DJ Music Management using Dropbox

Still using USB drives to update new music onto your DJ performance computers? Or maybe you are using a special program to sync multiple hard drives at once? Nothing compares to the ease of use that Dropbox gives mobile DJs to manage their music library across multiple computers. Imagine being able to add music to any one of your computers, without having to remember which computer you added that music to and which ones still require being synced. Dropbox takes care of all of that… and so much more!

Ritchie Rich, owner/operator of Big And Rich DJ in Sudbury, Ontario, reached out to me recently, asking how I use Dropbox to manage my music library. I’d recently brought up the topic on a CPDJA Canada Wide DJ Call (an open format, group video call, open to any Canadian DJ) and Ritchie was intrigued, wanting to know a little more. What follows is the conversation Ritchie & I had about how I use Dropbox to manage my music files.

Video Notes & Links:

1:00 Introduction
1:35 Step 1 for using Dropbox
3:34 Seamless workflow (non-music mention)
5:41 Better Rename file renaming software
8:50 Using selective sync
12:00 Cost of using Dropbox
15:21 Benefit for multi-system DJ companies
16:33 This isn’t like streaming music
17:21 Side benefit for wedding DJs (of many not mentioned)
19:10 Note for Serato DJ users

Canadian DJs might be wondering how this impacts the legality around CONNECT Music Licensing. I am not an authority on CONNECT, nor do I provide legal advice on how you should manage the licensing of your music hard drives. How I manage the licensing scenario for my purpose though, is as follows. I have my music library in four (4) places: 2 MacBook laptops, 1 iMac desktop, 1 Dropbox account (in the “cloud”). I have two (2) licenses from CONNECT to cover my two laptop computers. By my understanding of the CONNECT terms of use, for each licensed hard drive, a DJ is allowed to have one other duplicate copy of that music for backup purposes. In my case, those two backups are my desktop computer and the copy of files that exist in my Dropbox account (in the “cloud”). Much to the chagrin of many DJs, I do encourage Canadian DJs to participate in the CONNECT Music Licensing program, but I won’t debate the topic any further then I did here.

If you don’t already use Dropbox for this purpose, I hope this system of managing your music is helpful to you. Go ahead, retire your thumb drive… they’re so 2015… 😉

Leave a comment below or contact me here.

~ Dave




9 thoughts on “DJ Music Management using Dropbox”

  1. Hey Dave,

    How are you? I hope you and your family are doing well. I use iTunes as my main software for importing and organizing my music. Would this Dropbox Management video work as well if I used iTunes and how would I set that up? Also if I was to change the genre field (in iTunes) would it also change it in Serato as well? Sorry for asking you this twice. I honestly thought I was commenting on this page to begin with.

    Thank you for your time and stay safe,
    Ronnie

    1. Hey Ronnie, thanks for your comment here! So sorry for the delay in replying as I don’t get back to this site too much anymore (sadly). That said, I am unaware of how this might work with iTunes these days. I would have to do some testing to ensure that I don’t lead you astray but I am unable to do that at this time. So sorry!

  2. It took me a little bit to be convinced this was an ideal worth implementing (although, I’m not sure why) but I ran across your video tutorial on Dropbox, and while I was already pretty fluent on how it works, that sold me! I recently added a second (music only) laptop to my gear plus my original, now backup laptop, and because I simply prefer to manage my incoming music updates using my desktop (because dual monitors makes life waaaaay easier) it’s working great! I’m a VirtualDJ guy and I can keep all my playlists/virtual folders (crates) sync’d across devices too.

    Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom!

  3. I’ve been a DropBox user for…forever. Mostly for Word docs and .pdfs only. Time to stretch my legs and upgrade my account. Plus I’ve always worried that my local external 3TB hard discs could fail or be lost to a power surge or a fire. Those are non issues for you as a DrooBox user. Long live the cloud.

  4. Some further thoughts for those DJs that might be wondering about this:

    Now… if only Serato would allow me to have it store all crate information in my Dropbox folder… then I could open Serato on any of my computers and not only would the music files be synced… so would all crate information. THAT would be a MASSIVE game changer.

    To move Serato crate information from one computer to another, it is easy to do manually. It’s just not automatic. Here are instructions for doing this on a Mac if anyone is wondering.

    Go to Macintosh HD > Users > (your-user-name) > Music
    That’s where you’ll find the folder “_Serato_”. Copy that folder onto another computer in exactly that same location. Then, provided that other computer has the same audio files on it through Dropbox, you can open Serato on that computer and all crates will appear just as they do on the computer you created them.

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