Too many tags isn’t the problem

A 20-year-old library exposed a trap

Hi there 7” Vinyl Adaptor Avengers,

I’ve been busy this week editing the first of the new library roasts. This particular library was the result of around 20 years of DJing.

The tag system had become insane, and the DJ in question was finding it hard to find the tracks they needed.

But when I was thinking about the best way to tackle it one thing really stood out to me.

It was how much of that DJs musical vocabulary and decades of DJing was baked into the tag system itself.

There’s no point building a nice pretty library system that doesn’t reflect how you actually think about your music. And you absolutely shouldn’t get rid of your musical personality either. Scorched earth was not the right approach here.

So how did I break this beast down?

Not by deleting, but by using the right surface in the library for the right job.

For example, this DJ had a ‘quality’ rating. This was like a personal gut feel of how good the track was banger wise.

They used 5 tags for this. 1,2,3,4,5. They were mushed into their vibe tag category.

There were some nuances that i’ll dig into more in the full video, but broadly speaking this could easily belong in the star rating field which wasn’t currently being used consistently.

A quick intelligent playlist that pulled in all the 5’s and then bulk apply the 5 star rating was all it took. Rinse and repeat for all five - a two minute job.

That’s 5 tags not deleted from a particular DJing approach, but moved to a better and faster to access surface.

So before you nuke your whole tag system ask yourself these 3 questions:

• What are the key decisions a tag needs to help me make?

• Is a tag the best place for that information?

• Which tags are actually part of how I think about and choose music?

A better library shouldn’t change how you DJ or think about your collection. It should make it faster to get to the decisions you already know how to make.

See ya next time