There are a number of music management tools available in the market. Among them, iTunes and Serato are mostly popular among the professional DJs.  For those just getting started I

Professional DJs use these applications in order to store, organize, and manage the music playlists. Both of the applications (iTunes and Serato) comes with their own set of pros and cons. In the following sections, you will be acquainted with more information on the topic of iTunes vs Serato.

iTunes Music Management

DJ software mainly comes with file management features. And, iTunes (a product of Apple Inc.) is not an exception to that. When the American multinational technology company i.e. Apple Inc. launched the iPod, the device featured a polished, intriguing, and interactive download store cum file manager — iTunes.

iTunes featured a nice, sleek, and easy to use interface. It was compatible with both PC and Mac; therefore, universal users of Apple products simply loved this newly-designed download store cum file manager i.e. iTunes. In the meantime, DJ program makers also built iTunes library viewing feature into their tool where the users can download, organize, and prepare their music via iTunes.

With iTunes, you can also put your DJ playlists into your iPod or use them across multiple DJ programs (if you wish). In this way, the music management software (iTunes) gained a significant popularity among the professional DJs. However, over the years, they have found various foibles and stumbles while using iTunes for storing, organizing, and managing music.

What are the Drawbacks of using iTunes?

  1. It Has Become Big & Bloated: Earlier iTunes was used for downloading music and syncing it to your iPod, DJ software, and smart phone. Nowadays, iTunes is all about films, home video, podcasts, TV programs, audio books, app management, online learning, and streaming music etc. Thus, it can be no longer used as a clean and focused music library app for elegantly managing your DJ library.
  2. Apple Inc. Is Probably Planning to Terminate Music Downloads Feature: With the popularity of online streaming, Apple Inc. is already planning to drop its music download feature. If music download feature is removed from iTunes, it will be totally unusable for professional DJs.
  3. iTunes Can Not Handle DJ Info Well: In iTunes, you can not view/check the universally accepted musical key info in terms of ID3 tags. Therefore, iTunes is slowly becoming a compromise for professional DJs when it comes to music management or DJ library management.

Considering the aforementioned shortcomings, professional DJs are now using another excellent and powerful music management tool i.e. Serato.

Serato Music Management

In addition to having a huge following in the DJ realm for the stability of  Serato’ Scratch Live software, DJ has built upon their legacy with music management functionality.   Once of the first things I’d noticed while using the software was its ability to load larger music library content quickly and seamlessly.  Without a doubt loading a large library via Serato is noticeably quicker than iTunes. Just in case when you are trying to open or load a large library file in iTunes, you may need to restart your application or reboot your laptop since iTunes application crashes and freezes every time as you try to open a large library file.

Manipulating various information in Serato through an external drive offers a complete portability to any computer or laptop. All you will need to plug your USB device into your computer to manage music from an external drive.

Creating Smart Crates and Crates in Serato are also extremely straight forward. Furthermore, you can nest Crates into a hierarchical manner so that you can organize your music collection well. While creating Smart Crates, you can use the options to add a filter to your data. However, the available options for Smart Crates are quite limited. For example, you can not use conditional statements (like AND or OR) and do simple NULL checks in Smart Crates.

Another limitation is that — if you try to execute a complex Smart Crate query in Serato, it generally takes a few seconds to populate the results (which can be a minor performance issue). Whereas, iTunes can instantly load results of a complex query without any delay.

Conclusion

While iTunes may cut it for those DJs looking to quickly integrate their music library into a fairly reliable platform rather than something new,  Serato offers a faster platform where you can quickly load a large music library file and efficiently organize your DJ playlist.  As mentioned earlier, you may observe a slight performance issue while you are trying to execute a complex query in Serato, but the efficiency and their library of DJ-centric applications make it the choice for this DJ

Thanks for reading…Alex

https://www.studiodelphin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/serato-vs-itunes-1024x575.jpghttps://www.studiodelphin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/serato-vs-itunes-150x150.jpgAlex FigueroaDJ AdviceDJ Gearitunes vs serato,serato file management,using itunesThere are a number of music management tools available in the market. Among them, iTunes and Serato are mostly popular among the professional DJs.  For those just getting started I Professional DJs use these applications in order to store, organize, and manage the music playlists. Both of the applications (iTunes...DJ Delphins Professional DJ Blog