So, here I am. Arrived in the time of Rekordbox. Version 3.0 even, with a lot of fuzz in the '3'!
After three years of using Scratch Live and about five years of finding digital solutions the very first thing I discovered it was going to be hell to keep good track of my collection. The vinyl was in many ways much more manageable but I'm not the kind of guy that resists against progress. I rather be part of it so I started working things out. And one of the first -flexible- things about the digital era to me, were the many different hardwarez to control them. Each of them with their own specifics and each of them with their own presentation of the info I need to recover my tracks at a gig.
Let's skip the whole development I and my collection went through and start right at the end:
I now store my tracks centrally in one folder where it is divided in processed tracks and tracks that just came in.
Mixed in Key scans the new tracks and ads the key before the track name. No need to in Scratch but i do not drag my scratch everywhere anymore since ID# can be read and displayed properly.
My central application sees the new tracks coming in and automatically renames the files. Track name (from the ID3 tag with the added key) first because on a gig I don't care about the artist, I want to know the track I'll be playing and the older CDJ's and CD players in general have the annoying feature of scrolling through your file names.
In the process the files are moved from the 'new' folder to the 'processed' folder.
Mean while I create M3U playlists also centrally stored on a different drive. Synced with Onedrive these days. My Drive name and folderstructure is the same on my network as it is on my Laptop so simply syncing the folders (and AppData folders from Scratch and my Music app) gives me the same environment portable as it does at home.
From my Music app I sync the playlists to external devices. For starters my phone (or your phone, iphone/android no problem) I have set different name tag formats for different devices to make everything more readable and therefore manageable. The phone thing is a must have to 'know' my music. That's where i listen and choose
Then I have an open source app to sync everything into Serato's library. Ready to roll....
And because pioneer is doing so well in creating the perfect play tools my 32GB USB sticks are formatted especially for the use of them. And now I bought two CDJ900NXS-es
I am so sorry to find out that the last thing screws up everything I have worked for. Because now I HAVE to buy an iPhone and a Macintosh computer and laptop and storage for which I have not the money! It would be the only way to copy my workflow and it would be much less flexible all of a sudden. Exchange between brands is not flexibility. It's just expensive.
So now there may be two solutions:
I step up to the plate, buy a new SSL so I get SeratoDJ and move on with the Serato people who now connect closely with the great play-functionality of the pioneer people...................OR:
Please help me out so I can actually really import .m3u playlists in Rekordbox. Can we find a way to get this done? I'm not a developer but I happen to be a media workflow consultant in video. We have the centralized location thing so well in order. I don't mind helping pioneer people (artists as well as the company men) to get their systems to work for them instead of the other way around. But I need a way to either do everything with every device from rekordbox, or have rekordbox connect to a more flexible streaming media player and organizer. Mine is called Media monkey and it really has all that functionality.
Just maybe, someone could develop an addon for media monkey that exports it's library in the right XML format for recordbox. But i buy your stuff because I want to play. Not because I want to solve administrative and technical issues....
Pleaze...........M3U?
