You Don’t Need More Tracks

Why crate digging might be making your library worse

Hi there Line-out Legends,

I’m poor.

Recently I’ve been getting back into vinyl. I’ve been rebuying the same stuff I had 20 years ago. But now I’m doing it at 4x the price from some guy called Keith off Discogs who probably hasn’t seen sunlight in about a decade.

Now don’t get me wrong, collecting tunes is super fun. But after spending £30 on a copy of Chicane - Saltwater (which I don’t even like THAT much) I had to have a hard talk with myself.

I came to a realisation - I had enough music. At least for the time being anyway.

Most of these tracks I’ve not even mixed yet. I just played them once to make sure Keith had graded them properly and then shoved them into their designated Kallax orifice.

This is exactly the problem I see with digital DJ libraries all the time. But in the digital world it’s usually much worse.

The cheapness of digital music and the ease you can just throw tracks into Rekordbox means many DJs end up hoarding, instead of using.

So how can you end the cycle, and make the most of what you already have?

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DJ Backwards

Do you have a bunch of tracks with high plays, and then massive slices of your library with none?

The problem could be that the way you choose your tracks, either when preparing for or playing your sets. It’s easy to end up treading the same paths over and over, turning your library into a boring echo chamber.

• Do you often sort by BPM? You may never scroll down enough to see that 171bpm banger you’ve never played because most of your tracks are 172-175

• Do you organise your playlists by genre? You may never hit tracks that don’t fit neatly in one category

• Do you mainly play tracks you know well? You might be missing less familiar tunes which could change your set completely

All of this can lead you to feel like you always need new music, because you’re never actually using the new stuff you add.

💡 Tip: Sort your library in reverse: Usually sort newest to oldest? Flip it. Like your high play count tracks at the top? Not any more buddy.

Disrupting your patterns with this method can help improve your knowledge of your library, and surface gems you never even knew you had.

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Refresh your memory

I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve prepped whole batches of tracks, then just completely forgot they existed.

Not only does this waste time but sometimes I even buy the same tracks again by accident.

I’ve been building something DJs actually need. This isn’t just another cleanup tool like the rest. It’s built to stop the chaos before it starts — by helping you build a system that holds up under pressure, scales with your growth, and reflects your sound.

So one feature I love is called “You prepped them, now play them”.

How it helps: It’ll instantly find tracks that are cued and ready to go, but have never been played. It’s the perfect reminder to use what you already have. Even better - you can import them right back into Rekordbox so you can get them in your playlists fast.

DJ AJ - One of my beta testers

I’m very close to opening things up to the first batch of users so keep an eye on your inboxes 👀

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Know your tracks so well you’ll hate them

If you feel like you always need new music because you’ve run out of ideas I’m going to set you a challenge.

• Create a playlist with 30-50 tracks (enough for about 60 minutes of music, depending what genre you play).

• Add an equal selection of ones you play a lot, and ones you don’t

For the next 2 weeks these are going to be the only tracks in your world. Your entire library.

Here’s my playlist

The first time you play using this playlist it might even be kinda fun. But by the 3rd time around you’ll probably start getting bored. This is a good thing.

This means it’s time to start working out how to use the tracks you have in new ways to keep it interesting.

Here are a few ideas:

• Mix using the 2nd drops instead of the first

• Use one track as an acapella or layer instead of playing it in full

• Mess with stems

• Shuffle the play order completely

• Use key shift to mess around with new harmonic mixing ideas

By the end of this experiment you’re going to have:

• Improved your knowledge about what’s in your library

• Discovered ideas to blend your favs with ones you forgot existed

• Found ways to create new ideas out of the same building blocks

• Broken some of your track selection patterns and bias

Because I’m a sadist, I’m going to be doing this myself too (I’ll share the results in the next newsletter).

Let me know if you’re going to give this a try too!

See you on the next one 🏯