Every DJ eventually hits the moment where they own more music than they can remember. The structure you choose before that point decides whether the library stays usable afterwards.
In a booth you never think "show me my deep house". You think "I need something that lifts this without going too hard yet." A library organised around genre answers a question you were not asking.
The rule: if the software can already filter it, do not build folders for it. Genre, BPM, key, year and label are all metadata. Your crates should hold the judgements the software cannot make.
| Crate | Holds |
|---|---|
| Openers | Records that work on an empty floor |
| Warm-up | Building, not demanding |
| Peak | The heavy hitters |
| Closers | Records that end a night properly |
| Wildcards | Surprises, edits, the ones that change a room |
| New — to test | Bought but not yet played out |
| Gig: [date/venue] | One per booking, built from the above |
Seven kinds of crate cover most working DJs. Add a genre crate only where you genuinely play two separate scenes and never cross them.
Every library accumulates records that seemed right and never come out. They are not harmless: they pad every search and slow every decision. Move them to an archive crate rather than deleting them — the point is to shrink what you scan, not to lose the music.
Build a crate per booking, then build the set from it — that is How to plan a DJ set. Keep a permanent Emergency crate too: ten records you can play in any situation, in any order, that have never let you down. When a night goes sideways it is the only crate you will want to see.
Energy and situation are usually more useful. Genre is already stored as metadata and can be searched or filtered instantly, so a crate that duplicates it adds little. What software cannot tell you is which records open a night, which lift a floor, and which close it, and those are the judgements you need fastest under pressure.
Few enough to scan without scrolling — for most DJs that is somewhere between eight and twenty. A long list of crates is as hard to search as no crates at all, and crates you never open are a sign the structure is describing the music rather than how you play it.
Not as folders. Key is metadata: sort or filter by it when you need it. Building crates per key fragments the library into 24 pieces and hides the more useful groupings, and our research found key is a weaker factor in real transitions than it is usually taught to be.
Where to buy music · Cue points and hot cues · How to plan a DJ set · Does mixing in key actually matter?
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