Best Way to Organize Music Library for RadioDJ?

[zemirah]

I'm just getting started with RadioDJ and loving the flexibility so far! One thing I'm trying to figure out is the best way to organize my music library for smoother automation and rotation.

Do most of you organize by genre, decade, or energy level? I'm planning a mix of classic rock, indie, and some chill tracks for overnight. I'd also love to hear how you tag your tracks for categories or rotations—any tips or mistakes to avoid?

[RFU]

Genre is handled by the import for each track

I've found the best way to physically organize your tracks is

1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s

Then artist name
and have their songs/albums split according to decade
This makes it very easy to import everything if you have to rebuild your database or when you're first starting out.

I used to have my tracks organized as Artist name, then 1960s etc. Huge mistake as it took forever if you had to rebuild your database or you were first starting.

[packzap]

There are many different ways and ideas to do it. Yes, you can organize by dates or era's. Or, by priority: hot, warm, cool. Some people use colors: red, blue, green, whatever . . . Or, the actual genre type: jazz, rock, folk, country.  The possibilities are limitless with RadioDJ.

Create your own categories and have fun with it!

[RadioDJ Dude]

Since my station is 'All 80s, All the Time', I import all songs into the 80s subcat, but rely on Genre in my rotations and some of these other options.

Other settings in Track Editor I use:

-Year Field: I enter the release year of the song, which can be used in SQL queries for special features that play songs from specific years.

-Mood (Others Tab): I mainly use 'High' to program high energy songs after certain production elements/jingles. BUT, the list of options is long.

-Language: I've never used the actual languages, but I assigned them different values for added programming flexibility. For example, "German Polka One Hit Wonders" can be assigned to German.

-Start/End Type: I use these for different functions. For example, "Fade" start type = a song with an intro of :20+. This is helpful when programming sweepers over song intros. I use RDJ's sweeper functionality to run my voice tracks, so this guarantees my tracks will never step on a song intro. In a Rotation, I'll select song Genre, Start Type=Fade and add Sweeper to start of track.

-All those seldomly used fields like 'publisher', 'composer', etc can also be repurposed with custom tags that can be pulled in SQL queries. RDJ is incredibly flexible! I did a video about this.

Of course, everyone has 'their way'. Find the most intuitive system that works best for you.