Most DJs Have This One Big Problem
And it's making DJing stressful
Hi there Pioneer Pioneer,
In the Pixar film Up! - you know the one with the house on balloons - this old guy Carl has a home full of possessions that he can’t let go of because they remind him of his dead wife.
It seems like these possessions are bringing him happiness but eventually he realises that keeping hold of all this stuff is actually holding him back.
When he finally lets go he’s able to grow as a person and move on. If you have a lot of Tech House you might relate.
DJs are particularly prone to this hoarding mentality. But the problem is whilst a big library might seem like a good thing, it can actually make your sets worse*.
Why is this, and what can we do about it?
*wedding DJs get a free pass
Why we be like this tho?
More more more!
It’s what our entire society wants us to believe is good for us.
DJs are especially prone to this way of thinking because our entire purpose is the collection of music.
Or at least that’s what I used to think.
What I came to realise is there are many reasons why endless collecting is a bad thing:
Too much choice - you have so many options it becomes impossible to choose the right one
It’s expensive - You have to find somewhere to put everything. So you have to spend a LOT of money on physical or cloud storage (or both)
It’s stressful - Hoarding behaviours can make it emotionally painful to ever get rid of anything, even if it’s objectively the right thing to do
It’s overwhelming - The more music you have, the harder it is to organise and manage it effectively. It also feels impossible to get started sorting it out.
If you’ve been DJing a long time then you may feel your library is too far gone to be helped. Or if you’ve started more recently, you may recognise some of the warning signs.
So how do we deal with this nasty addiction?
How to cure the addiction
Music is cheap. Too cheap probably.
That makes it accessible, but it also makes it too easy to over-indulge.
99p a track? I’ll take 30 please
£9.99pm for a streaming library of every tune ever made? Go on then
When I started DJing on vinyl - my student loan (which definitely was not meant for buying bangers) could only stretch to 2 or 3 tunes a month.
That meant I had to think really carefully about what I was going to spend my cash on. What new track would teach me a new mixing technique? What new track would enable a new transition in my set? What new track would impress that girl improve my future job prospects?
Sometimes it meant selling an old track to an unwitting student to get the funds for something new.
This forced financial limitation drilled some really good habits into me which I didn’t realise until way later. My library grew in a slow, but controlled way. Constantly being pruned and thought about methodically.
It’s easy to forget this essential part of library management when you have cheap access to everything in the entire world.
And over the last few years, I did.
What I needed was a mindset shift - from a collector of music to a curator.
But what do I do about it?
Even with the lessons I’d learnt early on, my first digital library fell pray to all the traps I’ve spoken about.
And it got so bad I deleted all of it. I even made a video about it.
The thing is a year on - I regret it. I think there was a way I could have whipped that library into shape without firing a nuke at it.
There are three big things I should have done that I didn’t:
Back it up: Fear of loss is THE biggest reason I think most DJs find it hard to declutter their library. The simple act of backing up and shoving it in a drawer somewhere makes it massively easier to be objective and not emotional when taking the axe to your library
Start small: The bigger your library is, the harder it seems to get started. That’s why it’s important to do it slowly over time. If every week you can get rid of just 20 rubbish or broken tracks then that’s 1,040 over the year. And this really does only take seconds of time.
Be a gatekeeper: No, not in the boomer way. But gate-keep your library like you are those creepy statues with wings in The Never Ending Story….Artaxxxxxxx! Do not under any circumstances let sub-standard tracks in. One of the best ways I’ve found to deal with this is to shortlist any tracks I’m thinking of getting, then leave it at least 24 hour before listening again and deciding if they make the cut
I need more help English guy
I’m pleased to say I have some practical advice on how to declutter your library.
The latest video on the channel goes into much more detail on how to:
Get rid of missing files from Rekordbox
Get rid of duplicates (including a special new Rekordbox feature)
Find and kill bad quality files and remixes
Clean up your hard drive in a flash
And on that last point I’ve made a little something special for all subscribers of Hotcue DJ..
🆕 A new Mac Shortcut
Running out of hard drive space? The problem could be you have a ton of music saved on your computer that isn’t even in your DJ library.
I wanted a way to quickly find these files so I could remove them and take back ownership of my hard drive. You can also use it to find tracks you’ve forgotten to add into your library.
It’s called Library Hunter and adds to my other Mac tools for DJs (find them in your welcome email). The video above has a full walkthrough on how to use it.
❓ Have you been struggling with a library that’s got out of hand? Let me know in the comments or by replying to this email.
In other news
You may remember some time ago I asked for some beta testers for a new course idea. They were instrumental in helping shape the content in what I’ve been calling ‘CueCademy’ - everything you need to know about setting the perfect cue.
After going back and forth on this for the last few months I’ve decided this content should be available for everyone, so i’ll be splitting it out and releasing it on the channel over the coming weeks/months.
There will be something in here for you even if you’ve been using cues for years. Make sure you’re subscribed over on the youtubes so you don’t miss those new videos.
See you next time!
That's funny! It's been four months since I started cleaning my library. Out of 8000 tracks, there were exactly 4000 left yesterday. And I'm not going to stop. I removed a lot of garbage and for the first time in years, the desire to play music all day long returned to me
Brilliant as ever!