SwingDJs

So reading the results of Mr DJ 5x5 prompted me to wonder how selective people were in creating their DJ Book. I assume that most of us burn a prefered set of tracks rather than drag around a whole CD collection. What percentage of your swing/jazz songs do you consider danceable in that you take the trouble to burn them into your book??

I'll start - approximately 15% of my swing/jazz collection has found its way into my book. Pretty annoying when I look at how much I've spent on CDs and how few songs I actually DJ with!! I should probably go back and reevaluate!

I carry all my CDs with me. Although, now that I'm switching to laptop DJing, that won't be much of an issue.

Depends on how I count. I carry about 80% of my original cds. And about 10% of my jazz mp3 collection burnt to audio cd (of which 90% I payed for by using e-music or similar)

I think probably all you want to carry around is about 200-300 cds at most. any more is a hassle. so you have to constantly reevaluate your book as you get more stuff. I carry around only compilations. And I'm glad the good old vinyl days when you needed a hand cart and crates of music are over.

I carry about 95% of my stuff with me. the stuff I leave at home is Neo stuff that I bought 5 years ago and CD's I haven't had a good chance to review tracks for dancing yet.

Doug wrote:So reading the results of Mr DJ 5x5 prompted me to wonder how selective people were in creating their DJ Book.

Well after that experiment, I realized I wasn't very selective at all. It spurred me to organize all the music I own, (swing, jazz or whatever) and eventually reorganize my books.

I really want to take a look and see what I use and what I don't... it's also forced me to continually listen to what I own and find those "gems" that I already have. Hopefully this will help since lately I've been in a money crunch and really can't buy all the new CDs I want.

Tina

i have to carry everything because i can't make comps. (my computer has a 9-gig hard drive and a 1x burner with a broken tray )

-yakov

Yakov wrote:i have to carry everything because i can't make comps. (my computer has a 9-gig hard drive and a 1x burner with a broken tray )

Dude, for $30 you can get a faster burner (at least 16x or 32x) on Ebay or even new at Fry's.

With over 13 Binder-books of CDs with potentially danceable music (actually more if you count Blues, Rock, and Hip-Hop), it is impractical and rather useless for me to cart my entire collection around. I have compilations burned in one binder, and sometimes randomly select ONE of the other books to take with me so as to "rediscover" lost gems.

I bring all my cds with me all the time, but I do DJ mainly out of one (now starting a second 48 cd binder) binder because that's where my best music is. My other 2 48 cd binders are alright, but I just don't DJ out of them as much because there is a lot of crap in there, but I bring it anyways. I need to get one binder for everything. I also have about 60 albums on my computer as well. But I don't bring my laptop with me that much and the music isn't the greatest.

Harrison

I've got about 90% of what I own in my book; it is now full and I'm going to resist buying a larger binder (mine holds 92 Cds) - so as I buy more stuff I'm starting to have to make compilations.

For the really good CDs I like having the whole CD instead of a compilation because it gives you more options on new songs to play - if a CD has at least half it's content something I would play then it's just easier to carry the entire CD.

I think my binder is 236 CDs. I would say it's about 50% of my jazz/blues collection, but the rest is not all dancable...

About 1/3 of the CDs I carry are compilations. I've gone through most of my "only 1-2 good songs" CDs and removed them.

On the bright side, I just made $180 selling CDs I bought that I don't use/listen to and I think I'm going to get rid of more of them...

Greg Avakian wrote:On the bright side, I just made $180 selling CDs I bought that I don't use/listen to and I think I'm going to get rid of more of them...

What have you found to be the best/most cost recover effective way to go about this?

I carry around about 350 CD's with me. I don't use a book. I use separate CD soft sleeves. I store them in 3 hard plastic cases which people usually use to store computer CD's. These 3 plastic cases fit perfectly into a small suitcase. The entire thing weighs about 40 pounds.

I like this system. prior to going on to DJ I go through allot of my CD's and lift them diagonally to mark them as songs I want to play. Similar to what allot of DJ's used to do when they had milk crates of records. If I put a set together in my mind the soft sleeves allow me to pull them out of the book alltogether. For me it also allows me to diversefy more. When my CD's were in books I tended to go back to the same CD's too much.

GuruReuben wrote:

Greg Avakian wrote:On the bright side, I just made $180 selling CDs I bought that I don't use/listen to and I think I'm going to get rid of more of them...

What have you found to be the best/most cost recover effective way to go about this?

I don't worry about the money too much; it's a convenience to take them to a used CD store where I get $2-5 dollars a CD -usually about $3. If I take store credit, I can add about 33% to the value of the CDs.

Greg Avakian wrote:I don't worry about the money too much; it's a convenience to take them to a used CD store where I get $2-5 dollars a CD -usually about $3. If I take store credit, I can add about 33% to the value of the CDs.

Sounds like a good chunk of store credit would be worth it. I've got a bit of crap to unload. Though, one mans trash is anothers gold mine... maybe we could have a "For Sale" thread around here somewhere.