Crates – Pillar 1 to Success

Back when vinyl records were the only way to transport music from point A to point B, you would take a copy of all the music you knew people liked, carry it to the venue, and make that last as long as you could.

Here’s a little history lesson for the younger folks.

There used to be a person who delivered milk to every household daily. Refrigerators weren’t as cheap or effective as they are today and food you put in them didn’t last as long.

They would drop of a number of milk jugs in a plastic container called a crate. It was a light weight, strong, easy to carry, and they could interlock together so they weren’t likely to fall over. It was completely by coincidence that the milk crate was the perfect size to hold a collection of full sized records! This was the beginning of using crates to transport and organize music. At one point it was actually illegal to use a milk crate for anything other than milk because the industry was actually losing money making crates, shipping them out and not getting them back!

Today, just about every Digital DJ platform organizes their music using a file system centered around crates though it’s more of a catchy name for a filing system than anything else.

Crates are not only a simple way to organize your music, but, they are key to a successful set! When set up correctly, they can cut your effort in half and allow you to focus on other things while you work!

I say there’s no right or wrong way to organize crates because everyone is different, but, I’ll fill you in on my logic and you can put your own spin on it.

All of my crates are organized by genre, release date, BPM, purpose, and how often they’re played.

For example, when I first started DJing you couldn’t play a single party without playing “Let Me Clear My Throat – DJ Kool” Let’s break down the properties of the song.

It’s a dance song, it came out in the 90’s, it hovers around 100 BPM and it was a MUST play.

I would put that song in my Dance crate, in a sub crate of 90’s music. I would also place that song in a “Must Play” crate with songs that were popular at the time. The good thing about most software is that you can place songs in multiple crates. Sounds confusing but there’s a method to my madness. Popular songs usually stay popular just people want to hear them less frequently over time. You can rotate “Must Play” songs in and out of that particular crate as they become more and less popular. If I decide to remove a song from the Must Play crate, it will still be organized in my Dance crate and I can use it for a throwback song later.

Music, just like fashion, tends to go in cycles. Any song that was in the top 10 for any length of time, should never be out of reach down the road. Right now, 90’s Hip-Hop is making a comeback. There’s even videos of people listening to 90’s rap for the first time and being blown away by the skill set of the artists of that time. These songs can be peppered in with new songs to lengthen a set or test the preference of my audience. Don’t be afraid to take calculated chances during a set, sometimes, people surprise you!

Using the example above, you can organize your crates the way that makes sense to you and make it easy to play hit after hit, as well as make it easier to experiment with new mixes that don’t’ exactly jump out at you.

Get crackin’ on your crates and feel free to drop your own suggestions in the comment section below.