would probably have been wise. I-tunes remains one good option for managing music but it was a lot better 10 years ago. The music browsing and playlist architecture has become intermingled with other media areas making it a lot more cumbersome. In my opinion, Pro is preferable because:
1) It’s easier to work in (less cluttered and easier on the eyes) – Try to replicate this “all music on right, playlists on left” interface in Itunes (impossible without using a smart playlist for all music)
2) Pro is focused on the needs and pain points of djs
3) The dj specific tags and sync is great for updating info and parsing the collection
4) Smart playlists can achieve similar results but are more difficult to work with and less dj focused.
All that being said – a tutorial on how to hack the new Itunes into a more dj friendly workflow could be a good next article!
If you guys are interested, I’d love to do a guest article on how I make iTunes work with a variety of DJ gigs. I find myself having to explain the smart playlists to folks a lot and so many people have no idea how powerful it is.
You can easily do all playlists on the left and all music on the right in Itunes.
Im quite confused as to what you are on about. The picture of Beatport pro looks very similar to Itunes 11!
Try to replicate this “all music on right, playlists on left” interface in Itunes.
That doesn’t make any sense, anybody can do that,
I know by default they changed the lay out, but you can change it as it was in iTunes 10 very easily. Just go to view / show sidebar, then click on Music in said sidebar and voilá, you have your playlists at the left and ALL your music in the left side (make sure you select “songs”or you’ll only see thumbnails of the album covers instead of a list of tracks)… In my humble opinion iTunes is still miles ahead of beatport .
I meant music at the right side
Itunes is a JOKE, i want folders, folders, foleders, like back in the day when computers was quite new and a dj was able to rip his music to a harddrive, made folders with their own collections and put the content in them with a cover and maybe a textfile, quesheet and with other pertinent info
So when the cd broke, you just did not have to buy it over again, or the record could be off the shelf as well.
And djs without the right music are as you allready know unemployed djs.
Itunes for me is a no go, put everything in and make a playlist?, huh?, what a braindead way too approach a problem.
“Its like having one big cover for all your cd music in a case!”
Being Mac exclusive in this day and age is sad. Should have focused on Windows support before focusing on reinventing a wheel that no one asked to have reinvented.
…or a Chrome App that runs on Win/Mac/Linux/ChromeOS/Android/iOS from the same codebase. Oh well!
This is due to historical reasons. Beatport Pro started its life as a product called Beatler. Beatler was a non-official, reverse engineered software that was later purchased by Beatport and rebranded as Beatport Pro.
In addition to this – a request for a PC version was made almost two and a half YEARS ago, and only in March of this year are they finally hiring someone to do a PC/Windows version, which means it will be some time before it shows up for those of us on Windows. While I would love to say it’s nice to see a Windows version is now planned,they sure dragged their heels for a long time on this issue.
http://beatport.uservoice.com/forums/180293-beatport-pro-for-mac/suggestions/2409407-pc-and-windows-version
aren’t we forgetting the most important thing!!
how about integration with traktor or ableton(specially with the ability to organize your loops and one shots)
That’s a good question. You can set Beatport Pro to export the playlists in a Itunes format and then point Traktor to import from that file. That does mean it would break the connection between I-tunes and Traktor (only one at a time), but the playlists would all be synced up between pro and traktor or other programs that support itunes import.
How exactly do you do that?
nvm, i figured it out. peace!
I see that, but tell me that’s not a kludge. (I miss Beatport integration w Traktor tbh). Hopefully there’s a better fix in the future (from NI or BP).
Is it already out? I can’t seem to find it. I visited their page and it says coming soon.
Looks really promising. Two problems I see: One, beatport genres are often a joke. It’d be nice to be able to select what fields are synced. And two, iTunes playlists integrate with Traktor and Rekordbox. This doesn’t (as far as I know). That’s a deal breaker for me.
from the video, it appears that you select what fields are synced. there appear to be checkboxes on screen
this actually does integrate with traktor serato and rekordbox
Good points Sam – You can choose which fields are synced over and which are not.
Hi Sam. Read John and DJ Souza’s comments (with my responses) below.
“download correct genre” from Beatport? Hahaha! Nope. Love them, use them often, but genre tagging is not their strength.
True – the genre’s are a very subjective thing which can often be “wrong” depending on our point of view. This does give you a good place to start as many songs in our collections have no genre info at all.
to be fair they are really wrong – as a content provider to Beatport you can tell them what genre to classify a particular track, but they seem to ignore this and choose the classification themselves. The particularly bad side effect of this (from the sales perspective of content providers as well) is that deep house/electronica/indie dance gets very mixed up – a lot of stuff that is very much deep house gets thrown into the electronica category, and thus missed by people.
Thats why the savvy shopper needs to use advanced search features to find the good stuff. The real annoyance is trying to find good glitch hop with all the 110 dubstep they throw in.
I set my download settings to download by genre and I had trance, deep-house, progressive house and breaks created as folder though only breaks were in my cart – heh
Fatlimey, use the app and help the system learn. Also, see John’s comment below.
Help the system learn? Ok, I’ll help the system learn when you run more 50% off sales. You’ve got SFX Entertainment money now, you ain’t a charity and my time is valuable. You want free expertise? Start over as a 501c3.
If i search house or the other way around i dont want to end up buying trancetracks or something i dont like. i stopped using beatport since i heard theyre not 100% honest with their compression of Wav vs mp3, to med thats freud.
And saying the genres arent that important, true true to the average listner it isnt, but for a dj its imperative that i get the right music for the job!
Hey dude, play some progressive house will ya?
Sure i play some new fresh progressive i bought on beatport, = TRANCE; hahaha