Hi everyone
I'm using rekordbox a while now and now I'm running into a problem.
I organize my music and by year for example:
2013
2014
2015Q1
2015Q2.
In Rekordbox I put everything in 1 collection and make smart playlists by key (camelot system). I manually mention the corresponding folder where the music was put on the harddrive in the comments field so i can keep track of that.
Now the problem:
In the folder of 2013, there are some tracks that i don't use anymore. I really only want to keep the floorfillers from back then. I also don't want that music to be physically on my harddrive anymore. Instead i want to move it to a second harddrive called 'Archive'.
That music, is probably the music that got a rating less than 4 stars. Offcouse it's easy to find this these issued tracks by going into explorer in Rekordbox, navigate to the 2013 bin on my harddrive and select all the ones that have no rating. I can prelisten them, maybe some of them are marked to stay.
Except... i can't delete these files. I can't move them. Nope, the only thing i can do is select one track at a time, click 'show in explorer', and then move it from explorer manually. After this process i would have to let Rekordbox 'find' missing tracks and click remove to get them out of my collection.
And then i'm like ripping my hair out because that's just awful? Wouldn't it be much easier that Rekordbox makes it possible to delete or move music from the explorer tab and asks "You are about to move source files on your computer. Do you want to keep these tracks into your collection?" or "Caution: you are about to permanently remove these files from your computer, these tracks will also be removed from your collection/playlists. Do you want to proceed?"
I have the feeling that Rekordbox thinks that unused music should just keep floating around on your harddrive since there is no way to deal with it, meaning that over time it's just impossible to archive unused tracks or in worst case rebuild a collection with tracks you do use. RB now just ignores every basic principle of management in explorer/finder that has been around for decades now and i think - with all do respect - since rekordbox depends on explorer, these functions should work in the first place.
Am i maybe overlooking something?
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You could try this:
Move all the tracks from your 2013 folder to you archive folder using Windows Explorer (assuming you are PC based).
Go to Rekordbox and let it realise that there are a load of missing tracks.
Remove all the missing tracks from Rekordbox.
Re-add the tracks to Rekordbox from the archive folder.
The suggestion has already been passed along to allow rekordbox the function of deleting the physical files themselves.
Is the problem a lack of storage space on the drive or that you simply don't want to keep the files anymore?
@Johnnyb50uk: Thanks for the suggestion, only in windows explorer i can't see which files should be archived. I know titles of a lot of tracks but not all of them ;-) if windows explorer could show me the rating of a track assigned in RB it would already be an improvement, but unfortunately it can't.
@Pulse: Thanks for the feedback. The problem is both. I tend to connect my laptop more than usb-sticks so i can dig in my whole collection. I regulary clean out my playlists to keep the best from the past and optimize my disk-usage. Some music that was only good for once or twice (the downside of buying albums) just needs to be archived and get lost from my collection. If i ever have a worst-case scenario where my stuff crashes and my RB-backup gets lost too (and it happens, believe me) that would leave me with at least raw folders with "my" music. I hope the team will take it into account as it can only be an improvement.
The mass-movement of files would be a bit of a disaster unless you're maintaining the same structure, eg:
From: X:\Music\2014Q1\Artist\Album\Song.mp3
To: X:\Music-Archive\2014Q1\Artist\Album\Song.mp3
...where the only real change is the fact it's gone from X:\Music\ to X:\Music-Archive\ - everything below that remained the same. In that case, you could do it, but the process of locating and moving those files would be a bit time consuming. Moving files from within rekordbox is not a feature I expect Pioneer would implement as the variables of how and where would be far too complex.
My recommendation would be for you to keep everything in the folders you put them into in the first place, and simply manage the music within playlists. You DO have the ability to create backups of your library and the playlists, so there should be no reason for loss in the event of a drive failure.