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Workflow: The idea of "the shelf"

Hi Pioneer and forum,

I wanted to propose an improvement to Rekordbox (or ask if anyone knows a way to achieve my goal).

I come from playing vinyl. So the way I've organized my now large digital music library come the idea of "the shelf" :-)

So I have My Collection, which is, as we all know, the entire collection unsorted.

What I've done is then categorized everything into various folders and playlist. These folders and playlists are then dissected/filtered (manually) into corresponding "export folders and playlists" - this is the tracks that I'm exporting to my USB. Also known as - the record bag :-)

So far so good.

BUT....

I cannot see which tracks are NOT in the "record bag."

At some point I want to delete some tracks off of the "export playlists" that I do not play out after all. Also known as - taking the record out of the bag again.

Now, what I want is a sort of "shelf" - or an automation - that moves tracks I am deleting off one specific export-playlist BACK into the corresponding "shelf"-playlist. (Yes, I know I could do this manually as well, dragging them back into the "shelf" and then deleting them from the "export" playlist.)

Does it make sense? :-)

 

This is an example of how my structure looks:

TECHNO [folder with all complete subfolders, playlists and tracks in this genre]

TECHNO EXPORT [export folder (corresponding the one above) only containing the tracks I want to play out]

TECHNO SHELF [folder where all the tracks that are NOT in the export folder/playlist goes when I delete them off it - sort of like a shelf]

Is this possible in any way?

 

 

 

Kasper Melchior

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First, open your collection and create / tag all your tracks with a tag InCollection.

Next, create a tag and call it InPlaylist and then go through each of your playlists, select ALL tracks, add the InPlaylist tag to all the tracks. You can easily do this later when adding them to playlists.

Finally, create an intelligent playlist with the criteria My Tag does not contain InPlaylist. This is your "shelf."

Pulse
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Thanks for the answer, Pulse!

I can see how to acheive a view of tracks not in playlists with tags - and that's really great!

But, when I remove a track from my export-playlists "back into the shelf" by deleting it from the export-playlist, I would like it pop back into the corresponding non-export playlist.

Example:

When deleting [TECHNO EXPORT] \ [Peaktime playlist] \ Track01.wav I would like Track01.wav to go back into [TECHNO SHELF] \ [Peaktime playlist].

Is this achievable in any way that isn't too manual?

 

Kasper Melchior 0 votes
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Below you can see my structure.

The TECHNO FULL folder is all tracks from the Collection that is techno and categorized. The TECHNO EXPORT folder is the tracks I've selected from the corresponding playlists in TECHNO FULL to be exported. The TECHNO SHELF folder should show the tracks that are IN TECHNO FULL playlists but NOT IN TECHNO EXPORT playlists, filtered under each corresponding playlist. So when I for example delete a track from [TECHNO EXPORT] \ [Main] \ Playlist 01 that track should appear in [TECHNO SHELF] \ [Main] \ Playlist 01.

COLLECTION

[TECHNO FULL]
---[Warm-up]
-----Playlist 01
-----Playlist 02
---[Main]
-----Playlist 01
-----Playlist 02
---[End]
----Playlist 01
----Playlist 02

[TECHNO SHELF]
---[Warm-up]
-----Playlist 01
-----Playlist 02
---[Main]
-----Playlist 01
-----Playlist 02
---[End]
----Playlist 01
----Playlist 02

[TECHNO EXPORT]
---[Warm-up]
-----Playlist 01
-----Playlist 02
---[Main]
-----Playlist 01
-----Playlist 02
---[End]
----Playlist 01
----Playlist 02

 

ps. sorry for the wall of text :)

Kasper Melchior 0 votes
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Thanks for taking the time to illustrate that, and I applaud you for having a very concise and detailed music organization workflow! 

Yeah, unfortunately what you're requesting seems pretty specific, and I can't think of any automated method to achieve what you're asking. It would be best accomplished by manually changing tags of tracks before they're removed from one playlist. For example, you could use the tag "Shelf" and then the smart playlist criteria could be for tracks with the "Shelf" tag AND tracks with a specific genre.

I also don't know that this is something that could be integrated for use by the masses, but I'll move the post to the suggestions forum anyhow.

Cheers!

Pulse 0 votes
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Thanks a lot :-) I try my best, and I am really enjoying Rekordbox on all other levels.

I was thinking - couldn't it be a criteria option to be implemented within intelligent playlists? Criteria could be called "In Playlist" for example. So instead of using tags, you could make an intelligent playlist with the criterias:

[In Playlist] [equals] [TECHNO FULL \ Main \ Playlist 01]

[In Playlist] [does not equal] [TECHNO EXPORT \ Main \ Playlist 01]

 

Without knowing 100% I think this could be beneficial to a lot of users!

 

 

Kasper Melchior 0 votes
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Yeah, that could work... if we had better criteria for the intelligent filters. I know it's on the list to improve those, but there are still a few drawbacks.

Pulse 1 vote
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Thank you Pedro! I have actually improved it by now.

Now I only use tags and intelligent playlists. Much easier! Here goes: 

I have my tags in three categories: GENRE, SITUATION and STYLE. And then I combine the tags as criteria for my intelligent playlists.

This is my playlists:

And the list of the My Tags

All I now have to do is supply the tracks that I want exported with three matching tags of the playlists I have.

As an example, this is how my criterias are set up for the playlist Techno -> Main -> Hypno


Style is the last of the tags in the criteria so it determines if the track goes in the playlists or not. If I do not want a track on the playlist I tick it off, and it goes into.. TADAAA:

THE SHELF

In order to this my shelf has the following criteria:

So all tracks that are tagged with the genre Techno, but are NOT tagged by any of the Styles goes into the shelf. 

Now everything is controlled by tags and intelligent playlists! And I do not have to worry about Export Playlists etc. 

It took me some time, but now it works LIKE A CHARM! 

Hope this can be useful to others out there struggling to structure their Collections in a fast, functioning and convenient way :-) 

 

/ Kasper

Kasper Melchior 1 vote
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It's a lot of configuration, but I'm glad to see you've whipped rekordbox into a useful tool! I know we'll see more improvements and additional functions as updates roll out, and hopefully some of them will make what you're doing easier.

Thanks for sharing your method!

Pulse 0 votes
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